Not sure if this is the Daily Mail stirring this up, but apparantly, a secret 'Big Brother' operation is allowing officials to pinpoint the exact location of thousands of vehicles with Trafficmaster's Smartnav satellite navigation systems
tinyurl.com/2okarb
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From three consecutive paragraphs in the article:
"However, the system could provide the blueprint ..."
"Such a system might be used to manage ..."
"It could also be used by ..."
Not really convincing language.
V
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From three consecutive paragraphs in the article ...
I think you are attributing more linguistic skill to the Daily Mail than is strictly realistic. This is more an issue of context. You expect a newspaper to report on the news, which is generally thought to be more or less equivalent to the truth. But Mail journalists are recruited for their creative writing skills and seem to just make stuff up. When you put made up stuff in the context of 'stuff that is true' people get confused. cf. Wikipedia
Of course your observed linguistic features mean that the article can never be proved wrong. It is unfalsifiable, which is another tabloid stock in trade.
In other news, cars might double in price by 2050.
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It wouldn't surprise me in the least if this were true, and all the things mentioned come to pass.
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You DT readers are unfairly biased against the Daily Mail. I rate it very highly. Its journalism is first rate and second to none, it only tells the truth, it preserves the name of sacred Princess Diana and it makes a good firelighter.
And if you believe any of the above, you should read it as only the credulous do imo.:-)
madf
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Sat navs can only receive information, not send it.
The only way something like this could work is for people who subscribe to a traffic service (as per the article) and use their mobile phone to get the updates via bluetooth and gprs/wap (I do this myself). It may well be that we are tracked via these systems. One would hope not of course!
The article seems to suggest that somehow this will be expanded to all drivers with sat nav; this simpy is not true or possible with current systems. Of course in the future sat nav systems may be able to do this, if they have some kind of transmitter built in to them, but for the time being this just is not the case.
Pure scaremongering!
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Trafficmaster is not scaremongering. It tracks vehicles by reading their numberplates as they pass roadside cameras.
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So every trafficmaster camera has anpr software built in? And there is a system somewhere to record the numbers recognised?
Don't believe that, sorry.
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So every trafficmaster camera has anpr software built in?
Yes it does - a collague's son worked on the system. Read plate, read plate at next camera, time difference to travel the distance report back average journey time. Whether it records data permanently is a different matter.
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have a look here:
www.ukspeedtraps.co.uk/traffic.htm
half-way down the page there's a description of the trafficmaster system.
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Trafficmaster (at launch) stated that the data is held only until it has been used to calculate vehicle speeds. So, go from camera one to two and and the fact you passed caera one at a given time is deleted, as the speed has now been calculated. Ditto, after a period of time when you haven't passed camera three, your data is destroyed.
Only the central four characters are ever read.
Now, that was the blurb on launch, so it may have changed.
I wouldn't trust as accurate an article like that from Speedtraps above that referred to "neuro networks". That really does smack of sloppy reporting.
V
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At my old work we used to use a combination of GPS and datalogger to record journeys and things like load condition. Allways remember ringimg a driver at Irun on the french/spanish border to tell him his ice cream was melting but theat the fridge repair man was already on his way !! that saved a £45K load. In the Uk we use to use it to claim back sitting time when suppliers took more than 3 hours to unload the truck ... all clever stuff
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The first rule of journalism:
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
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Well that is how they work but ignore last digit or two for privacy reasons. They check how long your car takes to get between two particular cameras.
It is a bit big brother.
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I wouldn't deal with that company or any of it's sibling companies. They are too global and in bed with the government.
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It's far easier tracking mobile phones anyway.
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I thought all cars from around 2010 were to have a "safety" system in place that called the emergency services if the car was involved in a crash, and gave the vehicle's gps coordinates, make, model and licence details, checkout E-merge or Ecall by Ertico. The European satellite network, Galileo, is being setup for this purpose, border control, transport logistic surveillance, finance?? etc.
Just because it's in the Daily Mail doesn't mean it's wrong, it's happening.
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The European satellite network, Galileo, is being setup for this purpose
We're OK then.www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/24/giove_b_delay_gal.../
"Hotly-debated European sat nav project Galileo has suffered a technical delay in addition to its budgetary and political woes.
Media reports suggest the Giove-B satellite, second in a series of testbed and validation platforms preceding the main Galileo birds, will not now be launched until next year."
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I thought all cars from around 2010 were to have a "safety" system in place that called the emergency services if the car was involved in a crash and gave the vehicle's gps coordinates make model and licence details checkout E-merge or Ecall by Ertico.
That's certainly what the EU is pushing for - they wanted the system to be standard fit on all new cars sole in the EU from 2009. The timescale may have slipped a little, but it will happen.
Originally it was all about road-charging, but more recently they've been looking at speed control (hmmm...what revenue stream will replace speeding fines?). Now eCall is seen as a more acceptable way of getting what the EU wants - tracking in every car.
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So eventually it'll get to a stage where we physically won't be able to speed.
The car will limit itself to 30 in a 30 and 70 in a 70??
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