Fornicalia seeks a replacement for the license plate — RFID chipping your car?

Big Brother B&WA Fornicalia government insider brought this to my attention, with some salient comments.  First, the confirmation that this is not a pie-in-the-sky idea.  From GCN.com (and please read the entire story):

California pilots electronic license plates — will other states follow?

California is piloting electronic license plates to improve efficiency,  lower the cost of DMV vehicle registration services and eliminate the need for vehicle owners, particularly fleet owners, to receive physical registration tags by mail, according to a bill analysis by California’s Senate Rules Committee. 

The Assembly Appropriations Committee said it will cost less than $50,000 for the DMV to administer the pilot program and complete the evaluation report. However, the plates most likely will come at a cost for drivers, said David Findlay of Compliance Innovations,  an electronic license plate manufacturer. Findlay told Time magazine the plates could cost around $100, at least five times the price of a typical license plate fee.

The electronic plates would serve as alternatives to California’s traditional metal license plate, plastic-coated registration stickers and paper registration cards. California’s DMV annually registers approximately 26 million vehicles and performs over 10 million renewals.

Senate Bill 806, signed by California Gov. Jerry Brown in early October, calls for the pilot to be established by Jan. 1, 2017. The pilot will be limited to no more than 0.5 percent of registered vehicles and vehicle owners who have voluntarily chosen to participate.

And just what would an “electronic license plate” consist of?  I can only think of one thing: an RFID chip/tag.

RFID Railroad TagThe bulk use of RFID chips began in the railroad industry, with one purpose: to track the locations of railroad cars.

While the bill does not specifically state which devices will be tested, the bill analysis did mention a provider, Smart Plate Mobile, which was incorporated in 2009 and is based in San Francisco, as being “the company most interested in participating in such a pilot project.” Smart Plate Mobile’s plates are computer screens that would take on the size and appearance of a standard California license plate. Since the plates can receive wireless updates from a central server, they could also display additional messages such as “stolen” or “expired.”

Perfect.  Now the state would mandate that you possess a plate which displays EXPIRED if you happen to be either late with fees, or DMV (and this occurs frequently in Fornicalia) screws up your paperwork.

But not just STOLEN or EXPIRED — how about a venue for selling advertisements and making Fornicalia some more revenue, to be given away to more parasites?

A similar bill proposed in California in 2010 would have allowed advertisements to scroll on the screen if a car was stopped for more than three seconds, Ars reported. The ads were envisioned as an additional revenue source for the DMV. The current bill does not include provisions for advertising, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Now your vehicle would be a rolling billboard, and you would have NO CHOICE but to comply.

And just as the NSA has LIED and said it is not tracking your e-mails and cell phones, the state of Fornicalia SWEARS it would not track your vehicle’s movements.  Trust them.

Responding to concerns about tracking expressed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an amendment was added to California’s bill to limit the data exchanged “to that data necessary to display evidence of registration compliance. The department shall not receive or retain any information generated during the pilot program regarding the movement, location or use of a vehicle participating in the pilot program.”

So read this:

Still, Lee Tien, an attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that while the DMV will not be receiving location information in the pilot, the company providing the plates would, and it would control what is on the plates, reported the Capitol Hill Daily.

And of course, if it’s digital, just like all your private information in ObamaKare, it can be hacked.

RFID chips are the wave of the future, in order to track and force compliance with whatever illegal and freedom-killing government mandate can be conjured.  I already wrote about RFID chips here:

This is a perfect way to track your vehicle, micromanage your life, know where you and your car are all the time, read your location, know your speed at all times, know your rate of acceleration, your rate of deceleration, the weight transfer involved in taking corners, and monitor your every possible vehicle code violation.

You could find yourself instantaneously fined by the government for an infraction and then, in that same instant, have your insurance rates raised or your policy canceled.

Paranoid, am I?

No, just utilizing what I call the Logical Extension.  When has government been able to do a thing, and not done it?  Because, after all, the government has proven itself trustworthy time and time again.

If for no other reason than “for the children.”

Welcome, Big Brother.

BZ

P.S.
And if it’s coming to Fornicalia, you can be assured that “Progressives” in your state are conjuring up the same thing.

 

FBI pressures Internet providers to install surveillance software

Obama Destroying US ConstitutionFrom CNet.com:

CNET has learned the FBI has developed custom “port reader” software to intercept Internet metadata in real time. And, in some cases, it wants to force Internet providers to use the software.

The U.S. government is quietly pressuring telecommunications providers to install eavesdropping technology deep inside companies’ internal networks to facilitate surveillance efforts.

FBI officials have been sparring with carriers, a process that has on occasion included threats of contempt of court, in a bid to deploy government-provided software capable of intercepting and analyzing entire communications streams. The FBI’s legal position during these discussions is that the software’s real-time interception of metadata is authorized under the Patriot Act.

Attempts by the FBI to install what it internally refers to as “port reader” software, which have not been previously disclosed, were described to CNET in interviews over the last few weeks. One former government official said the software used to be known internally as the “harvesting program.”

Carriers are “extra-cautious” and are resisting installation of the FBI’s port reader software, an industry participant in the discussions said, in part because of the privacy and security risks of unknown surveillance technology operating on an sensitive internal network.

It’s “an interception device by definition,” said the industry participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because court proceedings are sealed. “If magistrates knew more, they would approve less.” It’s unclear whether any carriers have installed port readers, and at least one is actively opposing the installation.

Use your heads, Americans.  Any source of privacy you thought you had is, essentially, gone forever — because you cannot put that genie back in the bottle.

Your cellular phone calls are monitored and stored.  Your e-mails are monitored and stored.  Your terrestrial calls are monitored and stored.  Your movements are tracked and traced via OnStar, Sirius and other subscriptive elements in your vehicle.  Newer vehicles have “black boxes” similar to those of aircraft (though not yet quite as sophisticated).  Insurance companies want you to have a device similar to that of Progressive’s Snapshot installed in your car; now it’s voluntary.  Soon it will be mandatory.

You are captured, thousands of times daily, on video and cameras if you live in an urban or suburban territory.  Bank on it.  In Russia, most vehicles themselves have dashcams.  Police agencies have LPR and face recognition systems — I know that because — obviously, to those who read me — I’m a cop.

Every store, every theater, every retail outlet wants you to subscribe to and utilize “their own cards,” so that they can sift you and sort you for your information, then direct-sell you.  Every keystroke on your computer can be logged, your phone can be made to listen to you and the RFID chip in your credit card can be stolen.

The more you embrace the digital world, the less privacy you have.  Plain and simple.  It’s why Russian intelligence agencies are going back to manual typewriters.  I hope you don’t think that’s something I made up; it is not.

Disarm Americans, remove their freedoms — and in some cases sell those freedoms back to them — then disable the rest of their tawdry and outdated little niggling Bill of Rights.  There’s your Utopian Leftist/Demorat Master Plan.  Think: Cloward-Piven.

Some day, this is all going to explode.

This nation is on the cusp of losing itself and its Bill of Rights forever.

And when that explosion comes — well, it won’t be pretty.

BZ