On 11/4/2011 8:09 PM, Douglas Johnson wrote:
bob wrote:


the feds want mandatory GPS imbeded on all new vehicles.

the vehicle would monitor the driver and report in by cell phone all
infractions. things like wreckless driving speeding etc. vehicle would
look for signs of being driven by a DUI and call for police assistance

tampering with the system would shut down the vehicle completely.

police could send out a slow down signal to all vehicles in area of a
police chase.

Do you have a citation for this? There are some court cases kicking around
saying that police may put GPS on a car without a warrant, but that doesn't
sound like what you are talking about.
-- Doug

Old news combined with usual internet urban legend and fear mongering.
Likely based in the already well underway effort to add data recorders
to all new cars, and use the data from them for accident analysis. Some
people don't like that, so there were discussions about if a warrant
would be required to get the data. For cars with onstar or similar
systems, the car already phones for help when certain things happen. I
don't think there is enough headroom in cell system for all cars to
report position constantly, even on a burst message basis. And a lot of
country isn't covered by cell towers.

Sure, the technology to do all the various things already exists. LoJack
can track and remote kill a car, OnStar can report location, etc, etc.
It would not be a great leap to link all this stuff and tie it to the
onboard computer and data recorder. And once all the old cars were off
the road, it could eliminate most police chases- cop on scene could
remotely read car's ID, transmit it uphill, and Big Brother in the cloud
could just issue a command for the car to choke off fuel supply.
Science fiction described such systems 50 years ago (although those cars
could usually fly), but it hasn't happened yet. I hope it never does,
for cost, additional failure mode, and constitutional reasons.

--
aem sends...