I do wonder why they haven't been used yet to track speeding violations. Speed cameras are being installed in Manhattan. EZ passes are supposed to be used in one car only so it can't be lack of ability to isolate the user that's stopping it.
For years I've been keeping my EZ pass in a static electricity bag when I'm not anticipating going through tolls. I'll definitely continue to do so. At least until it becomes illegal.
This question was answered for me by a Maryland DOT person a few back during a tour of one of their operations center. The upshot is that the intended purpose of EZ-pass and other toll systems are for improved traffic flow, there is a lot of DOT involvement and the DOT wants to encourage folks to use them.
If those toll systems were to be used for speed enforcement, people would be discouraged from using them, which hurts the DOT's objective. Furthermore (and this is probably the bigger reason), since the DOT is deeply involved in deploying and monitoring the system, they would be subject to subpoenas by offenders challenging their speeding tickets and the DOT absolutely wants no part of that.
I am not sure if I remembered this incorrectly but I am sure there were serious lawsuits in the tri-state, and lawyers were lining up to stick it to the states for it, but I could be wrong. Anyone find/know of data about this?
It's different in California, Arizona and many other states -- in those states red light and speed cameras are legal. There is talk of changing the law in NY because some municipalities want more money, but us New Yorkers see what goes on in other states and we don't like it.
It NY you need to be given a ticket by a police officer who observed you speeding, because otherwise you don't have a positive ID on the driver. EZ-Pass identifies the car, but they couldn't decide if it were me, my wife or somebody else driving.
It was never kept a secret in Houston that toll-tags were used to collect data for the real-time traffic map, this system is decades old. http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/aviinfo/avi-tech.html
>EZ passes are supposed to be used in one car only so it can't be lack of ability to isolate the user that's stopping it.
A car may have more than one user.
>For years I've been keeping my EZ pass in a static electricity bag when I'm not anticipating going through tolls. I'll definitely continue to do so. At least until it becomes illegal.
Try an Altoids Tin instead.
With traffic enforcement cameras in New York the violations are issued to the owner of the car. They don't try to identify the person who was actually driving. Because they don't identify the driver the summons doesn't count against anyone's license.
Hearing this is almost never a sign for optimism.
Yet, this very news proves that it DOES happen.
So not only was the sarcasm misplaced, but he is in the right. Sure, one might believe that "well, a little tracking never hurt nobody" but that's another matter altogether.
This is not strictly true. When registering a second EZ pass for a second car, I was told that we could use either EZ pass in either car. The EZ passes were tied to the account and the cars were tied to the account and that was all that mattered.
For another use case, I was told that I am allowed to take my own EZ pass with me in a taxi cab, and request that the driver use it for tolls instead of his own.
In the US, the law says that the only person that gets the ticket is the driver which != owner in a lot of cases. Because of this, places that have speeding cameras have to employ people to look at pictures of the person driving and compare them to pictures of the license of the owner, or try to identify the driver by some other means. Needless to say this is expensive. On top of that, states like North Carolina require that all or most proceeds from speeding cameras tickets go to education, and not the police department. Thus, the police department has no reason to shell out $100k/year on running a camera to see none of the profits. They'd rather hire an extra officer to give out tickets manually.
That could be different for tickets given for average speed violations, as you could give them to the driver, but that would likely create a traffic backup nightmare.
Europe is a big place. In Sweden, the traffic camera has to catch the driver's face. If you cover your face so you can't be identified, they won't serve you with the ticket. They do exactly as you say - employ a room of people to compare photos to the driver's license database. http://www.svt.se/nyheter/sverige/dolj-ansiktet-slipp-boter
I'd guess the intelligence use of it is likely more important to the powers that be to risk a backlash against using it to catch speeders.
You take a picture on the beach and catch me in the frame, I'm totally fine with that, you take pictures of that beach every day for a year and then put IDs on every 'face' so that you've got a history of everyone who has been to the beach, I'm much less comfortable with that, you create an API so that someone can send you a picture of a face and you will give them the history of that face at the beach for the last 12 months, I've got a huge problem with that.
You'd have the person arrested for harassment.
In a functioning democracy, it's not the thickness of the doors that prevents them from being kicked in, but the strength of the laws that restrains those who would do the kicking. Likewise, the "reasonable expectation of privacy" is not limited to the narrow range of situations in which violations are physically impossible, but the much broader range of situations in which violations are corrosive enough to be socially and politically unacceptable.
http://www.amazon.com/Antistatic-Bags-Resealable-6X10-Pack/d...
Do they all do this? I live in a state that has exactly two toll roads, so I'm not sure what SOP is for those kind of things.
(Also useful if you're using the new FasTrak-enabled carpool lanes in the east bay, when you actually have a carpool quorum and therefore are exempt from the toll.)
I've heard of it happening online, but never seen them pull somebody over personally.
[1] - Prepaid toll-tags could be sold at vending machines for cash (business travelers, philanderers, etc.), but are not.
That conflicts somewhat with the article:
> Notably, the fact that E-ZPasses will be used as a tracking device outside of toll payment, is not disclosed anywhere that I could see in the terms and conditions.
I'm fine with you doing whatever you disclose you're going to be doing, even if it seems invasive, but the key there is the disclosure.
http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/aviinfo/avi-hou.html
>I'm fine with you doing whatever you disclose you're going to be doing, even if it seems crazy like "wherever you are in downtown Manhattan, you won't be able to go two blocks without hitting a reader somewhere", but the key there is the disclosure.
I am happy to see productive uses of technology. But, I'd prefer it if the data were required to be anonymized pretty close to the collection point. I think the gov't should almost always disclose its activities, especially in direct interactions with citizens. I'd like to see things like license plates going away and replaced with the transponder tags, but with the tags also reporting when they are accessed, and by whom.
Interesting reverse-engineering of FasTrak transponders in 2008: http://rdist.root.org/2008/08/07/fastrak-talk-summary-and-sl...
By the way, in addition to LAX, this also happens when you're looping around San Jose Mineta airport (SJC). The airport says that it's to track taxis, limos, and shuttles: http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_14885277
There's a company already sniffing radios on the road to determine listener demographics among other things.
http://masscommandme.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/mobiltraks-lis...
The UK has been using this for a while to crack down on TV liscences.
"BBC admits that TV detector vans only work because Britons believe they do"
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/10/31/bbc-admits-that-tv-...
And to be very pedantic, every conductive object in the universe plays some part in any antenna system.
The NSA "could" have you arrested for a crime you didn't commit by sharing intel it's collected about you! The NYPD "could" use your E-ZPass to track your movements through NYC! Google "could" access your Wi-Fi password as it's synced from your Android device!
I think people forget sometimes that 1984 was a work of fiction, and never actually happened.
Not that we should have ever cared about those possibilities until they came to light, leaving us scrambling to cope with the consequences and attempt to repair the damage after the fact.
People still get trials. They still get due process. If the DEA/FBI can't provide evidence to the state/federal prosecutor such that a person is found guilty of a crime by a jury of his peers, then a person does not get convicted.
You're saying the government is committing thought-crime. Just because a person owns a gun doesn't mean they're going to kill their neighbor, and just because the FBI/CIA/NSA/Local PD "could" abuse its power, does not mean they "do".
I don't think it's fiction, and I think it had happened before it was written even. There are still bugs of course, but those are being worked out as we speak.
This is the first piece of vehicle telematics I added when I got a new car. When I was stuck in a traffic jam at an off-ramp near Albany, I realized how I'd make it better for myself and other drivers if I got one.
It's particularly good that E-Z Pass uses the same technology as most other states in the Northeast so you can drive the Mass Pike and out to Maine or the other way to Ohio.
*edit: found the presentation at https://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-archives/dc-21-archive....
As part of 511, state DOTs also purchase cell tower data to estimate speed on highways. My understanding is that is where the Google Maps traffic indicators come from.
Close, but actually Google gets that data from Android devices that phone home directly to them, not from the cell companies.
Heck, FBI agents can legally place a tracking device on your car, without a warrant if they do so while your car is in a public place (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/03/federal-judge-rules-fb...).
His presentation is at https://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-archives/dc-21-archive.... (The first section is on license plate readers. ezpass details start on slide 84. He starts with modifying his own ezpass to detect when it's being read then makes his own detector (slide 97) and runs it side by side with the pass. The new detector is much more sensitive and picks up being read basically everywhere.)
Search for "license plate" on http://www.zdnet.com/wikileaks-uncovers-trapwire-surveillanc...
Listen up kids. Even if your goals are entirely pure and innocent, this sort of BS just makes you look shady. If you wanna do traffic analysis, sanitize your data ASAP, and purge it as soon as you can, and then when people ask, you can answer questions like this with a clear conscience.
Just last month, JPMC announced that its patent collection had reached 500, with our patent on EZ-Pass being one of our most successful, and something we still receive licensing fees on.
https://www.jpmorgan.com/cm/cs?pagename=JPM_redesign/JPM_Con...
Everyone hates traffic and loves complaining about it, but I personally haven't seen a lot of work being done to solve it. And yeah, having people take public transportation helps with congestion, but you're not actually solving anything by doing that, only working around the problem. Maybe it's because I've never worked with any DOTs.
http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/112
Don't know where to buy just the shield though...
