A chip for every car

Marvelous BritishBlog White Rose brings together principled left and right in concern for common dangers of an ever-encroaching state. Bookmark it.

This particular post on Wheel life: The thought police are on their way should not be missed.

Reports this week indicate that the Government is working on a scheme that will lead to every car in the country being fitted with a personalised microchip, enabling the powers-that-be to identify and prosecute motorists who break the law.

Electronic vehicle identification (EVI) allows the chip buried within your car to collude with the existing network of roadside sensors to provide a host of information about the individual behind the wheel, as well as monitoring exactly how vigorous their progress is on any given journey. An in-car informer, in other words, to go with the mobile phone, the Switch and credit cards, and the army of CCTV cameras already tracking our every move.

And if you hate cars and want to charge their owners for every roll of the wheel, you'll probably say "Bully!" But not so fast. We've gone over this before; someone --- and probably not some sustainable greenie in hiking boots --- is going to be in control of the data --- data which practically I believe cannot and will not be effectively made anonymous. So let's be careful out there.