On Fri, Apr 21, 2000 at 04:25:45PM -0600, Pope Golgotha Pierced the Zeroth wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Apr 2000, Jim Choate wrote:
>
> > There is a new system planned to go into the police cars that includes a
> > wireless datanetwork coupled with GPS and general car control (e.g.
> > turning on sirens) via a touch screen. They just finished a test run and
> > are expecting to go live in the next couple of years.
>
> Now there's a daydream come true, perfect GPS'd Cop-Radar. Just
> drop an LCD screen in your car, and speed all you want in perfect security!
You could do that now, on current cop radio setups.
You just need a network of cypherpunks with radio scanners, direction
finders and GPSs, a way to recognize different cops by their radio
transmissions, and a way to communicate the cop location vector data
amongst the cypherpunk participants. Recipients need only do the
triangulation using the vectors to locate the cops.
You wouldn't need to be able to decrypt the cops communications as long
as you could distinguish the individual cop transmitters. You'd probably
want to have an encrypted authenticated channel for exchanging location
vectors. Although some way of anonymously contributing vectors to the
system would be interesting- of course you wouldn't want the cops in on
the system, or they could send incorrect readings. You'd need to have a
way of authenticating that a data transmiter was an authentic cypherpunk
without giving out real meatspace identification info. There's a lot
of ways to do that though. Another problem is how to avoid giving away
location data for the cypherpunks participating in the scheme.
The data, if it's accurate, would be salable- long-distance truckers,
who are already pretty wired, would love to have it (the ones that are
independents that is; many big trucking firms have data recorders on their
trucks to record when a driver's been speeding or driving more than the
government-mandated number of hours). I'm sure lots of other people
who would rather avoid police for one reason or another would be
interested.
If it worked and became widespread, it would of course be made illegal.
I don't know the exact laws about the legality of doing direction-finding
on radio sources, but in a sense it's just a high-tech version of the
trucker's CB radio "smokey reports" or whatever they're called.
If it wasn't banned and became widespread, then highway policing would
have to change.... no more stealth runs up to a pack of cars (safely)
speeding down the highway at 10 over and picking out the weakest
from the herd for a ticket. OTOH, sometimes cops cruise highways
wanting to be visible (slows traffic and makes people behave) and if
everyone knows where they are, the effect would be greater than having to
depend on seeing the cop car.
--
Eric Murray www.lne.com/~ericm ericm at the site lne.com PGP keyid:E03F65E5
