traffic woes and laws

[Brett Dikeman]

It has been amusing watching all the bull that has accumulated in 
this thread.  If you guys are going to yack off-topic, at least trim 
the quoted text like I have, okay? :-)

At 7:05 AM -0800 3/30/04, Kevin Boykin wrote:

>Remember the story of the rental car company assessing upwards of 
>$400 in fines to a renter based on speeding?  The rent-er took them 
>to court and won since the rental agency had no authority to assess 
>speeding fines.

BZZZZZZT, thank you for playing.  The clause was buried so deep in 
the contract that it was unenforceable.  It had nothing to do with 
"authority to collect speeding fines"; unreasonable terms were buried 
in the contract.  If it had been up-front, or the contract simpler, 
or the policy explained by an employee, it probably would have been 
perfectly legit.  It was essentially deceptive business practices, 
and not much more.  See:
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-269388.html?legacy=cnet

>The second main function of this device (and arguably, THE purpose 
>of this device) would be to create an
>electromagnetic pulse.  Ideally this would be local only, so only 
>the car that the device is attached to
>is affected.

You've been watching too many movies to think that this is possible. 
An electromagnetic pulse requires an enormous amount of energy to 
generate to do anything more than make the radio crackle.  Energy 
requirements way beyond the capabilities of the electrical system in 
your average police car.  Nevermind that cars make for decent faraday 
cages, given that they're(gasp!) big metal boxes.

A few systems were demonstrated many years back and all involved not 
an EMP but an extremely high voltage discharge to the car body as it 
ran over a conductive strip.  It had to be laid down in the road 
ahead of time, just like a spike strip, and was unreliable and 
finicky at best(for example- useless on wet pavement).  Slow-deflate 
spike strips can be more effective and cost next to nothing.  No big 
surprise then that everyone uses spike strips, is it?  High tech 
ain't always best.

At 4:08 AM -0800 3/31/04, Kevin Boykin wrote:

>Who needs to track your car when we can track YOU?  Guess what? 
>It's already in the new US $20.
>Andrew has a tiny RFID chip in his right eyebrow.  Try and microwave 
>it...it will burst into flames and
>Andrew's face will burn.

That's because it is a metal strip, not a RFID chip.  A trucker who 
didn't trust banks carried thousands of dollars in cash in his 
pocket(just wanted to establish the intelligence level here) stuck a 
couple thousand dollars worth of $20's in the microwave because he 
thought they had RFID chips in them(let me repeat that: he THOUGHT 
they had RFID chips in them).  Why?  Because they kept setting off 
the product theft systems in convenience stores.  Except NONE of 
those systems are RFID based.  They work off of resonance of a metal 
strip or coil in the tag, and the wad of 20's just happened to 
generate enough of a response to set off the store's anti-theft 
system.

The bills caught fire because the strips are conductive(and hence 
microwaves heat them up), and due to extremely low thermal mass, were 
essentially vaporized instantly.  The intense heat ignited the (very 
thin) paper which was bonded to the strips, and yes, the whole thing 
probably did make a spectacularly loud bang.

Furthermore- RFID devices have range limiting intrinsic to their 
design.  a)they are powered by the detection system, so they have to 
be close enough to the detector to get enough power.  b)they are 
microscopic- and hence the antenna is microscopic as well.  There's 
also little room for energy storage.  What's all this mean? That the 
reply signal from the RFID chip is very, very weak.

Most RFID systems have a range of barely a few feet tops.

>/end of conspiracy ranting/

More like baseless rumor-mongering that discredits those of us with 
legitimate privacy and freedom concerns :-)

Oh, and Rocky- most antistatic bags aren't RF shields; they're just 
plastic with slight conductivity, and not much more.  Furthermore, 
the signal is so weak(since the unit is battery powered and designed 
to last a couple years) that even putting the sender unit on the 
passenger seat probably would do just as well.

Now if we're all done playing armchair conspiracists, can we all take 
off our tin-foil hats and get back to talking Audis, please? :-)

Brett
-- 
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~brett/