From WorldNetDaily.com

"Feds plan to track every car
Obscure agency working on technology to monitor all vehicles

A little-known federal agency is planning a new monitoring program by which the government would track every car on the road by using onboard transceivers.

The agency, the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, is part of the Department of Transportation. According to an extensive report in the Charlotte, N.C., Creative Loafing, the agency doesn't respond to public inquiries about its activity.


According to the report, cutting-edge tracking technology will be used by government transportation management centers to monitor every aspect of transportation. Under the plan, not only will movement be monitored but it also will be archived in massive databases for future use.

The paper reports a group of car manufacturers, technology companies and government interests have worked toward implementing the project for 13 years.

States the Creative Loafing report:

"The only way for people to evade the national transportation tracking system they're creating will be to travel on foot. Drive your car, and your every movement could be recorded and archived. The federal government will know the exact route you drove to work, how many times you braked along the way, the precise moment you arrived – and that every other Tuesday you opt to ride the bus.

"They'll know you're due for a transmission repair and that you've neglected to fix the ever-widening crack that resulted from a pebble dinging your windshield."

The agency's website says its purpose is to "use advanced technology to improve the efficiency and safety of our nation's surface transportation system."

Critics believe the program will be used to line the pockets of business interests that stand to gain from the sale of needed technology and that the government will use the data collected to tax drivers on their driving habits.

Though the program has ominous privacy implications, Creative Loafing reports none of the privacy-rights organizations it contacted were aware of the government's plans.

The report states that more than $4 billion in federal tax dollars has already been spent to lay the foundation for the system, which will use GPS technology and other methods to monitor Americans' movements.

The plan includes transceivers, or "onboard units," that will transmit data from each car to the system, the first models of which are expected to be unveiled next spring. By 2010, the paper reported, automakers hope to start installing them in cars. The goal is to equip 57 million vehicles by 2015.

Creative Loafing quotes Bill Jones, technical director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, from a speech he gave in January.

"The concept," said Jones, "is that vehicle manufacturers will install a communications device on the vehicle starting at some future date, and equipment will be installed on the nation's transportation system to allow all vehicles to communicate with the infrastructure."

"The whole idea here is that we would capture data from a large number of vehicles," Jones said at another meeting of transportation officials in May. "That data could then be used by public jurisdictions for traffic management purposes and also by private industry, such as DaimlerChrysler, for the services that they wish to provide for their customers."

The plan sees the federal government working with auto manufacturers to place the transponders in vehicles at the factory, giving consumers little chance to drive a new car not tethered to transportation computers.

One of the program's visions is for transportation officials to share collected data with law enforcement, meaning a driver potentially could get a speeding ticket based on information stored in a government computer.

Proponents of the system say the safety benefits are enormous. One goal is to virtually eliminate auto accidents by having vehicles "communicate" with each other.

Neil Schuster is president and CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, a group of government and business people that's the driving force behind the program."

Read the full article at:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40795

Oh rly?

The last part about avoiding accidents sounds reasonable. The bit about tracking is an invasion of privacy.

Combine the above story with this one....
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40796
"LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER
Lawmakers consider 'smart' driver's licenses
Computer chip's signals allow data to be read from a distance

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: October 7, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern



© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A controversial technology already planned for tracking consumer products could be used to create "smart" driver's licenses that emit signals readable from a distance, according to federal and state government officials contemplating ways to fight identity fraud.

Radio frequency identification, or RFID, could help thwart terrorists who use falsified documents to get around, say Virginia lawmakers who will hear testimony on the technology's uses, reports Wired.com.

As WorldNetDaily reported, a Johnson & Johnson executive recently told industry leaders that in the future, the RFID chips will be "on everything from diapers to surgical instruments."

On the driver's licenses, the computer chips would emit a radio signal bearing the holder's unique, personal information. Virginia is considering adding biometric data such as fingerprints and retinal scans to the RFID tags."
=================SNIP=====================
"It's for our safety..."
Hmmmmmm....do tell!

If this is what "staying the course" is about...this is one course I don't think we should take. Remember, all tyrants and dictators say that the measures they institute, are for someone's protection and safety, and for the good of the Fatherland...er..uh..."Homeland".

http://www.its.dot.gov/
The website of this bunch.

This and a national ID scheme as proposed in the UK. First you have to prove you are who you say you are in the first place. Much of which can and is faked on a frequent basis. So now you have a scan of your iris or a thumb print proving you are who you say you are. Yet this was created using falsified documents in the first place!

Just think how much easier it will be to send out traffic tickets!

hammer>chip

if this ever happened i'd just look up online where the "chip" is located and smash it.

Anyone ever see Minority Report? Enemy of The State? I agree, I'd find the chip and smash it too, they shouldn't install it without my consent. Thanks patriot act. They can ticket you even if you aren't being followed by a cop? How fking retarded.

Baby, you can drive my car
Then they'll think I'm where you are.
Baby, you can drive my car
And Baby, they'll bug you.

When Condi Rice heard about this..here was her reaction....
http://images2.dmusic.com/users/c/o/d/codewarrior/34747.jpg

They're going too far with this stuff. Hmm...hope this doesn't happen in Canada

Good thing the Bruja drives brooms

I wonder what the penalty would be to inactivate the system. I know soon as it hits the road there will be those who will find a way to circumvent it.

"Drive your car, and your every movement could be recorded and archived."

Sounds like more sick step towards fufilling TIA.

I heard they are testing a way to track vehicles for the soon to come "mileage tax", and if you think thats crazy..dont forget...years ago, who would have figured we would pay for water. Air tax soon to follow?

http://economics.about.com/od/taxesandeconomicgrowth/a/mileage_tax.htm

Forgot to post this in ragard to my last post.

I'd build my own car from scratch rather than put up with THAT bs.

"Gilmore sued several government agencies and the airlines, claiming the ID requirement infringes on Americans' right to travel freely. The lawsuit, Gilmore v. Ashcroft, has forced the government to defend the existence of secret security rules that apply to millions of travelers. "

While he's at it, Gilmore ought to sue to stop this program too. It's obvious it will prevent American's from traveling freely.

The more the feds dwell into a persons life, the closer a civil war will erupt in the future. There is only so much people can take as its been shown in past history.

George Orwell

stock up on your guns before they get rfid chips. better to be able to use an older gun than a new one that the gov't can disable. if you say why i mentioned guns??...the better to shoot the opressors with my dear.

I was unaware that TIA got it's funding cut. Good news.

It's not so bad that they could track our car. It's bad that we would not have the option to turn that on or off, and that we would not have the option to track THEIR cars. No balance.

If they are so worried about accidents, etc. then why are speeding tickets so damn cheap? Do 90 MPH in a 40 MPH zone, pay just a hundred or so bucks. Wanna really stop accidents and jackass drivers? Up the damn fines, toss in some jail time. I bet people will think twice about running a red light if the fine was $2000 instead of $200. I bet they would think twice about going 50 MPH in a school zone if they were going to get tossed in jail for 90 days.

Skippy: How about fining idiots who won't get out of the left lane while we're at it? And how are they going to make room in the jail for traffic offenders? They don't even have room for all the violent criminals.

Actually, this is old news. The Left (Daschle,et. al.) has been brown-nosing the greenies and trying to pass "clunker laws" to rid the US of older cars. I'm an automotive hobbyist, and we need the old beasties for parts. One of the aims of this legislation was to remove all vehicles over 10 years old from the roads. Eliminate all the old, non-GPS vehicles by making them illegal. (GPS is not in all vehicles yet, but if the law had passed, you would eventually have been forced to be tracked). I disabled the black-box data recorder in my late-model vehicle, and use a cell phone with GPS tracking disabled, also. Yeah, I'm paranoid.

"The more the feds delve into a person's life, the closer a civil war will erupt in the future. There is only so much people can take as it's been shown in past history."

Well, then, I hope history can repeat itself in this way. I really do.