Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 262 posts

Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

#91

Post by ChuckMcM »

ryan-allen wrote: post #30
ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I always found it much more interesting to consider that smart stop light sensors could read the RFID tags that are required for tires [1]. You can change your plates but how often do you change your tires? [1] http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880

Tyres have RFID tags in them??! What an unusual thing to put RFID tags in. I wonder what other common items could have tags in them that people are generally unaware of. I'm quite in to cars and I had NO IDEA this was a thing.

Yup, embedded right into the rubber. There are a couple of reasons for this, one is to provide serial numbers which allows you to 'age' the tire. Older tires are less reliable than fresh tires and there are laws in states like California that disallow selling "old" tires as new. You can read the tag and see when the tire was made. The sensors are not used to indicate inflation as far as I know that is a completely separate system. When they were first proposed, some folks showed they could be read from side of the road although that was unreliable. Reading them from the roadbed itself however was quite reliable as you ended up, worst case, with the tag being one wheel diameter away from the reader, and they were spec'd to be readable like that as folks doing inventory on a stack of tires did not want to rotate the tires in the stack. The last set of tires I 'read' (to show this off to a disbelieving friend) had a 18 digit serial number and a 6 digit date code. I'm sure there is some IEEE standard now for what your tire should report.

Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

#92

Post by whoopdedo »

deadfall wrote: post #54

Just last night I watched an older episode of Jay Leno's Garage and they brought in a few of California Highway Patrol (CHP) cars to show off. The officer explains that new cars are equipped with a license plate scanner find wanted people.

Something I've learned from listening to police scanners is the majority of warrants are for unpaid traffic tickets and guys behind on alimony.

Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

#93

Post by woodman »

themartorana wrote: post #87
woodman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to reverse this. Trying to cage this with paperwork will just lead to more of the same creative interpretations à la NSA. So the rulers don't feel the rules apply to them, big surprise. With that in mind, the futility of fighting the tide, what is the next step? As the ideal solution of reversal is unavailable, we need to go with harm reduction - but what is the harm that we would reduce? Most would s…

Who remembers when Cheney removed his house from Google Earth? All the while the NSA et al were building insane domestic surveillance systems. That's pretty much when I understood what "oligarchy" meant and how very much there we were. Snowden didn't help my mental picture of the country.

I've always enjoyed the work of John Young. [0] The eyeball series isn't nearly as interesting as most of the mirrored leaks, but it serves to frustrate such attempts at airbrushing the homes and workplaces of the anointed.

[0] http://cryptome.org/

Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

#95

Post by ChuckMcM »

Zombieball wrote: post #40
ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I always found it much more interesting to consider that smart stop light sensors could read the RFID tags that are required for tires [1]. You can change your plates but how often do you change your tires? [1] http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880

Doesn't that average consumer change their tires more frequently than their license plate over the lifespan of their car? I ask as your question seemed a bit strange to me. I am not sure if you are alluding to the fact that individuals trying to evade the law wouldn't know to change their tires, or if car licensing & insurance is much different than I imagined in the US (and individuals get a new license plate each y…

   > Doesn't that average consumer change their tires more
   > frequently than their license plate over the lifespan
   > of their car?
Yes, of course. And the RFID tag is really not helpful outside of inventory as far as I can tell. When they started this project I expected something like the microwave tags they glue inside a DVD case to detect shoplifting that you could remove from the tire innards before you mounted it. But nope, its embedded in the tire material.

Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

#96

Post by fru2013 »

jessriedel wrote: post #78
pokstad wrote: post #68

Get rid of license plates. They can also be used by private parties to track car movements. They aren't safe anymore in this time and age. Once someone builds a proof of concept of a real time car tracker using crowd sourced license plate trackers, we'll realize that.

That really only buys you a couple of years, if any. If they can do face recognition, they can do car recognition. Just determine the make/model/year/color/trim, and then look for some individually identifiable marks, scratches, color imperfections, tire type, etc.

It doesn't stop there. How about high-def video feeds of the entire planet via satellite? With heat tracking/infrared? Combine that with smart tracking software and NSA-level eavesdropping and there would be no escape.

Personally, I think we'll have the technological capability to do this within a couple decades.

Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

#97

Post by sliverstorm »

Zombieball wrote: post #40
ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I always found it much more interesting to consider that smart stop light sensors could read the RFID tags that are required for tires [1]. You can change your plates but how often do you change your tires? [1] http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880

Doesn't that average consumer change their tires more frequently than their license plate over the lifespan of their car? I ask as your question seemed a bit strange to me. I am not sure if you are alluding to the fact that individuals trying to evade the law wouldn't know to change their tires, or if car licensing & insurance is much different than I imagined in the US (and individuals get a new license plate each y…

You don't normally get new plates often, but you can if you want (report them lost or stolen and pay ~$20), and it is also rather easier to steal someone else's plates than their tires.

Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

#98

Post by Zigurd »

joliv wrote: post #56
woodman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to reverse this. Trying to cage this with paperwork will just lead to more of the same creative interpretations à la NSA. So the rulers don't feel the rules apply to them, big surprise. With that in mind, the futility of fighting the tide, what is the next step? As the ideal solution of reversal is unavailable, we need to go with harm reduction - but what is the harm that we would reduce? Most would s…

Some things the public should not be able to spy on. Using the example of the DEA, we can't have cartels knowing the identities of the DEA's informers, or when and where they're planning to make a bust. We can't have our citizens' tax records getting out of the IRS. And public relations would break down if we can't keep our allies secrets, either. Our military's plans shouldn't be made known to the enemy, of course.…

> we can't have cartels knowing the identities of the DEA's informers

You should learn about how CIs are blackmailed, used, and discarded, and, often enough die. If informants were outed and the use of CIs ended, it would be a benefit to everyone.

Wikileaks? Cables? We lost all our allies, right?

Don't fear radical transparency. It will be to your benefit.

Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

#99

Post by joliv »

woodman wrote: post #58
joliv wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things the public should not be able to spy on. Using the example of the DEA, we can't have cartels knowing the identities of the DEA's informers, or when and where they're planning to make a bust. We can't have our citizens' tax records getting out of the IRS. And public relations would break down if we can't keep our allies secrets, either. Our military's plans shouldn't be made known to the enemy, of course.…

Security through obscurity? No doubt a great deal would need to change, but we've tried the method of giving a select group of individuals an immense amount of power and hoping for the best. It hasn't worked out that well. So I'd recommend that you consider the present situation, because the prospect of you knowing my tax information, by comparison, doesn't seem so bad.

Interesting—I haven't seen that term used that way before. If I encrpyt my customers' private data using a well-publicized encryption method, is it still security through obscurity, simply because they are secrets?

Re: U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

#100

Post by sliverstorm »

pokstad wrote: post #68

Get rid of license plates. They can also be used by private parties to track car movements. They aren't safe anymore in this time and age. Once someone builds a proof of concept of a real time car tracker using crowd sourced license plate trackers, we'll realize that.

So long as cars are uniquely identifiable, car movements can be tracked.

Cars will never be allowed to not be uniquely identifiable, for hopefully-obvious reasons that have nothing to do with Big Brother.

Post reply on HN