On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 10:04 AM, brian carroll <electromagnetize@gmail.com> wrote:
> Any questions?

about the V2V cars- what is the likelihood that automobiles are _not
tagged in some way, just like computers, given that location or other
data is critically important and perhaps more easily accessible or
tracked outside of a particular environment, say run-ups to meetings
or whatever, the timeliness of data as it approaches a meeting point,
thus ramps up in criticality, say if a cellphone conversation decides
actions minutes before an encounter. or, to scan a city for someone
via satellites, pinging the missing submarine from satellite. given
highest priority to own every computer, how likely is it that vehicles
are not already being tracked, regardless of 'known technology' that
then brings this tracking into the open. even if via passive means,
giant RFID in the sky/net, say serial #s that reflect back with
vehicle title databases, mapping geographies this way, 100,000
vehicles return signals, as if looking at asphalt and concrete heavens
using astronomy software to parse star/car-names. either installed in
new vehicles by default, or when serviced if a focused customer.
perhaps not advanced beyond passive ping, though are vehicles really
driving around autonomously besides redlight cameras and speed traps?
doubt it.

Given that a V2V system can only warn of an impending collision with another V2V-equipped vehicle, this seems ludicrous to me. Passive systems like radar and lidar will be cheap enough to be in nearly every new car soon enough.

However, even if V2V ends up being mandated, whether it's abusable is very implementation-dependent, and there are already plenty of ways to track vehicles: license plate scanners, toll transponder readers, even just plain old image processing on existing surveillance cameras to track vehicles probabilistically. Oh, and then there's that cellphone you're probably carrying with you.

Some of these are easier to avoid than others, and a V2V system could probably be disabled easily. But we're already being tracked, and I doubt there's much incentive for a politician to go out on a limb to make it even easier. If we really want to avoid tracking, it's the efforts to network and database security cameras and ALPRs that we need to go after. Those are much harder to avoid, even if you don't own a cellphone and ride a bicycle or walk everywhere.