A 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.
The 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.
From the Associated Press:
