NO2ID

With this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4610755.stm being talked about today, is anyone else worried?

It's all part and parcel of the same thing, this government seems utterly determined to identify not just us but our movements and in time just about every other aspect of our lives. It is also about control and we will see a lot more of this sort of thing once cards are introduced.

Frightened? I'm terrified and perhaps the most terrifying aspect is that so few people are willing to oppse it all, it's just so big and we have all become comfortably numb to borrow the words of Pink Floyd.

What drives them to it? Power and money I guess and we are just the unthinking beasts of the field that are simply their to enable their fantasies. Thar other great motivator of mankind, sex, has not as yet reared its head but I am begining to wonder whether Blair doesn't get off on all this 'big me' business. Nor do I ever see the man going quietly, he will have to be kicked out and kicked out hard and I don't believe that Brown has the balls do it.

Yours, looking for properties elsewhere in Europe


Justin.

This database will most likely 'follow' you. There will be no escape if the idiotarians get their way.

No doubt the satellite tracking/road charging device fitted to your car will control the ignition and will be activated by your ID card. No ID card - no go!

Not so fast, Batman! As I've mentioned on a similar thread elsewhere: http://www.no2id.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=953, this is the first step in the creation of an EU-wide road-pricing system based on (and to be used as the financial justification for) the Galileo satellite navigation system.

Well I tried to make a list of all the reasons this road pricing scheme is less practical even than ID cards and in the end there were so many I gave up.

They include:

Cost of the devices, it must be well over £100 and will need to be fitted to all cars / bikes / pushchairs etc. No, I made that last bit up. A cheap recreational GPS unit currently costs from £100 up to £200 or so and has none of the special functionality this will require.

GPS signals are least reliable in urban areas, which is where they'll need to be most accurate for this to work. The prices will change most often in these areas.

In rural areas there don't seem to be enough police to deal with serious crimes, let alone go around remote farms and make sure everyone has a working receiver.

How do people know how much they're being charged for driving on particular roads. If the thing constantly tells you like some sort of taxi meter (I had that Alistair Darling in the back of my cab last week, gave him a thumping ...) then its a distraction from concentating on traffic and if it doesn't it can't persuade people to change their habits.

The Galileo system won't be operational until 2008, if they hit their schedule. It's folly to base your scheme on something that doesn't exist yet.

When you switch on a GPS it takes several minutes to acquire a signal. If you can't see enough satellites it could be longer or it could fail to get one. What happens then? Can you drive for free or does it disable the ignition?

How is the data going to be uploaded from the cars? Again there are rural areas where whatever infrastructure they plan to use (if they know) will be totally uneconomic to install.

There are obvious and easy ways to cheat that people have already pointed out, swapping devices between cars, jammers and signal spoofers. This will mean, just like we've seen with ID cards, that the burden of proving yourself innocent in disputes will be on you, not the state.

What about visitors and tourists? At the moment they pay tax on petrol. This implies that if its going to be "revenue neutral" prices will go up.

Driving without insurance will be easier because you don't need to display a tax disc.

Somebody in Westminster really needs to get a grip on the huge chasm between "technically possible" and "technically practical".

I've worked in software for a long time now and when I come across this attitude that specifying requirements is like visiting a magic wishing well it usually means the project is doomed.

Martin

Do you mean like commercial off the shelf cheap, secure, triple biometric ID card readers ?



Perhaps the device will be decrementing its internal ca$h counter at the maximum rate e.g. £1.34 a mile unless and until it gets a position fix that you are in a cheaper zone, just like the Oyster Card on the London Tube.
If it is wired into the odometer like a tachograph, then even poping down to the local shops could cost you several pounds.



150,000 lampposts or another forest of mobile data masts that people can object to being sited near their schools etc.



Your insurance premiums will go up as the insurance companies are sued to recover excess Road Tolls caused to other drivers by delays and traffic jams which trap them in a motorway etc. until the peak charge time kicks in.

You are making the assumption that the vast increase in Automatic Number Plate recognition and the new direct data sharing "gateways" between DVLA and Insurance companies will not continue to expand.



It is easy to be profligate with taxpayers money

When I read about the system that was forcibly (did you get a vote on it?) foisted on London to "limit congestion" and charge every motorist entering London a toll, a couple of years ago I got very cynical about it and thought "it won't stop there" and it sure hasn't!

Mr Darling says he "doesn't intend to force anyone out of their cars". Yeah, right! This is exactly what this will do.

Dick Turpin rides again, this is THEFT, your government is stealing from its own people. Not only that, the right of FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT (and that must be defined as 'by what ever is the usual means' so I am obviously not talking about walking) is being infringed here. Your transport department has an incredible cheek thinking that it can charge people for travelling in their own cars, and demand that people not only pay for the infrastructure through their taxes, enabling them to steal - but also pay for a microchip or a "blackbox" to tell government how much to steal and when.

I actually think that there is far more to this than is being publicised at the moment. There is no way that any government would enable a system merey taking money for travelling without all the control-freak ideas that they could have as well.

I will post a few quotes from a news item that caused a uproar in this country a while back. I believe that your system is the same as what they are talking about here. This was dated 7.9.03, called "Motorists face travel tax and big brother microchip law enforcement":

"Transport minister Paul Swain said with vehicles becoming more fuel efficient revenue from petrol tax would drop and alternative charges needed to be considered". Then went on to say:

"At the same time police and transport officials are looking at 'spy chips' which automatically report speeding, illegal parking, and vehicles that are unregistered or without a warrant of fitness certificate.

Guilty drivers would learn they had been caught breaking the law only when a fine or summons arrived in the post.

Officials are watching the development of an electronic vehicle identification (EVI) programme in Europe before deciding if it can be applied in NZ.

The scheme has sparked concerns from civil liberties experts as vehicles could seemingly be monitored wherever they travelled".

Then: "Under the programme roadside sensors read a car's microchip and that information goes to a central computer system to check that the car is legal. Those breaking the law are penalised".

Finally: "I think in the very long term all cars will come out with some electronic identifier. That will be there as a security mechanism as well as providing information about the vehicle and I think a lot of this type of technology will evolve through new car manufacturers".

This is absolutely horrifying!!!!!!!!! Imagine she scenario: You live in a remote part of the country, a hundred miles from the nearest medical facility. Your brother (or friend or whatever) has a bad accident and staggers to the house bleeding. You do what you can but you realise that he is a haemophiliac and needs to get to a medical place to have a blood transfusion asap or he will die. You only have a car that is perfectly mechanically sound but that you realise you are a day late in paying the registration fee on. You get your brother into the car hoping that it will be allright. Then: YOUR MOTOR IS DISABLED AND A SIGN FLASHES ON YOUR DASHBOARD SAYING "service will be continued as soon as you pay a new registration fee"

Or, alternatively (just in case I am being a bit OTT here):

You do your best, knowing that you are going to get penalised for it, and take your brother to the nearest hospital only to have him not make it in time and die because you were stopped four times by police to "check your id" and then the hospital wouldn't treat your brother because he had forgotten his id card and you get home in a daze and make funeral arrangements for 3 days hence only to find on the day of the funeral that: Your brother's body is refused burial because his id could not be checked out in time and there was "something wrong" found with his DNA sample, then you go to check the mail and Presto! A FINE FOR "VEHICLE BEING DRIVEN WITH NO CURRENT REGISTRATION", THEN ANOTHER FINE FOR "ILLEGALLY PARKING" NEAR THE HOSPITAL.

Then you get home to find that your house has been ransacked and your TV, microwave oven and some furniture taken by the courts department to "pay outstanding debts - road user charges".

All this will be possible because we don't do enough to "limit the powers of government" and we seem to think that we are there to serve government, not the other way around.