Chuck Kuecker wrote:
>
> At 09:58 AM 10/22/01 -0500, you wrote:
> >A relatively simple way to monitor suspicious activity without new
> >technology would be to make GPS units manditory for all licenced motor
> >vehicles. The necessary infrastructure to continously monitor all
> >vehicular motion could then be continously
> >examined and sophisticated GIS/mapping overlays could (if the proper
> >software was implemented) provide a relatively cheap anti-terrorist
> >system that could be in place in 2-5 years.
> >
> >This would be intrusive to personal privacy but might there be civilian
> >offsets to make this useful?
>
> It's going to take a huge infrastructure to keep track of ALL cars all the
> time - and anyone who wants to go under the radar need only clip the
> antenna lead from his GPS. If you can't track everything at least once
> every few minutes, you will lose lots of data that could be important.
>
> Who will pay for the air time when 200+ million vehicles all want to report
> position? Will there be any room left for the people who can't drive
> without a cellphone glued to their ear?
Not to mention unnecessary. Apply it only to foreign visitors, convicts
on probation, juvies, and violent felons as a locked Swatch wearable
transponder.
However, the bandwidth requirements are not any different than the
market for beepers, which are a satellite device. Doesn't take too long
to beep in gps coordinates. GPS devices are now rather compact, there is
a setup in Britain for parents to implant a Norplant sized GPS tracking
device in their kids.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:15 MDT