Found via Radley Balko, this story about a new technological solution to the pesky problem of not being able to track every human being at all times:
IBM will begin installing a "Smart Box" system in vehicles in the United Arab Emirates next year, potentially generating millions in traffic fines for the Gulf state. The UAE signed a $125 million contract with IBM today to provide the high-tech traffic monitoring and speed-enforcing system in which a GPS-enabled "Smart Box" would be installed in cars to provide a voice warning if the driver exceeds the local speed limit for wherever he may be driving. If the voice warning is ignored, the system would use a GSM/GPRS link to beam the car's speed, identity and location to the police so that a ticket could be issued. The system would also track and monitor any other driving violations, including "reckless behavior."
One hardly needs to be some sort of sci fi dystopia fan to find this prospect frightening.
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Well, at least it's the UAE. That's comforting...some...right? *sigh*
No, it isn't just UAE. Various auto-rental companies in the US use this technology, especially in the large urban area airport fleets. If you are found to have been excessively speeding, they apply a surcharge to your final bill, for, i love this, insurance premium risk to their policies. This also applies to rental trucks which are taken out of the agreed rental geography--across statelines or national boundaries. A whole slew of these applications are entering our lives, essentially to protect the corporation from which the consumer has voluntarily chosen to give up their fourth amendment protections in exchange for the use of vehicles and equipment.
Prior to my retirement from academia, and continuing through the present, my summers were/are used for music festival productions. Last summer we were informed by several of the major leasing companies(the ones who lease the tour buses for bands and the equipment tractor-trailer rigs) that their vehicles would include these types of technologies to prevent misuse and abuse by performers and promoters. Evidently bands like to party and take side trips and sometimes, heaven forbid, agree to hold unscheduled free concerts etc. Since these activities are not protected in the lease agreements(for the most part) the companies are using the available technologies to crack down.
So no Enigma, we are all surrounded by it, more than we imagine.
Big brother is in fact alive and well in the twenty-first century. I have to admit though that RFID chips scare me more than a "black box" for cars. http://www.spychips.com/what-is-rfid.html Shows what in my mind is the least frightening use for them, product placement. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67025,00.html?tw=wn_6polihead Talks about the use of RFID chips in personal documents and passports. http://slate.msn.com/id/2109477/ Slate magazine and NPR's talked about this last November. Veri Chip is developing a subcutaneous RFID transmitter that could be tracked by satellite. Now the theory is this could greatly enhance efforts of law enforcement to find children of others who have disappeared or been kidnapped. Realistically this means instead of tracking your car they could find you with a satellite and watch you from such a distance that you couldn't possibly know your being survailed.
I am all for pervasive technology of this sort.
The only thing I want to be manual and never be computerised is voting, for obvious reasons.
Speaking as someone who doesn't drive and would like to see most of central London pedestrianised, I find this hilarious. It's not jsut the UAE - the UK government has been looking at this sort of thing, primarily in connection with road charging, though.
This WOULD be kind of funny. American speed limits are absurdly low, and having everyone drive five miles under the limit would pretty paralyze us.
Bring it on, baby, bring it on.