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Malaysia to Use RFID Number Plates Next Year

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Dec 09, 2006 10:27 AM
from the following-cars-made-easy dept.
Privacy Technology
durianwool wrote in with a story about Malaysia's plans to introduce RFID number plates. It reads: "'The first thing thieves do after a car theft is change the registration plates,' Road Transport Department Director-General Ahmad Mustapha was quoted as saying. The microchips, using radio frequency identification technology, will be fixed into the number plates and can transmit data at a range of up to 100 meters (yards), the report said. They will have a battery life of 10 years, it said. "
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  • Now the second thing.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Yetihehe (971185) on Saturday December 09 2006, @10:29AM (#17174016)
    will be to fry, change or overwrite RFID tag

    • Re:Now the second thing.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by arivanov (12034) on Saturday December 09 2006, @11:11AM (#17174374) Homepage
      And how exactly are you going to cross a road toll or a police checkpoint?

      This is one of the few possible use of RFID which make sense. Your number plate is out in plain sight anyway, it is also visible at the same or greater distance as the reader range. So there is no privacy implication here. In fact many privately run road toll systems already use this tech and this is simply an extension to cover the entire country.

      Compared to the alternatives like Ken Livingston's London CCTV camera recognition and the UK dept of tranport "GPS in every car" scheme this is considerably less privacy invasive and much much cheaper. In fact - I would prefer this to them any day (especially to the GPS in every car idea).

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by garcia (6573)
        Ah, because they don't need human interaction in order to check for you passing between the gates. If someone is sitting at a computer monitor with a stopwatch mechanism and times you between the gates and calculates that you are speeding, I have no problems with the "technology" (as it's just like VASCAR over a longer distance).

        What I do have a problem with is automated systems to do this job (i.e. lowjacking cars) so that it's fast and easy to make revenue.

        • Re:Now the second thing.. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Sancho (17056) on Saturday December 09 2006, @12:42PM (#17175126) Homepage
          In a situation like this, you'd eventually see a complete turnover of traffic laws. Traffic analysts have shown that without speeders, congestion is unbelievable (or more accurately, if everyone is going the same speed, the congestion is terrible). Because so many people are willing to go the speed limit, and a few people drive below and above it, traffic flow is reasonable. Speeders only speed because there is a low chance of being caught.

          With automatic tracking/ticketing of speeders, beyond the obvious problem of loaning your car to someone, you'll see the roads getting clogged constantly. Something will have to be done to alleviate the problem, and that something will either be having personal speed limits (you can drive faster if you pass a safety test), greater public transportation to reduce the cars on the road (I'm all for this--there's virtually none in my state), bigger roads (ug), or a reversal to manually tracked speeding.
          • Couldn't the same effect be achieved if nobody actually exceeded the speed limit, as long as there were some people driving slower than most other drivers?

            • The highways are not something you just dump something on. They're not a truck.

              They're a series of tubes.

              And the faster the things move down the tubes, the more things you can move through the tubes ...

              In Soviet Russia, bad technology analogy explains cars!

              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by p43751 (170402)
                You would believe a road can handle more cars the faster they go. If you really looked at the facts you would find that with quite simple math you can draw a line-chart showing cars/hour and you would see that you are correct all the way up to around 17 km/h after that you actually get less cars/hour. The reason is quite simple, the space each car use increase as the speed go up so that every car will have enough space to stop(remember 1 sec. 2 sec.. 3..)

                So max cars pr hour on a straight road all using a re
          • On tolled roads another option could be to have speed-dependent pricing: Have the price go up when exceeding the desired most common speed, and have an absolute speed limit a bit above that. A few people will be willing to pay the additional price for the additional speed, while the majority will just keep at the maximum normal-price speed instead.
          • having personal speed limits (you can drive faster if you pass a safety test)

            Extremely dangerous. You don't want cars limited to 50 mph sharing the same road with cars zooming along at 80. Speed differential kills!

            -b.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by sgtrock (191182)
              That's still a manageable risk, though, with proper training, laws, enforcement, and to a lesser extent better road design. Have you ever driven on the autobahn? Cars zipping along at up to 140+ mph in the inside lane, 70-100 mph in the middle lane or two, while the outside lane lumbers along at 50-60 mph. Accidents are rare, although admittedly when they involve the inner two lanes things can get kinda messy.

              The Germans do it by having a longer driving course than the US does, their traffic laws and pen

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 4815162342 (940334)
        Actually I have to agree with this. Normally I am opposed to the increasing use of technology in ways which reduce our privacy.
        However in this case I think the benefits actually outweigh the costs.

        I do see potential for abuse but I also see how this technology can be used to make car theft (and particularly resale) much more difficult.

        The way I see it, it could work like this:

        Licensing authority when issuing plates encodes the following information on the integrated chip:
        "KV4782-Blue Honda Civic Saloon-VIN
      • less wrong is acceptable? How about just saying no to ANYTHING that isnt acceptable?

        This is invasive, and wide open for abuse. its wrong, period.

        Now, if it was 10inch, instead of 100yards, you might have an argument that its good for the cops.
    • "number plates and can transmit data at a range of up to 100 meters (yards)"
      A meter is 39.37 in, 1000 cm
      A yard is 36 in, 91.44 cm

      At 100 meters, the difference between meters and yards is about 30 feet, or 10 yards.
      • Yes, yards and meters are different, but by less than 10%. RFID range is highly unlikely to be that precise - it's going to depend on angles, speeds, battery age, dirt, equipment sensitivity. If you care about the answer, either because you've stolen a car or because you don't want your government tracking everywhere everybody in your country goes, or because you don't want advertisers or burglars easily tracking cars, you know they can nail you at around that distance.

        At least this isn't like the US RFID

  • RFID tags that use batteries?? That just sounds like lo-jack?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Colgate2003 (735182)
      There are both passive (no battery) and active (battery-assisted) tags. Want an example of an active RFID? Try EZ-Pass [ezpass.com].
      • The only thing remarkable about RFID technology is the battery-free property. Anything which needs power might as well be called a "radio transmitter" and not RFID.

        • The only thing remarkable about RFID technology is the battery-free property. Anything which needs power might as well be called a "radio transmitter" and not RFID.

          RFIDs are radio transmitters, just with a bit of smarts. Battery-powered RFID is completely valid. They have drive-by applications where the tag cannot be expected to pass within a couple of meters of reader/writer devices, but because of battery life limitations need to be replaced every few years.

          So-called "Passive RFID" tags are still acti

          • I did not mean to imply that a passive RFID tag is not a radio transponder. I only intended to point out that battery-powered radio transponders are common and uninteresting. RFID is interesting and uniquely useful only because of passive RFID.
  • Step 1: Steal Car
    Step 2: Change plates and either clone or transfer original RFID tag
    Step 3: There is not Step 3
    Step 4: Profit!!!
    • Change step 2 to:

      Fit the stolen car with your own number plates complete with relevant RFID information and presto!

      There is nothing to suggest that criminals cannot produce these tags. Malaysia is not a backward country. Heck they produce some of the technology our [American] government uses in some cases.

      • Change step 2 to:
         
        Fit the stolen car with your own number plates complete with relevant RFID information and presto!
        A digital signature on the RFID tag should be sufficient to prevent that.

  • Not groundbreaking (Score:3, Informative)

    by Raindance (680694) * <(johnsonmx) (at) (gmail.com)> on Saturday December 09 2006, @10:36AM (#17174078) Homepage Journal
    This is not as groundbreaking as it would seem. I believe all new automobile tires in the U.S. come with unique, tamper-proof RFID chips in them already.
    • There is tamper-evident, and tamper-self-destructing.

      Unless the car depends on the chip to work, it should be easy to disable the chip using microwaves or some such. The hard part is destroying it without causing visible damage to the tire.
      • You don't even need visible damage to render a tyre unsafe - I wouldn't want to microwave a RFID unit in my tyre, possibly generating a small bubble that's delaminated some of the plies in the tyre and have it blow out at 100+ km/h

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by thestuckmud (955767)

      I believe all new automobile tires in the U.S. come with unique, tamper-proof RFID chips in them already.

      No. Not yet, anyway. There is a standard for auto tire RFIDs, that meets both automobile industry and retail requirements, but RFID industry sources say it will be years before these are widely deployed. Michelin is testing them. Goodyear has them to track leased race tires. Your car does not.

      Even so, it may be time to start thinking of ways to extend that tin foil hat.

  • I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shmlco (594907) on Saturday December 09 2006, @10:42AM (#17174132) Homepage
    I don't get it. The first thing they do is change the plates... so we're going to put tags into the plates???
    • I couldn't parse that, either. :-\

      Why not embed the chip in the structure of the car- somewhere in the frame? Or pull a Lojack and put it in a random location even the owner doesn't know. Do it at factory and use the VIN.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by garcia (6573)
      The first thing the government does is tell its people that its spying protects them from harm.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by tilandal (1004811)
      Your plates are registered to a VIN. They scan the plate to get the VIN from the RFID tag. They then look at the VIN on your car and if they don't match you go to jail.
      • So? My plates are registered to a VIN. They READ the plate and lookup the matching VIN. They then check the VIN on your car. If they don't match they go to jail.

        So what did the RFID gain me again?
    • Two ways this helps.

      1. New plate does not have RFID signal. Police pull over car for having an improperly registered car, and do manual checks. If things are A-OK, the guy is sent off with a "fix-it ticket", which probably means no fine, he couldn't know the RFID chip was malfunctioning, but needs to get a new plate within 2 weeks or something. Or upon manual inspection, it is found that this is a stolen car (from VIN number, registration, etc...)

      2. New plate has an RFID signal. Police driving along
  • i guess it would works like this eg. when the thief steals a car, they would change the plate, (if that plate is without RFID tag) the police would probably double check the car and its owner, if the replaced plate got its own RFID tag, the police would check the car description based on that RFID tag, if it is correct, then they can pass the block, otherwise, the police would invite them to police station.

    btw, the police could just drive along the road and just check everybody RFID tag and their car des

  • Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Life700MB (930032) on Saturday December 09 2006, @12:16PM (#17174918)

    I work in a RFID related start-up and I can assure you that putting the RFID tags in the plates just doesn't make sense, is just like adding a control number to the plate... what you want to know is if the plates correspond to the car, not a second way of identifying the plates!!!

    They should add the tag into the inners of the car, so they can detect when a detected RFID value and the plate don't match. It's a lot more useful, IMHO.

    Also I found funny to see the specs of the RFID chips (tags, as we know them) of 100 meters and ten years of battery, are exactly the same as ours... it would be priceless to discover reading Slashdot that our American partners are doing extra hours without telling my boss!!!

    Superb hosting [tinyurl.com] 200GB Storage, 2_TB_ bandwidth, php, mysql, rails, ssh, $7.95
  • Border controls, some police departments and who knows else already implement optical automatic liscence plate detection and scanning.

    The only difference is this has the potential to be a little cheaper. I don't see any cause for more fuss, if you're OK with the license plate being on your car already. What's the difference if it's done via RFID?

  • Brazil is on that wagon too (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Marcos Eliziario (969923) on Saturday December 09 2006, @12:41PM (#17175108) Homepage Journal
    My country is going to introduce RFID plates, starting with cargo trucks, next year. What really pisses me off is that nobody here seems to care about the huge privacy issues related to this.
  • Can you stick one in the microwave, put it on high for 30 seconds, and have it come out fine?
  • Can someone hit me with a clue-stick, please ?

    We're driving an old car that probably nobody feels like stealing voluntarily. Often enough I don't even lock it.
    If we were in MY, from next year on I couldn't sleep well at night without glueing, welding and chaining the plates to the venerable car. Why ? Because - I bet - chances are exorbitant that in the next morning I'll own a car without plates; something that will be *a lot* of hassle, to explain, drive, and whatnot.
    Why? Because a car thief finds quite a
    • The catch is the car thieves, according to the plan.

      You're right, though. It wouldn't take much effort to get "valid" plates. One could buy a junker, or steal the plates, or simply go to the DMV and buy a set of plates. The RFID does nothing to strengthen the link between registration plate and vehicle. It seems to me, the only thing it is good for is automating the plate lookup on the police computer at the roadblock. That way, when the computer says a red Datsun should be coming through the roadblo
      • > Can't you just remove the registration plate with the RFID tagged as > "stolen" for another one from a car that wasn't reported stolen? Where do you get non-stolen cars from, other than by buying them?
        Simply removing the plate from another car & leaving that car alone does it.
        What's the idea?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by FlyByPC (841016)
        Um, and have the government know exactly where every car is, where they've been, and how long they've been there?

        What a doubleplusgood idea for MiniLuv, citizen...

        I for one do NOT welcome any such RFID overlords.
        • Ever tried driving round the UK?

          Number plates are quite frequently scanned to check for speeding. If you are caught speeding, you get a letter saying where you were when caught speeding. How do you think that works?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Ralph Yarro (704772)
      INSIGHTFUL?

      The range isn't really a round number of standard measuring units. In fact it isn't even constant, depending instead on a whole range of conditions and on the equipment in use. 100 meters and 100 yards are both approximations that are sufficiently inaccurate that it really doesn't matter which you use.
      • Ot, but does anyone except teh united states still use the imperial system, zepplins, or leech therapy?

        I live around the corner from a place called "Master Ee Leech Therapy" in Malaysia.

        No Zeppelins though.

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