RFID to be installed on Bermuda's vehicles

RFID to be installed on Bermuda's vehicles

www.physorg.com

Bermuda's Transport Control Department... announced May 7 that it plans to automate vehicle registration, compliance and enforcement with an island-wide deployment of EVR (electronic vehicle registration). The EVR system is made up of RFID tags, antennas, readers and a database system.

(visit the link for the full news article)


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[edit on 5/9/2007 by Djarums]

I find this to be very interesting, and perhaps a taste of things to come. If you think about it, Bermuda is a perfect place to test out such a system. 21 square miles of land...

Now, on the one hand this will definitely make their Motor Vehicle office a lot more efficient, however the privacy concerns will be infinite. They swear that they'll be tracking the vehicles only, not the people, but they know who owns the vehicle. Do I need the government to be able to track my movements down to the millimeter? I'm not usually one for tracking paranoia but this has some bad potential uses...

www.physorg.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

As car (truck, van or SUV) owners have their vehicles inspected or registered they will receive a windshield sticker embedded with an RFID tag (the sticker is tamper-resistant to dissuade any removal of the tag)

Would be interesting to see how these chips could be 'temporarily immobilised' from a civil liberty point of view. Perhaps a small gadget that could be kept on the person that could jam the RFID interrogate-response signal?

Hey guys, don't take this all too seriously, it's bloody Bermuda for criminy sakes. Its virtually a closed system. Try implementing RFID in a place that is full of far more "holes" like Chicago or even a more remote and isolated midwestern city like Kansas City. RFID, to me, seems like something that would replicate fast and become a bit, how do you say, virus-y.

I am not well versed in this subject matter, but I wonder if they are setting this system up with a alternative motive. To see how the system will hold up in a hurricane perhaps. Maybe certain weather phenomena interferes with the devices ability to communicate and they want to work out the bugs.

Personally I don't see the big deal in this, yes in theory it could be used to track a person,
and indeed that could turn out to be a good thing, like if someone steals your car,
is in a high speed chase or kidnaps your child(ren) by taking off with them in the car
you had them, or if someone you know has abducted them.

When it comes down to it, especially in a small place like Bermuda, if you don't like it,
you have a wide variety of options to choose from other than driving, public transit,
walking, biking, hamster wheeling (who would do that I do not know) my point is it's
not some horrible thing being tested to take over the world or something.

Is it possible for a person to opt out of the new tag?

That would be the key to deciding if this is a serious violation of personal property.

I don't know how things work in Bermuda, but around here my license plate belongs to me and so do my registration tags. If I want to chop them up into little pieces and sprinkle them on my cornflakes I can do so with little non-medical consequence.

With these tags though, it's not the tracking that concerns me. A person already has zero expectation of privacy once they leave their home.

Where I draw issue is the placement of a device, which is property of the government, within a vehicle, a vehicle which is property of the owner, that can not be modified or tampered with by the owner under penalty of law.

If someone volunteers to have government property installed in their vehicle, that is their decision and they are entitled to it. But if this is being forced on the citizen then that is unacceptable.

All you need to do to foil them is to lend your car to your girlfriend for the day. Let them track all they want; what does it mean? Nothing.

I love people who can say with a straight face that this does not matter. I don't even have to ask anymore, it's almost always the same.

It's just like saying if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about. Whistle-blower let's say at some future time discovers that the government has dioblolical plans to, I don't let's say chip and inslave the human populous. Whistle-blower wants to get info out a some major news station or wants to leave the country.

It's discovered that whistle-blower has this important information. (Any important information, it could be 9/11 info for all I care.) They are suddenly enemy of the state. Remember will smith? Or enemy combatant of the state.

They can't do anywhere in their cars, because oh the cars are tracked. Movement by video camera public transportation is not an option, and movement on land is out of the question because of our brilliant spy force, fellow snitch citizens.

They are making it easier for themselves to track and get rid of those who would resist, what is coming down the line, or who might get the wrong information and try to get it out to the general populous. Remember when people discover information and they need to get it out to others, or they need to get out of the country they need safe passage. Use to be your car, or you could move on land, and it's going to get harder for those senarios to happen. Everyone keeps saying if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about, but that is just such ignorance.

Protesting against a police state tommorrow, will mean you are doing something wrong, finding out and trying to expose government corruption will mean you are doing something wrong, there are just so many other senarios.

I guess from this side of the fence I can see them all so clearly, and so can some others, who would try to lull you and numb you into thinking that there is nothing to worry about. There are people amougst us, who's job it is, to spead such prozac information. To numb your minds and make you think it's nothing to worry about, and then once you finally wake up and realise that there is something to worry about, it's just a little too late.

This in conjunction with everything else, is just one more test step of things to come. They tested the consentration camps off American soil in Cuba, and we all let them do it. Now these new car chips are going to be tested in some little carribean Island or something like that, and once all the data and info is gathered, where will it be used next? They used the information perfected by a snitch society to implement snitching in their own societies. They hired heads of the former KGB and Stasi to help out with the new id cards, but it's nothing to worry about.

Go back to sleep, nothing to see here, nothing to worry about, everything is fine, the government is watching over you, and protecting you.

Or how about Big Tobacco and Jeffrey Wigand? That is a real story, an in fact Wigand prevailed at least with his effect on the tobacco industry. He will have a very meager life now, but the companies felt it when he blew the whistle on them.

The point is, if someone with inside information is truly interested in saving people's lives, in doing the right thing, then it will get done.

This is a big problem, but getting this to fly on Bermuda is probably a lot easier than in the United States.