Selling Privacy for ETC

[Duncan Frissell]

A Faraday Cage for your EZPass:

EZShield.com

EZPass is an Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system used in the
Northeast. A small white box is attached to your windshield and is
queried by radios in passing toll booths. Your account is debited for the
toll. Your account lists all the booths passed and when so it can be very
useful for law enforcement and civil attorneys (including domestic
relations lawyers). EZPass has already been featured on an episode of Law
and Order. In addition since the system is protected by weak or no
encryption, attackers with radios could extract some information by
querying your EZPass. Perhaps duplicating it to steal tolls from you.

The EZShield is a little box with a drawer to hold your EZPass. According
to the photo, it doesn't increase the EZPass form factor by much. What
you are supposed to do in open the drawer to expose your EZPass only when
you want to use it and keep it enclosed when you don't.

The interesting thing is that EZShield's sellers believe that there is
enough interest in a technological privacy fix that they are willing to
advertise it on mass media. I heard it just before the Rush Limbaugh show
on WABC in NYC.

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Posted by Duncan Frissell to The Technoptimist at 8/19/2002 1:52:02 PM

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