road toll transponder hacked

[dan at geer.org]

"Steven M. Bellovin" writes, in part:
-+-----------------------------------
 | There's a limit to how far they can go with that, because of the fear
 | of people abandoning the transponders.
 | <snip>
 | As for usage-based driving -- the first question is the political will
 | to do so.
 | <snip>
 | Finally, the transponders may not matter much longer; OCR on license
 | plates is getting that good.
 | 


I don't think whether it is a transponder or not
actually matters, Steve, since, as you say, OCR
of the license plates makes whether a transponder
is in place totally irrelevant.

As to public resistance -- look at the revenue
coming in to, say, Chicago from the red-light
cameras and tell me that this won't spread.
Similarly, per-mile road-use pricing will be
all about revenue enhancement but it will be
painted DHS-faireness-green ("So as to fairly
fund the maintainance of this State's critical
infrastructure, this Act converts the funding
mechanisms over to a fairer road-use policy
but, at the same time, it leaves in place the
State gasoline tax, thereby penalizing the
people who continue to drive gas guzzlers").

Which leads back to the recording of travel
and the handling of those recordings.  When
New Jersey signed up with EZ-Pass it required
the company involved to retain toll records
for ten years (as an aid to law enforcement).
Since that is the same company in lots of
states even if it is called something else
(like FastLane in Massachusetts), the rational
thing for the company to do is to just keep
everything forever.  With disk prices falling
as they are, keeping everything is cheaper
than careful selective deletion, that's for
sure.

--dan

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com