NYC Is Tracking RFID Toll Collection Tags All Over the City

[DamianTV]

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/09/13/1547218/nyc-is-tracking-rfid-toll-collection-tags-all-over-the-city


In the northeast U.S., most of the tolls people encounter when driving make use of a system called E-ZPass to let them pay the tolls electronically. Drivers are given small RFID transponders that are scanned in tollbooths, at which point the toll is automatically deducted from a pre-paid account. One hacker got curious whether the RFID tags were being scanned elsewhere, so he tweaked his E-ZPass to blink a light and make a noise every time it was read. He tested the streets of New York City, and wasn't surprised to see it light up in plenty of places where there were no tollbooths to be found. From the article:


"It’s part of Midtown in Motion, an initiative to feed information from lots of sensors into New York’s traffic management center. A spokesperson for the New York Department of Transportation, Scott Gastel, says the E-Z Pass readers are on highways across the city, and on streets in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island, and have been in use for years. The city uses the data from the readers to provide real-time traffic information, as for this tool. The DoT was not forthcoming about what exactly was read from the passes or how long geolocation information from the passes was kept. Notably, the fact that E-ZPasses will be used as a tracking device outside of toll payment, is not disclosed anywhere that I could see in the terms and conditions. When I talked to the E-ZPass Inter-agency Group — the umbrella association that oversees the use of the pay-toll-paying tags in 15 different states — it said New York is the only state that is employing this inventive re-use of the tags. ... 'If NYDOT can put up readers, says [the hacker], 'other agencies could as well.'"

(Links to source on links, I didnt copy those over.)

Do people still believe Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear?

[amy31416]

I'm going to have to study up a bit more on how this technology works.

[Natural Citizen]

I'm going to have to study up a bit more on how this technology works.

There have been several threads where this was specifically discussed/shared. Unfortunately, there was no technology sub forum then so it's all lost...buried.

What happens is that the chip is sleeping until it is activated/read by whatever has your info. Although it's a bit more detailed than that. Could be a store you frequent or anything. Oh yes...it's a hoot.

Doing a search for Katherine Albrecht here on the forums will yield the most relevant sources. I know this because I put them there.

[Schifference]

I would imagine it won't be long before when you pass from one toll booth to the next they send you a speeding ticket if you got there faster than possible by driving the speed limit.

[tangent4ronpaul]

I would imagine it won't be long before when you pass from one toll booth to the next they send you a speeding ticket if you got there faster than possible by driving the speed limit.

shhhh!!!! Don't give them ideas!

http://b-i.forbesimg.com/kashmirhill/files/2013/09/Screen-Shot-2013-09-12-at-12.58.37-PM.png

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/09/12/e-zpasses-get-read-all-over-new-york-not-just-at-toll-booths/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCwWVxGtYgE


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZUtHJVonL8

-t

[donnay]

I'm going to have to study up a bit more on how this technology works.



http://www.spychips.com/
http://www.katherinealbrecht.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=102%3Afirst-chapter-of-qspychips-how-major-corporations-and-government-plan-to-track-your-every-move-with-rfidq&Itemid=94
http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/145548/Katherine_Albrecht__Spychips_and_the_Spychip_threa t/
http://archive.org/details/SpychipsHowMajorCorporationsAndGovernmentPlanToTra ckYourEveryMove
http://www.jhtl.org/book_reviews/2005_2006/br_spychips_cronin.pdf

[donnay]

I would imagine it won't be long before when you pass from one toll booth to the next they send you a speeding ticket if you got there faster than possible by driving the speed limit.

That's what the cameras are for and the lines in the road to determine how fast you are going--and yes, it will be tacked onto your bill at the end of the month. They are also thinking about taxing people per mile in certain states. Oregon was one.


http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/01/oregon-considers-per-mile-tax-on-fuel-efficient-vehicles/
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/2011/RAND_RB9576.pdf
http://www.csg.org/policy/documents/TIA_VMTcharges.pdf

[Carson]

Wow!

This is a HEAVY DUTY story!


That Moo-Cow was wigging out!

[donnay]

Toll Road RFID Tags
A Threat to Privacy, Anonymity and Individual Liberty
http://www.rfid1984.com/tollway.html

[ghengis86]

I would imagine it won't be long before when you pass from one toll booth to the next they send you a speeding ticket if you got there faster than possible by driving the speed limit.
Correct. This is done in Australia in some places, but with cameras and entrance/exit ramps on highways: plate camera flashes when you get on, plate camera flashes you when you get off, and of you got there 'too fast' (quicker than the distance divided by speed limit) - tickets in the mail!

With all the automated tolling, it'd be relatively easy to that here. I've often wondered why they haven't proposed it yet?

[Anti Federalist]

Correct. This is done in Australia in some places, but with cameras and entrance/exit ramps on highways: plate camera flashes when you get on, plate camera flashes you when you get off, and of you got there 'too fast' (quicker than the distance divided by speed limit) - tickets in the mail!

With all the automated tolling, it'd be relatively easy to that here. I've often wondered why they haven't proposed it yet?

Only a matter of time.

Us Luddites have been yelling about this for years.

Nobody will give a shit, and the beast marches on.

Yay, technology.

[presence]

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/09/e-zpass-is-the-best-tracking-device-thats-already-in-your-car/
E-ZPass Is The Best Tracking Device That's Already In Your Car Eric Limer (http://www.gizmodo.com.au/author/eric-limer/) Today 5:30 PM
Share (http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/09/e-zpass-is-the-best-tracking-device-thats-already-in-your-car/#share) Discuss (http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/09/e-zpass-is-the-best-tracking-device-thats-already-in-your-car/#comments) Bookmark

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1901td4243vi8jpg/original.jpg (http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1901td4243vi8jpg/original.jpg)
E-ZPass is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to paying tolls. Those plastic funnels you toss coins into are a close second. But E-ZPass has a bonus feature. It can be used to track you everywhere you go.

E-ZPass uses RFID. It’s cool tech, but hackable and trackable in ways that the companies who use it don’t really want anyone to talk about (http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/02/mythbusters-was-banned-from-talking-about-rfid-chips-because-credit-card-companies-are-little-weenies). E-ZPass RFID tags, for instance, can be scanned in plenty of places that aren’t tollbooths. A hacker known only as “Puking Monkey” has shown that it happens all the time around the streets of NYC, and talked about his findings at DEFCON.
To test how often his E-ZPass RFID tag was getting polled, Puking Monkey wired a little mooing cow toy into the circuit so it would warn him whenever something happened. And in a short drive around Manhattan, PM found his cow mooing an awful lot for no immediately discernible reason.


Turns out though, that this was the result of a project called Midtown in Motion (http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fht ml%2F2011b%2Fpr257-11.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1), a New York City traffic management system that is using E-ZPass RFIDs to track cars through the city centre. It’s not exactly clear what kind of information the Department of Transportation is scraping, but it’s something. And all you have to do to be involved is have an E-ZPass hanging around.
Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/09/12/e-zpasses-get-read-all-over-new-york-not-just-at-toll-booths/) reached out to the E-ZPass Inter-agency Group — the folks who oversee E-ZPass in the 15 states where it operates — and apparently NYC is the only place that uses them for any sort of tracking. Officially. So far. Real-time traffic monitoring isn’t particularly nefarious on its own, but post-PRISM it’s easy to get paranoid metadata-harvesting and it can be a little unnerving to know your car is a big fat target for tracking.
Maybe it’s time to pick up an RFID-proof holster (http://gizmodo.com/194061/rfid+blocking-hello-kitty-card-holder-private-cozy-kawaii). You know, just in case. [Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/09/12/e-zpasses-get-read-all-over-new-york-not-just-at-toll-booths/) via Slashdot (http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/09/13/1547218/nyc-is-tracking-rfid-toll-collection-tags-all-over-the-city?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=twitter)]

[nobody's_hero]

Chains disguised as convenience. I'll stick to throwing quarters in the plastic funnels. Or better yet, I'll just drive on roads that don't require paying more for something I'm already taxed on.

[Brian4Liberty]

No worries people! They make the data anonymous and they don't save it!


“The tag ID is scrambled to make it anonymous. The scrambled ID is held in dynamic memory for several minutes to compare with other sightings from other readers strategically placed for the purpose of measuring travel times which are then averaged to develop an understanding of traffic conditions,” says TransCore spokesperson Barbara Catlin by email. “Travel times are used to estimate average speeds for general traveler information and performance metrics. Tag sightings (reads) age off the system after several minutes or after they are paired and are not stored because they are of no value. Hence the system cannot identify the tag user and does not keep any record of the tag sightings.”

In other words, reading of the E-ZPasses won’t be very useful for uniquely tracking you or your speed, but it’s a reminder once again that if you accept some kind of tracking device, it may be used in ways you wouldn’t expect.

http://www.sherv.net/cm/emo/laughing/facebook-laughing-smiley-emoticon.gif

[angelatc]

No worries people! They make the data anonymous and they don't save it!



http://www.sherv.net/cm/emo/laughing/facebook-laughing-smiley-emoticon.gif

Riiiiiight. It's just sheer luck that they can debit my account when I drive thru a booth.

[Carson]

I would imagine it won't be long before when you pass from one toll booth to the next they send you a speeding ticket if you got there faster than possible by driving the speed limit.

I remember my brother telling me about a toll road that did that.

He had it all figured out how long it should take get through. He also had it all figured that we could stop and eat without it costing us any travel time.

[DamianTV]

So when they tie these Toll Booths together to check if a Suspected Criminal has left the area, not only will they know when he left, but exactly where he is at any given moment. What was the Crime the Alleged Criminal purportedly committed? Smoking a Joint, at Home.

[bolil]

But it is so efficient. "Besides for Tyrants and imperial cities nothing is unreasonable if expedient no one a kinsman unless sure; but friendship or enmity is everywhere an affair of time and circumstance."

Holy dick sucker, that was written in the BC... i guess some shit never changes.

[DamianTV]

Chains disguised as convenience. I'll stick to throwing quarters in the plastic funnels. Or better yet, I'll just drive on roads that don't require paying more for something I'm already taxed on.

Cant +Rep this enough!

We are even responsible for paying for our own chains.