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E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

forbes.com

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Re: E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

#101

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

Retric wrote: post #99
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

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…

>Also, all it takes is a picture of your license plate as you go through a toll an any anonymity is gone

No, because a prepaid eztag wouldn't mail a statement of your whereabouts to your home/office.

Re: E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

#102

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

3minus1 wrote: post #96
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they couldn't because it would be immediately obvious from the camera footage. Photos are always taken, even when a tag is registered.

i bet it's expensive to determine the vehicle type in every single photo.

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.

Re: E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

#103

Post by canvia »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #66
forgotAgain wrote: post #37

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…

>I have to disagree with those who say this isn't news. It was never kept a secret in Houston that toll-tags were used to collect data for the real-time traffic map, this system is decades old. http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/aviinfo/avi-tech.html >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…

Do you work for Altoids? (mostly joking)

Re: E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

#104

Post by codex »

Your location in a public place is not a secret. It is not legally protected. This is well established by multiple precedents.

Heck, FBI agents can legally place a tracking device on your car, without a warrant if they do so while your car is in a public place (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/03/federal-judge-rules-fb...).

Re: E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

#105

Post by refurb »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #101
Retric wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Also, all it takes is a picture of your license plate as you go through a toll an any anonymity is gone No, because a prepaid eztag wouldn't mail a statement of your whereabouts to your home/office.

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.

Re: E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

#106

Post by jack-r-abbit »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #100
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Redact the account number if you don't trust me. I just need a list of everything you bought, let's say it's, umm, to help me budget.

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.

Re: E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

#107

Post by saalweachter »

forgotAgain wrote: post #37

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…

> EZ passes are supposed to be used in one car

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.

Re: E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

#108

Post by jrockway »

drjesusphd wrote: post #67
joezydeco wrote: post #39

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. http://masscommandme.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/mobiltraks-lis...

Just to clarify, this is not an intentional design feature. Any reciever is necessarily a transmitter due to the physics itself. The UK has been using this for a while to crack down on TV liscences.

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.

Re: E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

#109

Post by tlrobinson »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #90
forgotAgain wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A car may have more than one user. 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.

Even tickets issued by officeres wouldn't be available to your insurance company, or just the speed cameras?

Re: E-ZPasses Get Read All Over New York (Not Just At Toll Booths)

#110

Post by timdellinger »

ISL wrote: post #32

Is there a publicly available standard for interrogating EZ-Pass chips? Does the state have an exclusive license for the band?

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?
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