I have to disagree with those who say this isn't news. It was news to me and will, I believe, be news to most others as well. The only time before this that I heard about using EZ pass for anything other than tolls was a few years ago when I read about some feasibility work on the concept of traffic flow optimization being done around Ithaca, NY.
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.
I do wonder why they haven't been used yet to track speeding violations.
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.
My father is an attorney in NJ, and told me growing up as the system was first implemented in the tri-state it was off the table once this started to happen, on a large group of lawyers were vocal about making it very painful for the NJ and tristate DOT groups once they went too far.
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?
Similarly in New Zealand, the highways agency isn't interested in catching people who are speeding. They certainly help the police with live incidents and co-operate on lots of levels, but they don't keep camera footage forever or feed data streams of toll/traffic-management users to Police. "It's not our business".
It isn't possible to give automated speeding tickets in New York at this time because our law requires that a ticket be given to a driver instead of a vehicle.
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.
In many states this is circumvented by taking a picture of the driver.
Here in CO you receive a nice piece of mail asking if the pictured driver was you. The process to contest the driver's identity is very straightforward, presumably to reduce the inevitable enormous load on the court system.
The obvious loophole is that if someone who isn't the registered owner drives the car, they can speed and run lights with as much impunity as they could pre-cameras. Especially if the other driver is named on the insurance, there's nothing illegal about loaning your car to someone else long-term.
In NYC at least, they do give red light tickets by camera/mail. I think it is like a parking ticket in that the responsibility is to the owner of the car. I assume it carries no points as well for that reason.
One issue is you can put the thing in a lead box or whatever until you need it for a toll. there is no requirement that it be available. so its easily thwarted as an enforcement mechanism. one could also envision equal protection lawsuits or what not related to this as well.
>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.
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.
The Texas legislature recently made the cameras illegal here, but even before that, a 'ticket' was only a civil matter. They would make a note on your credit report against you if you failed to pay.
Tinfoil as sarcasm would have made sense if what he feared (the extra tracking) was NOT happening. You know, like we used to mock people fearing aliens reading their mind and such.
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.
Are you saying that my post was sarcastic? That's strange, because I wasn't being sarcastic - my post was entirely based in fact. Tinfoil, or aluminum foil, is a cheap, commonly available, easily malleable conductor that is actually a pretty good RF attenuator. Some people are unaware that antistatic bags are not always good RF attenuators. If you intend to control when a device is permitted to receive radio waves, a simple and more effective solution is to merely wrap that device in aluminum foil.
I suppose this is sort of a Poe's law[0] effect in which sarcasm mocking security as a form of paranoia, and actual advice for improving one's own security, are now indistinguishable from one another.
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.
Speeding cameras and other ways to ticket people automatically are problematic in the US. See, in Europe, the ticket can be given to the owner of the car. The problem is simple: take a picture of the license plate, look up the owner, send ticket.
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.
> See, in Europe, the ticket can be given to the owner of the car.
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
It depends in Europe. In some countries, e.g. Germany it is like in the US, e.g. you can contest a ticket and say that the driver was a relative from another country. You can also say that you weren't the driver but you don't know who used your car. In this case you typically are forced to keep a drivers log for this vehicle for the future.
Can we just not go there? There is a qualitative difference between "being in public" and "being recorded while in public" and "being recorded in public over an extended period of time."
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.
FYI: You where just trolled. Sure, it feels go to respond, but it's also a waste of everyone's time to read a troll and the responses. It also promotes them making more comments like that.
What kind of stuff do you buy at stores? Mind if I have a look? I mean, you're in public when you buy the stuff. Please post your checking account and credit card statements in the reply. Thanks.
I'll gladly tell you whenever I buy things. My checking account and credit card statements are private, however (this isn't an argument against privacy, don't mistake it as such).
If you want more, come follow me around a bit. You wouldn't be breaking any law, after all. The fact that I go to potbelly each day, have a Gold's Gym subscription, and went to 3 bars over the last few days isn't private. None of it.
I value privacy, but I also know I don't always have it.
Right. Because some computer somewhere knowing that yesterday I drove 90mph on the I-5 from LA to San Diego is exactly the same as you knowing my credit card number. Got it.
Oh, is that all. The CC statement is not very detailed. From the last two months, you'll see several deliveries from Mountain Mikes Pizza, some various (non-descript) charges at Amazon ranging from a few dollars (music) to a few hundred dollars (bought a smoker), my $7.99 NetFlix sub, my bi-weekly delivery of organic fruits/veggies from a "local" farm (Farm Fresh To You), the equipment protection plan for my phone, the Veritas Instrument rental for my kid, ~5k in car repair last month at Volkswagen, monthly membership to City Beach, my web hosting bill (Rochen Host), DVD rental from RedBox, a donation to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, I stopped at a local pub (The Hopyard) for a couple pints and I reloaded my BART card.
Don't be a idiot. You should know as well as anyone that simply "being in public" actually preserves a large amount of privacy and anonymity. Consider, for, instance, what would happen if any of the countless people you pass by daily decided to follow your every step, stalking you, recording everything you say and do, waiting for you in the street when you got home, then relentlessly pursuing you again when you leave.
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.
Legally? No, there's no such idea as, "anonymous in public", and no, someone recording you in public isn't harassment. Ask celebrities. The paparazzi get in trouble when they enter into private spaces, but public spaces? Fair game. Always.
And what exactly is your moral argument against it? That your public movements would incriminate you somehow? That's a slippery slope argument - there's no connection between tracking your movements and necessarily indicting you for breaking some law. Besides, if you break a law in public, what the fuck were you thinking?
The moral arguments against it are profound: put simply human liberty and constant mass surveillance are mutually incompatible.
There is a deep and rich body of literature, philosophy, research, and direct human experience to back this up. I am truly sorry that you appear to be completely unfamiliar with any of it. If you have a sincere interest in the subject, you can start with the most widely recognized point of reference: George Orwell's "1984".
Also, regarding celebrities and their suffering at the hands of paparazzi. This is something of a special case, and hardly a situation that reflects the broad sweep of common law. But even here, there's recognition that something really awful and abusive is going on. California has already taken steps to curb the worst of it in ways that conform with existing laws and constitutional protections for the press. Meanwhile, celebrities themselves have taken to hiring PI's, who document the frequently-illegal abuses they're subjected to, and turning over their findings to the police.
1984 is a work of fiction and has no bearable application on the world of today, and furthermore there is no philosophical literature dealing with being monitored while in PUBLIC. This isn't about privacy when you're in a place no one else is, this is about how incredibly naive it is to think when you're in public, no one's allowed to look at you.
Do not transform this into a privacy debate, because I'm not saying you don't deserve privacy. Don't ruin this discussion by getting all fanatical on me...
"this is about how incredibly naive it is to think when you're in public, no one's allowed to look at you."
That is...not even remotely close to what I, or anyone else on this thread has said. This was about the malign effects relentless surveillance and stalking, not people glancing in your direction as you walk down the street. And you can't possibly be serious when you say "there is no philosophical literature dealing with being monitored while in PUBLIC." That is just so unbelievably wrong.
I realize I shouldn't get upset about stupid online comments, but every now and then you encounter one that is so unfathomably ignorant that your jaw just drops. And you, sir, have left me flabbergasted.
This is easy to prove. Show me which philosopher tackled mass public surveillance.
And it is exactly what you and everyone else in this thread has said. A surveillance program designed to collect information on you that's already public is not legally or morally wrong. Besides, you already agreed to it! When you GET a license plate, you're EXPLICITLY agreeing that you can be tracked. That's the whole damned point of the license plate.
You don't have a right to privacy while in public, and that extends to recording your movements in public. Get over it, because that's how it will be forever.
I have no interest in "proving" anything to anyone brainless enough enough to make sweeping assertions that categorically deny the very existence of something - without even spending the 30-40 seconds on Google needed to verify the truth of what he's saying. I mean, that's some weapons-grade stupidity right there.
But if you're truly interested in the subject, and are willing to do a very very small amount of work to educate yourself, you can try to guess who I'm thinking of. I'll let you know if you get it right. Bonus points for identifying one key concept this person popularized. It's one that routinely comes up in the conversations about surveillance and social control that are happening all over the place these days, so unless your ignorance is absolute, you should recognize it when you see it.
What I can can see is that you're an relentlessly dishonest person with no real interest in learning more about the world, making further conversation pointless.
Specifically, I've noticed that each time the error of what you've written is pointed out, you become evasive, cherry picking one part of the criticism for further distortion while ignoring the bits you can't respond to, or simply moving goal posts when that's more convenient. At no point have you taken responsibility for your statements, or acknowledged the faults in what you've said, even when they've been made plain for all to see. Given your low karma on this site, I suspect I'm not the only one who objects to your basic intellectual dishonesty.
Indeed, Harry Frankfurt has written an excellent essay about people like you. It's called "On Bullshit" and you can read it, in full, here:
His central point is that liars, while obviously dishonest, still maintain respect for the basic authority of the truth, if for no other reason than to do a better job concealing it. The bullshitter, on the other hand, has no regard for the quality of what he says, of even the accepted meaning of the words he uses. His only concern is personal advantage, truth be damned. For this reason, Frankfurt concludes that the bullshitter is a greater enemy of the truth than the liar.
> what would happen if any of the countless people you pass by daily decided to follow your every step, stalking you, recording everything you say and do, waiting for you in the street when you got home, then relentlessly pursuing you again when you leave.
I'm pretty sure what you just described there is exactly what paparazzi do. I don't believe any have been arrested for doing that. (Mind you, if they do get arrested, it is usually for something else.)
That's very much a special case, and one that effects a microscopic portion of the population. Were that level of harassment to become part of daily life as lived by millions, the presently tentative efforts to rein them legally in would become very serious, very quickly.
But that isn't a special case because of law. It is only special because only a microscopic portion of the population is that popular with the rest of the population. People don't do this to me because no one is buying those pictures and putting them in magazines... not because some laws give me extra privacy.
You asked what would happen. The answer is the same for me as it is for Jay-Z or Tom Hanks: Nothing.
That was actually my point, the law hasn't responded to paparazzi in a major way because they effect so few people. Or rather, it hadn't responded until relatively recently. California has found that the swarms are so big, and behave with such reckless disregard for public safety (high-speed chases on freeways are as especially sore point) that they've started to drop the hammer on these fuckers, passing legislation to curb the worst abuses.
Putting this special case aside, if you were to stalk someone in ways that many 'regular' people are actually exposed to, you'd find yourself face to face with a more fully developed - and far more serious - body of legislation.
The larger point is that a few people suffering the paps are not a threat to the republic. But if everyone had cause to live their lives in the fearful, guarded, anxious way that a lot of stars actually live (minus the giant paychecks, of course) then it's likely that society really would break down, and we'd see that "the reasonable expectation of privacy" isn't determined by what's technically possible at any given time, but what's psychologically necessary for people to function in and as a democracy.
Interesting question. However, I think you've got it backwards. What right does the government have to track individuals? That's what we should be asking.
It's not a right, but a desire and a desire that can be realized with simple planning. Is there some reason a person shouldn't implement methods that limit exposure?
What is the parent post genuinely concerned about?
For myself, nothing. I have to say I lead a rather mundane life.
My objection is not for myself, it's for others. I don't want reporters tracked. I don't want whistleblowers tracked. I don't want government employees to feel threatened they may lose their jobs because they have a private life. For those people to be safe we all have to be protected from government tracking.
Sorry, accidental downvote. I meant to upvote since you nailed it: I want privacy norms to be respected not because I have anything in particular to hide, but because I want people who can advance my general interests as a citizen to be able to do so safely.
I am acutely aware that doing so demands adversarial relationships with powers that can be concentrated, lawless, and malign. The risks faced by people challenging them are real. They deserve all the protection they can get.
This isn't an argument against privacy, this is an argument against absolute privacy.
You're not private all the time. Stop pretending like you are, it just doesn't mesh with reality. I can fucking see you walk into that night club, you did that in full view of the whole world.
Your argument is similar to the "why are you scared if you've got nothing to hide?" response to the NSA scandal. According to society, we all should be perfect citizens whose outward lives perfectly reflect our inward, private thoughts and actions. But we're not, and evidence to the contrary can be used against us.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say you are perfect. You don't exceed the speed limit, you don't haul drugs. But one of your elected officials really enjoys visiting his secret girlfriend on Sunday evenings. Do you still trust him to vote objectively in every circumstance?
True, I can't see XYZ agency using their records to threaten elected officials, either. But I doubt anyone was worried that promoting an egotistical bureaucrat in the Bureau of Investigation in the early 1900s would ever lead to the reign of J. Edgar Hoover. The whole point is that these things aren't a big deal on their own -- it's the slippery slope concept that should concern you.
This isn't a privacy argument, you already (should) have privacy in the situations where you're not around other people or out in the open.
This is about the times when you're out on the street with everybody else. That's when you can't reasonably expect EVERYONE TO LOOK AWAY when you walk into a store, or buy a coffee or throw your trash on the ground.
It's those times when you're not private. You know, in public.
These things aren't legally protected because our cultural and instinctive expectations forbid them. Try walking down the street and looking every single person you pass directly in the eye for as long as they're visible. See how they react. Follow them around. Write down everything they're doing. Let us all know what happens.
Wait until people discover your FM car radio also leaks information. Besides the leaky iPod/SatRadio transmitters, the unit itself gives away the station frequency from the internal oscillator.
There's a company already sniffing radios on the road to determine listener demographics among other things.
With a good isolation amplifier between your antenna and local oscillator, you don't necessarily transmit much on the frequency you're listening to. (If you did, you'd interfere with other listeners.) Where you transmit also depends very much on the design of the radio you're using; it might be obvious to detect that a radio is being operated, but not detect what frequency it is tuned to.
And to be very pedantic, every conductive object in the universe plays some part in any antenna system.
But some high-end SDRs use ridiculously-high sampling rates (like 200MHz), in which case many applications don't even need to mix a local oscillator with the incoming RF. It's pretty amazing.
I never learned much about RF, so this question may be naive. Is it possible to sample higher frequency signals using a 200MHz sample rate, by using a bandpass filter and then deliberately undersampling without an anti-alias filter? If so, how high could you go, and what other limitations exist?
Oddly enough I just received an email from SunPass(Florida tolls) encouraging me to trade in my old battery operated transmitter that beeps when it's read for one that doesn't. They're even offering to foot the bill. Weird... maybe I'm just being a conspiracy theorist :)
As many have stated, this isn't news. There are all sorts of good and proper uses of toll-tags that aren't collecting tolls. There has never been any effort to hide that, nor should there be. The thing I have always been disturbed by WRT toll-tags is that toll-collecting entities flatly refuse to sell one that isn't attached to a person or a vehicle. There are opportunities for profit that have been ignored[1], and I expect that is probably because gov't entities want a high degree of certainty as to who is with the tag.
[1] - Prepaid toll-tags could be sold at vending machines for cash (business travelers, philanderers, etc.), but are not.
The reason they link a tag to a car is because fees vary by vehicle type (number of axles). If the tags weren't linked to a vehicle, a commercial truck driver could simply buy a tag for a car and pay a whole lot less in tolls.
But nobody looks at that footage 99% of the time. Reolistically the only way to do prepaid tags it to bill the maximum amount as truckers would happily say use a car the first time and then use the rest of the cash on the semi unless they checked every time.
They could sell you a prepaid tag, and you could get change back or reconcile its unpaid balance when you returned it. This could all be accomplished at a vending machine, or at a car-rental counter, or any number of other places.
>But nobody looks at that footage 99% of the time.
A truck can be trivially detected and distinguished from a car. The S/N of the tag detected can then have the proper amount deducted.
Or just put a sign on the vending machine, "Not for Trucks"
Any form of trivially detected is going to cost millions. For what they assume is a tiny market, it's really an edge case that has little benifit to them. Don't forget they avoided ticketing most people who simply went through the EZ pass lanes without paying for years. Why, cost benifit analysis, they did not want to drive away users over what amounted to be a fairly small revenue stream.
Edit: Also, all it takes is a picture of your license plate as you go through a toll an any anonymity is gone which makes anon EZ passes somewhat silly.
What? If they have a picture of your plate they have the address the vehicle registration is sent to. If it's a rental, they can get renter info pretty easily.
I bet it's not hard to tell a Peterbilt with trailer from a Honda Civic. They OCR the license plate number in real time, which is a whole lot more sophisticated of a problem than what I suggested.
OCR of license plate characters is far easier than distinguishing specific vehicle and weight classes. Fortunately, the license plate is connected to a database that tells you much of what you want anyway. Couple that with weight sensors (to count axles), and you've got the data you need for tolling without doing any "hard" visual recognition.
> There are all sorts of good and proper uses of toll-tags that aren't collecting tolls. There has never been any effort to hide that, nor should there be.
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.
That's the author's experience in NYC. I rarely go there so I cannot refute what he says. But, in Houston, TXDOT and TTI[1] have been on TV and in other media bragging about their sophisticated data collection and how good a job they've done shortening my commute.
>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.
I don't think we disagree here. I'm also in Houston, and though I haven't read them recently, I'm happy to know that the terms & conditions for my EZ tag properly lay out what they'll use it for. If the New York tags similarly expressed the ability of the companies to use the tags everywhere, I'd be completely in agreement.
> I'd like to see things like [...] the tags also reporting when they are accessed, and by whom.
Agreed; I already get a monthly letter saying "here's every place you went where you were charged a toll". How hard would it be do the same (at least on the website) with all the places your car was tagged-but-not-tolled?
I wasn't as careful as I should have been in my other post.
>I'm also in Houston, and though I haven't read them recently,
Pshhhbt, me neither!
>I'm happy to know that the terms & conditions for my EZ tag properly lay out what they'll use it for.
That stupid thing is probably as vague and broad as it can be. I based my statements on news reporting I'd seen, and having been on the TXDOT and traffic.tamu.edu websites[1] where the stuff was explained.
[1] In fairness to mortals, that is kind of like the bottom of a filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign outside the door saying "Beware of the Leopard."
You'll pull my E-Z pass out of my cold dead hands.
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.
I have been a user of EZ pass, and it is wonderful from that standpoint. From a security design standpoint, it's a matter of a pointy haired boss reasoning through "out of sight, out of mind."
I had thought it was common knowledge that E-ZPasses were used to collect real-time traffic estimates; certainly I've known for years that i-Pass (the Illinois equivalent) was used for this purpose. Unfortunately, some quick googling does not appear to locate any information on this, so now I don't remember where I heard / read this in the first place.
FastTrak (used in the SF Bay Area) have a warning, laying this out when you buy the devices. You don't actually need the device though, as each bridge using it also uses cameras to read license plates. It's more convenient this way, as you just need to register your vehicle on their website.
I keep the tabs with the registration in the glove compartment, and the plates in the trunk. If I ever get pulled over and it is an issue, it will be a fix-it ticket. Since a cop has to write you a ticket for something, a fix-it is better than a speeding ticket.
Technically, CHP can give you a ticket if you use the FasTrak lanes without a FasTrack transponder, even though their computer system has no problems billing your account by license plate.
I've heard of it happening online, but never seen them pull somebody over personally.
Since earlier this year, they are taking an alternate approach with the Golden Gate bridge, and have switched to electronic only tolls. So either you have fastrak, or when you drive across they photograph your license plate and mail you a bill. No more pay by cash, or differentiated lanes. I could see that becoming the norm.
I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge a few months ago with no idea that this was going to happen - last time I was down there, they still had a normal tollbooth. I was in a borrowed car with Washington plates. If they'd had a normal toll booth I'd have paid, but with the system set up the way it was, I don't think they had any way to get revenue out of me.
I was also very confused the first time a drove across without the toll collectors. It felt like I was doing something wrong, and was going to end getting a ticket.
Do you know if the person you borrowed the car from got a bill? I'm curious if they are only able to bill California plates, or they have a national database of license plates.
At least the Port Mann Bridge in Vancouver, which uses the same license plate camera only style billing, has a database which they use to send a bill to your insurance.
I'm in Philadelphia. They recently added large electronic signs on various highways with information on how long it will currently take to get to certain destinations. I vaguely remember reading they were using anonymous E-ZPass readings for this. So yes, I thought this was common knowledge, also.
His presentation also featured pictures he took of many NY police's personal cars with deliberately obscured license plates so they can't be automatically read (and other features like illegally too-tinted windows, etc).
> The DoT was not forthcoming about what exactly was read from the passes or how long geolocation information from the passes was kept.
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.
It's worth surfacing the fact that California's FasTrak transponders beep when they are being read (although it certainly might be possible for the beep to be suppressed).
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
FasTrak CAN be read without the transponder beeping (the beep is software-controlled by the reader): the Transportation Corridor Agency themselves explain they are being read at many highway exits to calculate traffic stats. And I have never heard my transponder beep when exiting the highway.
They suppress the beeps on the 15 in San Diego. It used to beep at the single tolling location when there was only one (and read many other times for traffic flow / variable toll calculation) but they eliminated it now that there are 10+ points where it is read to determine distance traveled. The only place it beeps in SD is on the 125.
The thing at LAX is for tracking buses and taxis, it just uses the same technology as FasTrak, so it makes the transponder beep. It's not even connected to the FasTrak system. It's not for tracking FasTrak users.
This isn't news, and hasn't been hidden. EZ pass readers are plainly visible all over the place, including on the BQE in NYC and other places in NY. They give you an ESD bag to put your transmitter in.
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.
> 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.
Little-known, but publicly available, information: The EZ-Pass was originally developed by JPMorgan Chase (my employer) for use with a different client.
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.
I'd also be interested in seeing a write-up of the various legal aspects of this: Are private third parties allowed to interact wirelessly with the EZ-Pass? Are people allowed to broadcast signals similar to those that an EZ-Pass unit broadcasts, as long as the intent isn't to fraudulently drive on a toll road without paying toll?
IMO, this is actually pretty awesome. Maybe in the future, we can produce new EZPasses that do the same thing, except more privacy-oriented: a pass that reports different Tag IDs to traffic monitoring equipment, but keeps reporting the same Tag ID for 1 hour. Or maybe a piece of hardware that can intercept the EZPass signal on its way to the traffic monitoring equipment.
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.
Is there any way to install a switch to kill the tag when you don't plan on using it? If that's possible, how difficult would it be to control this on/off switch with a spare smart phone based on approved GPS location?
Yes, you can put it in a special bag that blocks its signals. If you buy a FastTrak device for the SF Bay Area, it actually comes in the bag. Still, you have a license plate. (Unless you are like Steve Jobs, and lease a new car every 6 months)
Seattle's equivalent has a few models, and one of them lets you turn it on and off by having the RFID part slide into the case. Though this has a practical use case---some lanes around here are tolled for single-occupant vehicles but not with two or more occupants, so that's how you indicate whether you need to pay or not.
I had a rental car in Boston a few weeks ago and the rental car came with an EZ-Pass that flipped into a little box. I was told by the rental company that if I didn't want to use it and pay cash tolls, just keep it inside the box. So I'm assuming the box stops the readers from reading the pass.
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.
Here in the bay area, they give you a mylar/antistatic bag with new FasTrak transponders for precisely this purpose. Put the transponder in the bag, nobody can read it.
(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.)
An on/off switch on the FasTrak transponder would be a lot more convenient than taking it out of or into a mylar bag... I have considered modifying mine with a switch.
I can't find details of his hack, but I am curious if his detector detects actual read events (when his device responds with its ID) or if it is just an RF power detector. Is there a link to a technical description?
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.)
Yet again, we arrive at a, "could" story, and not a "does" story.
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.
The FBI "could" track your movements via cell phone data. The FBI "could" then provide that data to the DEA to help make an arrest. The NSA "could" keep a log of everyone you ever call or who calls you.
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.
Arrests are allowed to happen to innocent people. Arrests aren't convictions, convictions are.
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 think people forget sometimes that 1984 was a work of fiction, and never actually happened.
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.
1984 was a work of fiction, that is undebatable. It did not happen. It's not based in reality whatsoever, and there is no indication that anything written in the novel logically carries from anything else written in the novel. Things happen in 1984 because it makes for a good story, not because that's what would happen next.
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.