Not just tolls: E-Z Pass keeping an eye on speeders

[donnay]

Not just tolls: E-Z Pass keeping an eye on speeders


Image Credits: Para / Wiki

by Larry Copeland | USA Today | December 19, 2014

Warning to motorists: Don’t speed in the toll lanes. E-Z Pass is watching.

Several states, including New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania, say they monitor speeds through the fast pass toll lanes and will suspend your E-Z Pass for multiple speeding violations.

In all, five of the 15 E-Z Pass states have some kind of rules on the books for breaking the speed limit in the convenience lanes.

Continued...

[Danke]

Is this a big deal?

[acptulsa]

Is it any surprise?

Is it why I have and will never put up with one?

[Danke]

Is it any surprise?

Is it why I have and will never put up with one?

It says you are given a warning letter if you travel 12 mph over 30 mph speed limit in the toll area. Twice, then you are back to coins.

Going ~40mph beats coming to a complete stop to throw coins in a basket.

I did the coins in Illinois until they made it twice as expensive to do so over using the EZ pass.

[KCIndy]

The monitoring is apparently just in the tollbooth area, where there is lots of traffic slowing down, changing lanes and jockeying for best position to save that OH-so-precious 1/10 of a second by getting in a shorter line.

I don't like "Big Brother" stuff and I'm about as fond of E-Z Pass as I am of tolls themselves. That being said, I've also seen a lot of really crazy stuff happen as traffic filters through these (stupid-ass, useless, accursed pain-in-the-ass) toll plazas. I can't really blame E-Z Pass for trying to slow people down. And a warning letter is probably a lot less traumatic to these idiots than my solution would be.

[Anti Federalist]

The monitoring is apparently just in the tollbooth area, where there is lots of traffic slowing down, changing lanes and jockeying for best position to save that OH-so-precious 1/10 of a second by getting in a shorter line.

I don't like "Big Brother" stuff and I'm about as fond of E-Z Pass as I am of tolls themselves. That being said, I've also seen a lot of really crazy stuff happen as traffic filters through these (stupid-ass, useless, accursed pain-in-the-ass) toll plazas. I can't really blame E-Z Pass for trying to slow people down. And a warning letter is probably a lot less traumatic to these idiots than my solution would be.

Have no fear comrade.

Toll booths will soon be a thing of the past.

You will be tracked and charged for every mile you drive, on any road.

Oh, and that will be recorded in a database to be used against you, amd you'll be monitored for speed at all times as well.

[KCIndy]

Have no fear comrade.

Toll booths will soon be a thing of the past.

You will be tracked and charged for every mile you drive, on any road.

Oh, and that will be recorded in a database to be used against you, amd you'll be monitored for speed at all times as well.

Hate to tell ya, but I already am. Have been for years. Roughly 90% (by my own estimate) of the commercial trucks on the road have GPS/satellite systems which track everything. And I mean, everything:

*number of miles driven
*roads traveled
*vehicle speed
*engine RPM
*shifting patterns and errors
*fuel economy
*vehicle speed and direction
*engine idling time
*sudden braking
*sudden acceleration

Plus a lot of other minor crap I'm not even going to bother to list. Qualcomm has a really big share of this market, with Rand McNally quickly gaining, and a lot smaller companies nibbling around the edges.

It's a pretty lucrative business. With all the government imposed regulations, it's a captive market.

[Anti Federalist]

Oh no, I'm well aware of that, I am too, not a square inch of ocean is free from surveillance.

I was directing that more toward the rest of the daily drivers.

Hate to tell ya, but I already am. Have been for years. Roughly 90% (by my own estimate) of the commercial trucks on the road have GPS/satellite systems which track everything. And I mean, everything:

*number of miles driven
*roads traveled
*vehicle speed
*engine RPM
*shifting patterns and errors
*fuel economy
*vehicle speed and direction
*engine idling time
*sudden braking
*sudden acceleration

Plus a lot of other minor crap I'm not even going to bother to list. Qualcomm has a really big share of this market, with Rand McNally quickly gaining, and a lot smaller companies nibbling around the edges.

It's a pretty lucrative business. With all the government imposed regulations, it's a captive market.

[tangent4ronpaul]

It's more than speed. Some guy in NYC hacked his EZPASS to tone and light every time his unit got pinged. EVERY F'n BLOCK!

There is a YouTube out there about it.

We have one highway out here that only accepts EZPASS. I made the mistake of taking it one time expecting a toll booth. Never got a ticket in the mail, though.

-t

[KCIndy]

It's more than speed. Some guy in NYC hacked his EZPASS to tone and light every time his unit got pinged. EVERY F'n BLOCK!

There is a YouTube out there about it.

We have one highway out here that only accepts EZPASS. I made the mistake of taking it one time expecting a toll booth. Never got a ticket in the mail, though.

-t

I can't do video right now so I can't watch the YouTube vid, but I can't figure out what would have been "pinging" the guy's EZPASS on every block. The units have short range RFID tags in them, and they're queried by the overhead equipment in the toll plazas. The stuff is pretty obvious if you know what to look for.

If the guy didn't know what he was doing, he might have set his unit to buzz every time it picked up **any** EM interference, which meant it could have been set off frequently by everything from cordless phones to microwave ovens.

[KCIndy]

I want everyone to understand that I'm not supporting invasive technologies. I don't. But if anyone thinks EZPASS is something new and nefarious, take a look at all the OTHER ways you're being tracked.

Got a cell phone? Even the "dumb" phones have location software in them, and have had ever since 1998. So you toss your phone out the window? If your car has any sort of interactive navigation system onboard (like OnStar) you're being tracked - very closely. Many rental cars also have much more surreptitious GPS tracking - and companies are starting to levy their own fines for speeding. Check your next rental contract carefully.

So you think you can grab an old clunker from 1974 and drive in anonymity? FAT CHANCE. Take a look sometime at the sheer number of cameras now in place on our highways. I'm not just talking about "red light" cameras at intersections. I'm talking about surveillance which can track vehicles along **hundreds** of miles of interstate and U.S. highways. A while back, the people of the state of Utah thought they had gotten rid of these things. Turns out the state just shuffled them through a few agencies and them relocated them to newer, better locations:
http://reason.com/blog/2012/07/11/de...work-of-licens

And cameras run by the state are likely outnumbered in total when one combines the number of surveillance cameras from ATMs, convenience markets, banks, department stores and other businesses. And that's not counting the thousands upon thousands of Home Cams and Web cams streaming live onto the internet.

Does your computer have a web cam? Are you SURE it's off?

Do you or anyone you know have a baby monitor camera? Remember that Russian site that recently exposed the tens of thousands of home and private cams which were unsecured and gave anyone who wanted a peek inside of private homes? Many of those were views from baby cams:
http://wqad.com/2014/11/20/baby-moni...ked-worldwide/

Any new form of surveillance is not actually new. It's just another layer of really nasty frosting on the cake of life. Orwell's 1984 isn't just coming - it's HERE. And no, we can't knock out every camera or defeat every form of monitoring. But be aware. Most people aren't - and have no idea how much of their life is being played out on a video display monitor somewhere.

So be aware. Be alert. Learn how the stuff works, and with that comes the knowledge of how to avoid or defeat much of the worst of it, at the very least.

[Anti Federalist]

I can't do video right now so I can't watch the YouTube vid, but I can't figure out what would have been "pinging" the guy's EZPASS on every block. The units have short range RFID tags in them, and they're queried by the overhead equipment in the toll plazas. The stuff is pretty obvious if you know what to look for.

If the guy didn't know what he was doing, he might have set his unit to buzz every time it picked up **any** EM interference, which meant it could have been set off frequently by everything from cordless phones to microwave ovens.

These things are all over the place.



RFID E-ZPass Reader

This device on a lamppost at an intersection is an “Encompass 4” RFID reader manufactured by TransCore of Pennsylvania. It is used to sense E-ZPass transponders in passing vehicles as part of the City and State Departments of Transportation and the NYCDOITT “Midtown in Motion” program. Although E-ZPass is primarily used for toll-collection across the Northeast, these sensors track traffic flow in midtown Manhattan, allowing traffic signals to respond to changing conditions.



Horizontally Polarized Panel Antenna

Used together with the Encompass readers shown above, this horizontally polarized panel antenna (model AA3110-101) is also manufactured by Transcore and forms part of the “Midtown in Motion” system. Mounted directly over an intersection, it broadcasts and receives radio frequency signals in the 902 to 928 MHz band, picking up the RFID-based E-ZPass transponders in vehicles passing in lanes below.