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Traffic jams, AirTags and GPS darts are ways NY, NJ are trying to stop car theft
- derwiki 3y agoPredicted in _Diamond Age_ by Neal Stephenson? Probably elsewhere, too.
- tiahura 3y agoSpider-Man Spider-Tracer 1964
- gnarlouse 3y agoI mean, aren't we kind of at a point where "predicted in Xyz science fiction novel" is a bit passe? Mankind is currently grappling with absolutely wild developments from every direction: the advent of AI, the collapse of birthrates globally, the advent of quantum cryptography threatening to make everybody's internet activity an open book, and the collapse of global ecosystems. If anything, Neal Stephenson did nothing more than mention a simple idea that was practically laying on the ground in broad daylight, and technology finally caught up to the point where it's implementable and deployable.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> aren't we kind of at a point where "predicted in Xyz science fiction novel" is a bit passe? No. Plenty are wrong. And both science fiction and the technological frontier are constantly advancing. Your argument is close to those who argue everything was predicted in their holy book of choice.
- aaron695 3y agoThe Diamond Age published in 1995? An idea that's 60 year+ old? The Diamond Age had specialized drones to shoot them and used barbs and nanotech - "When they were shot out of the tag stat's nose, they sprouted cruel barbs at the nose and a simple empennage" The hard part is when you miss you don't hid a kid walking to school in the skull and kill or blind them. Pictures of the non-nano real life tech - https://www.google.com/search?q=GPS+darts+police&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=GPS+darts+police&tbm=isch The Diamond Age invented "magic", then missuses it constantly (vacuums and hydrogen/helium at normal atmosphere are all about the same). There is not much to see there for predictions, it's fun fiction.
- teeray 3y agoIt will be interesting what the counter-surveillance will be like. The dart has to be adhered well enough that the speedster can’t get a lead on their pursuers, jump out, rip the dart off, and chuck it into the back of a UPS truck.
- NegativeLatency 3y agoPassenger gets out the sun roof, pops the tailgate and removes the tracker
- xnx 3y agoVideo of the dart in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiNPvrKRCgg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiNPvrKRCgg Seems like a really tricky shot to land since the only way to aim the device is by pointing the patrol car at the target vehicle. It's still many years away, but I could see specialty homing drones doing a better job of this. By that point, remote disabling of vehicles might be mandatory.
- derefr 3y agoWhy not teach cops to shoot bows, put them on motorcycles, and pass them some GPS-tracker-carrying suction darts to shoot as arrows?
- rpmisms 3y ago> By that point, remote disabling of vehicles might be mandatory. Congratulations, you've created a massive black market in the US. If the penalties are stiff enough to actually prevent people disabling it, you've massively increased the prison population, too.
- vkou 3y agoMost people with enough shit to lose to own a car won't throw themselves on the grenade of going to prison over this. The ones that would are either pro-cop (and are willing to overlook an incredible amount of police overreach and abuse, as long as it's directed against the right people), or the counter-culture antifa types that get demonized by the press, and are hated and feared by the first group. I suppose there's also a few comfortably-privileged libertarian types that talk a big game about these issues, but when push comes to shove, don't actually push.
- lostlogin 3y agoThey are absolutely massive. And that must fire at more than 30mph too surely?
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoActual article: https://gothamist.com/news/traffic-jams-airtags-and-gps-darts-are-all-ways-ny-nj-police-are-trying-to-stop-car-theft https://gothamist.com/news/traffic-jams-airtags-and-gps-dart...
- dang 3y agoThanks! We changed the URL to that from https://www.thedrive.com/news/police-tag-fleeing-cars-with-gps-tracking-darts-to-avoid-dangerous-pursuits https://www.thedrive.com/news/police-tag-fleeing-cars-with-g....
- xrayarx 3y agoI would like to point out, that the gothamist link leads to a „ The page you're looking for doesn't appear to exist.“ error on the gothamist website.
- dang 3y agoHmm - do you mean this URL? https://gothamist.com/news/traffic-jams-airtags-and-gps-darts-are-all-ways-ny-nj-police-are-trying-to-stop-car-theft https://gothamist.com/news/traffic-jams-airtags-and-gps-dart...
- schaefer 3y agoIsn’t this just incentivizing a car switch, mid getaway, via armed car jacking?
- xyst 3y agoIn this day and age, a gps tracker on a car is outdated tech. People carry phones with them that have much better geolocating devices than whatever these police departments can buy off the shelf. People are crying foul about “dystopian” nanny state. In reality, that worst case scenario has already come to life. Except it’s not the government, it’s private entities vacuuming up all of your data. Your phone, your “smart car”, IoT devices, your smart home, various free software, emails, voice recordings, search history, watched video history, social media engagements, purchase history. All of these possible vectors. It’s all packaged up, and sold to advertisers or used to train LLM models. Even the government entities have been caught buying up private data [1] September 11, 2001 (2001-09-11) — changed the game on privacy. PATRIOT Act is awful. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/tech/the-nsa-buys-americans-internet-data-newly-released-documents-show/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/tech/the-nsa-buys-americans-i...
- dmitrygr 3y agoMaybe the old ideas of publicly chopping off a hand for theft were the best. One way or another it will prevent car theft. Even if simply by making it hard to drive a stolen car away hands-free.
- infotainment 3y agoI could see it. It seems to me that, at least when talking about crimes that harm others, criminality isn’t curable; the kind of person who cause others harm isn’t just going to stop because someone told them “no” or gave some kind of punishment.
- userbinator 3y agoHence incarceration.
- infotainment 3y agoSure, but then what? You let someone out after N years and that person goes on to commit more crimes.
- userbinator 3y agoCapital punishment is reserved for the most severe crimes.
- infotainment 3y agoBut why? Is there a strong reason for that?
- AnarchismIsCool 3y agoThat's not how any of this works. Criminals generally have poor executive function but plenty of non criminals also do as well. The strongest predictors are situational, and we do everything we can to ensure they can't escape those situations by branding them for life with a criminal record and providing little to no opportunity for improvement.
- defrost 3y agoYour Car is Trackable by Law (2022) To keep drivers safe, all cars sold after 2007 in the United States are required by law to have a Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) installed. Most TPMS sensors have a battery life of 5–10 years. Although a unique ID can be used to avoid other TPMS sensor’s messages on the road, this unique ID can also be used by an attacker to track a vehicle’s movements. This ID is broadcasted unencrypted and, therefore can be used to track when a particular vehicle has passed nearby. https://medium.com/@doctoreww/day-2-your-car-is-trackable-by-law-1d5f74388850 https://medium.com/@doctoreww/day-2-your-car-is-trackable-by...
- ars 3y agoTheoretically possible, sure, but the range is only around 10 feet, so you would need a receiver on the side of the lane you want to track. Possibly to do in a single area, impractical to deploy widely. Your EzPass has better range, and is also being tracked. https://www.popsci.com/article/diy/ezpass-hack-covert-scanning/ https://www.popsci.com/article/diy/ezpass-hack-covert-scanni...
- thebruce87m 3y agoThat’s all well and good, but your car has always been trackable by the number plate, has it not? By Law?
- defrost 3y agoPlates get removed, plates get swapped- this is a potential (can anybody be bothered?) tell if the relationship of plates matched to tyres change. Probably because the tyres were routinely changed, occassionally because the plates were changed .. This goes to the domain of "who cares about plates | body VIN | engine VIN | tyre relationships".
- delfinom 3y agoPlates getting swapped doesn't really work on NY anymore. Even 3 weeks ago, someone rolled up to our building parking lot at night here in long Island and stole plates off a car. We had it on camera. The cops had them arrested the next day because they drove by one of thousands of plate scanners with the stolen plates fitted on a car. Basically even every police vehicle has plate scanners on its rear pointed forwards into both lanes.
- janalsncm 3y agoIn the US we have all of the downside of surveillance with none of the upside. Other places with competent police have vanishingly low crime rates. Crime is deterred because there’s little chance of getting away with it. In the US we still have domestic spying and facial recognition at airports but somehow car theft is still possible. In the Bay Area people even openly shoplift.
- thegrim000 3y agoYou believe that no other factor explains the difference better? The reason is "incompetent police"? Why did the US not have the same problem in the past? You would explain it as somehow, across the entire country, all police, at all levels, just become incompetent sometime in the last generation? Why don't you list some of the other countries that you believe have things figured out, and we can see what they have in common, other than "competent police"?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Nextgrid 3y ago> somehow, across the entire country, all police, at all levels, just become incompetent sometime in the last generation It isn’t as far-fetched as you make it sound. If the incentives stop rewarding competence, then people focus on other stuff instead. This seems inline with the general decay we’ve seen across the Western world where actually doing work and doing it well has a lower ROI than engaging in shenanigans to artificially boost one’s earnings such as office politics, fraud, etc. A certain airplane maker recently got to see the end result for example.
- throwup238 3y agoThe cops were even worse before. The crime wave of the 80s and 90s was way worse than what we have now and that was just the continuation . We’ve always had this problem.
- happytoexplain 3y ago>You would explain it as somehow, across the entire country, all police, at all levels, just become incompetent sometime in the last generation? Over a longer time, and not just police, but yes. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic.
- xphilter 3y agoThe investigators must be pretty low iq. They are sending the cars to chop shops and ships…close those down and the thefts stop.
- andrewinardeer 3y agoImagine if governments used toxic darts to neutralise threat actors.