Bills (in CA) would ban tracking devices in driver's licenses, IDs

Monday, June 12, 2006

Bills would ban tracking devices in driver's licenses, IDs

By: STEVE LAWRENCE - Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Sen. Joe Simitian is trying a new tactic in his year-and-a-half-long campaign to control the use of tracking devices in government-issued identification cards.

Bills by the Palo Alto Democrat that would bar the use of radio-frequency identification devices in driver's licenses and school identification cards are up Tuesday in the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

(snip)

RFID's are tiny chips that provide information by emitting radio signals. They're used in a variety of ways, including keeping track of store inventories, providing access to buildings and automatically assessing toll-road fees.

A decision by a Sutter County school to use RFIDs in student identification cards to track attendance produced a heated protest last year by parents and civil libertarians. The school dropped the program after the company that developed the technology pulled out. Simitian is concerned the devices could be misused in a couple of ways -- by overzealous officials violating privacy rights and by identity thieves, stalkers and other criminals gaining access to personal information.

(snip)


http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/06/12/news/state/61106182241.txt

My goddamned credit card does not work half the time on the first swipe.

here in illinois, they have the i-pass- a transponder that goes in your car to pay tolls on the tollway. to get people to start using them, they've doubled the tolls for people paying cash(which really sucks for out-of-staters passing thru). with the transponders, they know exactly what time you went thru the toll- so, it would be relatively easy for them to determine your speed, using the time/distance between tolls....BUT- they have promised that this will never be done, which is obviously bullshit...and i can pretty much gaurantee that when they DO start using it to fine speeders, A LOT of thos transponders will be tossed out of car windows- i know that mine will be.

I wonder what a few seconds in the microwave would do to the little transponder chip?

Or even just a good whack in the right spot with a 2 lb. hammer; I mean, the card is already flat....

No matter how "foolproof" the technology, there is usually a simple, cheap way to sabotage it. :evilgrin:

simply by running them past a strong magnet - this is called degaussing, maybe (trying to remember college physics).

be denied Federal benefits and prohibited from travelling out of state?

Virtually no one I talk to has even heard of REAL ID; all hell is gonna break loose when people finally realize what the GOP has done to them. The Dems ought to be putting together campaign ads telling folks about this and all the other crap (bankruptcy bill, etc).

:woohoo:

I'm still not sure what the purpose of the tracking device is, in a drivers license.