[adamsjas]

Earlier today, I was horrified to learn that the Feds have considered manadating the inclusion of Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices in our cars.

While it makes a nice entry into a long rant, its an urban legend, and there is no federal plan to put gps tracking into cars.

Some rental car companies do this in areas where car theft is high, but even these do not disable the car, simply result in a large bill if you violate the area rules.

Further, gps units do not track cars, they are a receive only device, and would have to be ganged with a transmitter to some receiver somewhere, which would simply not be able to handle the load. (The hidden truth is that things like On-Star do not scale well, and if even a quarter of US cars were equipped with on-star the system would be unusable.

Relax, people, its a myth.

[Just A Nobody]

Relax, people, its a myth.

Seems I've heard that before regarding KISS, mandatory seat belt laws ..... I don't trust any one that says "relax people" when we are discussing the Feds.

[Iris7]

Of course you are correct that the "GPS" system could not work as described.

A two way fully encrypted Diffie-Hellman handshake system could be made to work with sufficiently complex control chips. Of course the chips must erase their memories according to instructions, when being x-rayed, opened, chilled to excess, etc. and communicate with other chips in it's system only in a fully hard crypto way. The growth industry would be finding larger prime numbers.

The nationwide communication network needed would make the Internet look like a toy.

Probably when the Feds buy this wonderful system it will have been designed and built by the Chinese.

I am talking in jest, about 10%. Unfortunately the system is buildable. Shucks, just put the system in a chrome steel welded on neckband that cannot be removed without explosive decapitation. Just hope the darn thing's software wasn't written by Microsoft!

Dark visions, dark visions. Sometimes people say I have a strange sense of humor! Can you believe it?

[em2vn]

I wish I had known that before I retired from SBC. They had GPS on nearly one hundred thousand vehicles and they knew where we were at any time.
Now I wonder how that worked?