The report on slashdot -- tinyurl.com/bw4ls -- says that the system will first issue a warning to speeding drivers. Sounds preferable to automatic prosecution, but the downside is the big-brother aspect and The Register's report that it will be used to allow targeted advertising.
"You're doing 70 in a 50mph speed limit. Please slow down (or we'll chop your right hand off), and then why not pull in at the next junction to try a delicious meal at Derek's Dodgy Diner!!!"
"Oi! Slow down a bit more, or we'll chop off both hands. And after your burger at Derek's, why not go and get bronzed at Tony's Tanning Treatments!!!!"
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"Oi! Slow down a bit more, or we'll chop off both hands. And after your burger at Derek's......
How are you supposed to pick up your burger?!
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L\'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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I can forsee the values of lively older vehicles appreciating!
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I attracted some ridicule when I suggested a while back in this very forum that GPS speed-controlled cars were not too far into the future. When that day comes (and come it most certainly will) I will derive absolutely no pleasure from being able to say 'I told you so'.
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I absolutely guarantee you that when these devices are introduced here, there will be a huge market for chips or mods or whatever to make these devices useless. It would be criminal I know but I bet you any money that it'll happen.
For every 1 person that doesn't mind being tracked, there are 10 others that do.
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Adam
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For every 1 person that doesn't mind being tracked, there are 10 others that do.
I'm sure it'll be very unpopular. But when limits are so widely broken when unenforced, some sort of enforcement becomes inevitable. Drivers don't like cameras, which in any case only allow prosecution after the offence has been comitted, and speed bumps etc cause lots of howls too.
So I fear that some sort of big-brother system is inevitable, although there will be lots of technical hurdles in the way.
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I'm concerned on two counts.
Firstly, I'm concerned that I agree with pretty much most of your statement. I know I know - becoming more impressionable in my old age ;-)
Secondly, you seem to think tracking is purely about enforcing speed limits. I'm naive and can see through it. Surely you don't think that speed enforcement is anything other than a by-product of this technology?
OOh I love conspiracy theories!
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Adam
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I'm sure it'll be very unpopular.
Oh yes.
But when limits are so widely broken when unenforced, some sort of enforcement becomes inevitable.
I can see the letter now:
Dear Mr Patently,
Lots of other people have been proven to break the speed limit and drive irresponsibly. Therefore, it seems that you must do so too. So from now on we're going to assume that you're an offender too and track your every move.
Thank you for your co-operation.
The Ministry.
Somehow I'm not convinced, NW. Perhaps we should all be electronically tagged? After all, there are lots of muggings these days, and it would be useful to be able to say who was in the vicinity of the crime so that we could locate witnesses and suspects immediately.
As ever, where do you stop?
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Somehow I'm not convinced, NW. Perhaps we should all be electronically tagged? After all, there are lots of muggings these days, and it would be useful to be able to say who was in the vicinity of the crime so that we could locate witnesses and suspects immediately.
I hope you don't mind that I asked The Man From The Ministry to reply to you. Yes, it makes me shudder too!
Dear Mr Patently
You are of course quite right that HMG needs to be more rigorous in tracking all individuals. As you rightly point out, there are far too many muggings; but I must add that there is also a grave terrorist threat, for which we have plenty of evidence that we will never show you or allow to be tested in a court of law. And you can hardly have missed the deplorable growth in production of dodgy dossiers.
As you will be aware, the ID cards program provides the first step towards allowing us to monitor everyone. Through the use of sophisticated biometric scanning systems, every citizen will in effect become an ID card, capable of being scanned electronically.
The government is not yet persuaded that it is necessary to proceed to the next stage of citizen-tracking by electronically tagging everyone, but obviously we have undertaken detailed feasibility studies. However, this may not meet with unequivocal public support, because the vast majority of citzens are not muggers. Meanwhile, we are busy gathering most of the information we need, because most people have already tagged themselves voluntarily by carrying mobile phones.
However, we do enjoy collecting as much data as possible on everyone, so this vehicle-tracking system seems very attractive. Obviously, it will offend everyone who values their privacy or liberty, which is why the government has asked me to express its deep gratitude to all those millions of motorists who persistently flout the highway code, thereby giving us the perfect excuse to introduce a system which will monitor them. They nearly all do it, which is why we can justify tracking all motorists: it's odds-on that they are offenders, and they show no appetite for technical devices to aid self-restraint, such as driver-controlled speed limiters.
I know you are aware that the restraint of motorists is not our real reason for interest in the system, but the beauty of this situation is that we have another perfectly plausible justification -- without any need for those dodgy dossiers! (Of course, that's why we have not encouraged driver-controlled speed limiters, because they would undercut our case for universal snooping).
Thanks again for all your help -- and please rest assured that we really haven't ruled out the possibility of tagging the lot of you.
Yours etc, The Man From the Ministry
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Hahahahahahah.
NW, if I'm ever in court, I want you on my side. You're persistent I'll give you that!
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Adam
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Look, anyone who thinks this lot (aka HMG) could organise a clamp fest in a car park let alone track us all 24/7 is bonkers.
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Look, anyone who thinks this lot (aka HMG) could organise a clamp fest in a car park let alone track us all 24/7 is bonkers.
I wish you were right :(
But I think that even though they'd have dificulty tracking all of us all of the time, they could probably track enough of us for enough of the time to make quite a nuisance of themselves.
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Yeah but they don't need to go to all that trouble to be a nuisance NW :)
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Yours etc, The Man From the Ministry
I am really, really glad you don't work for them.
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If any man from the Ministry turns up to install a tracking device in my cars, then he will be welcome to do so once he proves he has the legal right to insist.
However, I may then find a need to carry out some work on my car. And, as often happens, my Black & Decker may well slip during the process. And if the Ministry's box gets in the way, so be it.
As someone said here once before, anyone who has nothing to hide has nothing to fear. However, those with nothing to hide really should get out more.
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>>If any man from the Ministry turns up to install a tracking device in my cars, then he will be welcome to do so once he proves he has the legal right to insist.<<
It'll be in the Road Traffic Act 200X. Passed unopposed by a virtually empty parliament which few MPs bother attending because there's no point.
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It'll be in the Road Traffic Act 200X. Passed unopposed by a virtually empty parliament which few MPs bother attending because there's no point.
Oh yes. But I'll be expecting him to set it out chapter & verse before he's let anywhere near my motor. And if he can't even remember why he's there, there's no way I'm letting him near it with a screwdriver!
;-)
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Once we are all tracked and these useless cameras have 100% coverage, The government/bilderbergers can do what the BH they like as we will never be able to organise ourselves, complain or protest again.
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Patently, when that day comes you will certainly not be legally allowed to carry out work on your own car.
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Sadly I don't think that will work. Why? Because in the UK this will be offered with services attached that people want. Like being able to trigger traffic lights as you pull up to them, so no more sensors in the roads; like being part of the system that pays road tolls; like being part of your mobile phone/gps/navigation system; perhaps like being the thing that works out how far you've driven so there don't have to be sensors on flywheels any more. This won't be imposed: we'll buy it willingly.
On the upside, being from IBM it probably runs on Linux so will never crash ;-)
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Having lived in the UAE for 11 years the threat of instaling tracking systems in cars would appear to be a pie in the sky.When the local trafic police cant control the increase of cars on the road and the dangerious driving that prevails here one can only sigh....Try it for a week the roads in the UK are so easy..
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So things haven't changed for the better then VM? I saw plenty of shocking things on and off the roads in Abu Dhabi when I worked there years ago. The only people who ever got stopped by the cops were expats who normally didn't have the requisite paperwork largely because by the time the authorities had got round to issuing it, it was already out of date! The locals seemed to be pretty much above the law.
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Better get to work on my giant flying pig* breeding programme. We're going to need an alternative form of transport when our cars are useless and this one has the advantage of low-cost end of life recycling.
(*Flying cattle and a really, really big chicken with an ejector seat are in development to avoid stigmatising minority groups. We regret that the flying cabbage is still on the drawing board so if any vegetarians have any ideas?)
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(*Flying cattle and a really, really big chicken with an ejector seat are in development to avoid stigmatising minority groups.
Beware the cattle. Bureucracy strikes there too -- they all need a passport these days, though I dunno if you have to SORN them. Coming soon, probably.
We regret that the flying cabbage is still on the drawing board so if any vegetarians have any ideas?)
I'm a reformed* vegetarian, so can't help there!
* As in repented, gave it up.
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NW! you eat meat?
Oh dear, there is one stereotype shot down in flames then!
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or should I say grilled with a little lemon butter
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NW! you eat meat?
Yes! I had been a veggie for abt five years, until the Greeks offered me souvlaki about eighty years ago. That was it: I was hooked again. Plus I find I'm much healthier when I eat meat.
Oh dear, there is one stereotype shot down in flames then!
That's why I dislike speding cars: they get in the way when I'm herding my cattle on the motorway ;-)
Being fed up with the scorn of my veggie friends, I eventually developed a Conclusive Proof Of Why Vegetarianism Is Evil. But I stretched the moderators' patience yesterday, so I'm trying to be good today and I'll spare you that off-topic stuff for fear the mods will drive* me outta here.
* obligatory motoring reference
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Anybody who goes around with a mobile phone switched on is being tracekd by that, already. It should be dead easy to interfere with the aerial/reception of any GPS device in your car. If it run by the Government and based on computers it will be a very expensive failure. You read it here first!
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