UPDATED: LTO RFID tags will hunt you down
RFIDs are cool, and there are countless benefits that we, the Filipino drones people, would enjoy if it's properly used. That is, if we trust the people who implement the system.
Our very own Land Transportation Office will be requiring vehicle owners to slap on an RFID chip on their cars starting this October. The chip will go for a one-time fee of P350-P400 and will supposedly speed up processes such as registration renewals and fines settlement.
If you've seen the TV ads, you might have seen that the LTO is using the fact that progressive countries like Singapore have been using RFIDs for years to control and monitor traffic, presumably to justify that it's an effective and safe system.
We won't go all political but a lot of people think that the idea of this government being able to keep track of us via RFID is enough to put us in a quandary. We're hoping that we're wrong.
Big Brother logo from Jamati.com
UPDATE: According to GMA-7, LTO will already implement this in January, months after the agency postponed the plan to "engage in further public consultations for the project." The information that it will retrieve from vehicles remotely and in real time will be "used in law enforcement, traffic management, and crime prevention." Transport groups, however, are asking the Supreme Court to issue a temporary restraining order versus LTO's RFID project. – Editor
The original story was posted on September 24, 2009.
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No argument against the benefits, but re the monitoring and control of traffic, can't motion sensors do the same job WITHOUT burdening the citizen with an additional 350 bucks on top of the 3-5k needed to register a vehicle? 350 LANG naman daw, at one time lang. Pero sa jeepney driver, 350 bucks represents a day's work.
The privacy issues are also legitimate. The ACLU in the US have questioned the RFIDs there because it does allow someone to track the movements of the car and its owner, as well as obtain information from the chip that you would otherwise not wish to share.
Last, re traffic and all, the issue really is enforcement of our laws. Kahit may RFID sticker ang bus, kung di naman huhulihin at ipo-police ng maayos ang mga yan, walang saysay din and RFID. Wala halos pinagkaiba yan sa CCTV camera, kung saan nakikita naman kung anong bus/kotse ang smoke belcher o reckless ang driver, pero wala namang ginagawa ang mga pulis.
and how about RFID spoofing?