NET - HLR on highway privacy (fwd)

[Jon Lasser <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu>]

I hadn't seen this cross the list yet...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Lasser                <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu>            (410)494-3072 
          Visit my home page at http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/
  You have a friend at the NSA: Big Brother is watching. Finger for PGP key.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 05:59:53 -0600
From: FringeWare Daily <email@fringeware.com>
Subject: NET - HLR on highway privacy

Sent from: hlr@well.com (Howard Rheingold)

We Need Privacy Protection On Intelligent Highways
	-- By Howard Rheingold

	Ominous steps have been taken recently, steps that perhaps move us
all closer to a global surveillance state, but few people are aware of them.
Governments around the world are installing "intelligent highways," whose
snooping capabilities ought to concern every driver.
	I recently remarked to my friend Peter, as he drove me  around
Geneva, that he is scrupulous about obeying the speed limit. He told me in
reply that he had on a previous occasion received in his mailbox an envelope
containing a photograph of his automobile, the radar detector readout
superimposed, along with a notice of his fine. On key Swiss roads, radar
detectors automatically videotape speeders, computers automatically
recognize the license plate number, check it against a database, and issue
mail to the home address of the owner. It happens in Japan, too, and more
and more locations around the world..
	If my Swiss friend had not told me that story, the hair on the back
of neck would not have started to stand up when I read, the next day, in the
October 9, 1995 edition of the International Herald Tribune, that Kansas
became the tenth state to adopt electronic toll collection. Electronic
transponders installed in vehicles automatically communicate with toll
collecting machinery via radio, and tolls are automatically deducted from
the driver's account. The following day, October 10, the same newspaper
reported that Singapore had announced contracts to wire up the road system
of the entire city-state. Singapore, never known as a bastion of civil
liberties, will be able to track the location of every vehicle, and identify
most drivers, on a minute-by-minute basis.
	 A government and private industry initiative now underway proposes
multibillion dollar investments in "Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems"
(IVHS) in the US. These systems, combining massive numbers of embedded
sensors, video cameras, chips embedded in vehicles, and even satellite
global positioning signals, are now under construction in every
industrialized country. IVHS promise greater convenience and perhaps safety
by monitoring highway traffic, routing around jams, and automatically
collecting tolls. If these systems are not designed with the privacy of
citizens in mind, however, we might be buying a heap of surveillance
capabilities for future secret police. This is a technology policy issue
where informed groups of citizens can have an impact if we act now. It isn't
a matter of banning the technology. It's a matter of making sure today that
these systems are designed with the privacy of future citizens in mind.
	One of the best sources of information about the social impact of
IVHS comes from Professor Phil Agre at the University of California, San
Diego. Agre stated recently: "Society may decide that it wishes to provide
law enforment with generalized abilities to track citizens' movements, but
this would clearly be a grave decision - one that should be discussed well
in advance rather than building the technical capabilities into ITS systems
with virtually no public discussion."
	There is a technical fix, however. Encryption techniques make it
possible to transmit account information from an automobile without
disclosing the identity of the owner.
	 However, it is critically important that the early majority of
transponder manufacturers build encryption capabilities into their devices.
Making privacy a standard will work far better than attempts at legislative
regulation after the market has settled on a standard.
	 Agre's reports can be found on the Web at
http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/rre.html. To access his
whimsically-named but extremely useful "Red Rock Eater News Service," via
e-mail send a message to rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu, Subject: archive help.
	We still have time to do something about this one. We need to ask
manufacturers now to consider the importance of building privacy protection
into their technology. I support Agre's statement that "People need to use
roads to participate in the full range of associations (educational,
political, social, religious, labor, charitable, etc) that make up a free
society.  If we turn the roads into a zone of total surveillance then we
chill that fundamental right and undermine the very foundation of freedom."
END