Pay as you go.

[samheath100]

I suppose i can think of one benefit of using the trackind divice (but im totally against it). The only benefit i can think of is that if your car gets stolen they can track where it is. However i would have thought that it could be disconnected very easily, even if it means cutting the wires. And another thing i was thinking what about theivs and vandels! the goverment say that it needs some sort of code that cannot be broke or something. but how long before people find out how to fiddle the boxes and get away with it. It'll happen sooner or later, and then they,ll get people doing that and therefore the consiquences will be that the price gets increased to compensate for the money loss. This will lead to more people doing it and so really it will only go down hill. I would totally object to paying for the box and then having to fit it in my moggy, talk about going away from the origionality or what. Things can only go down hill with pay as you go trackers.

[lowedb]

If theres one big thing i dont agree with its using a mobile without a hands free whilst driving. I still see even lorry drivers doing it and i dont think the police are cracking down enough on that.

Couldn't agree more. On my average 1 hour commute I see easily 5 or 6, and sometimes up to 10. Last week I had three people at junctions fail to stop, on one night, because they were on the phone. One of these was a large truck that would have killed me if I hadn't taken evasive action.

People seem to be avoiding one main issue - what about everyone who CAN'T use public transport to get to work?

Includes me, even though that maglev train would run less than a mile from my house, it would take around three hours to use public transport to get to work, instead of my normal hour.

Bottom line is if you don't like it don't vote for a party that supports it

Precisely. Although I think we should have a system where people who don't agree with any of the parties could and would have a choice, for example 'none of the above'. Then if you don't vote, you have no right at all to complain about 'the government'.

On tracking, it takes a few days for the masses to figure out how to defeat GPS. In the US, one police department allegedly started using it to keep officers 'safe' by knowing where they were. After a couple of weeks they found cars were dissapearing and then reappearing in the same place, half an hour later. The officers were apparently placing foil covered cups on the antennas when they went for coffee.

[Multiphonikks]

Considering the amount of Tecnology-driven initiatives we've heard of the Government screwing up over the past ten years (and before that too!) I think even if they do introduce a PAYG scheme the inherent problems of implementing the scheme would probably mean we'd not be bothered for a long time...

If you consider the number of cars in Britain on the roads, the number of enthusiats (in groups such as the MMOC) and the lack of alternatives (thanks, Dr Beeching and friends,) you really can't enforce such measures overnight.

I think the easier way around this all would be a heavier levy at the pumps. Ditch Roadtax (and perhaps adopt a local-based registration scheme similar to how the American's register their cars) and make people pay for the roads they use every time they fill up. It would then ensure that those of us who use roads a lot (and also those who are stupid enough to own gas-guzzlers) pay their way.

[Cam]

I see! Well, personally, for me anything is better than having the gangs of scum on the streets putting people in hospital, destroying property and terrorising people.........

As the Police admit, the problem isn't establishing a criminal's identity once caught, it's pinning them to the crime and location.

Well, I know workers in the local council offices and they get countless incidences of police officers coming in and asking if Mr X lives at this address and they say no, and then the police get rather fed up of people giving false names/addresses. The card would prevent this.

I agree though that pinning them to a crime and location is difficult, but simply tag (surgically) repeat anti-social offenders.

these plastic spies will do nothing except make it easier for the law-abiding to be penalised.

The simple rule is: If you commit a crime then you'll get punished. If you have no business being in a particular place then you should not be there! The cards also help to establish identity thus making it easier to hire things and prove who you are without having to carry masses of paperwork about only to be told that you don't have the specific bit of identity information that they need, so you'll have to come back!

Identity theft. That's another one. How can we prevent identity theft, they ask? How about gathering every little piece of a person's identity in one, easy to copy, plastic card?

Simple! Don't make them easy to copy! There are LOTS of cryptography systems based on hyperelliptic curves out there that would take MANY years to crack. The cards need to be written ONCE by the government and that's it. The readers can be simple. Use GOOD technology and not the useless rubbish that they tend to use at the moment. The current encryption schemes are cracked easily because they are SO simple! Just use a more complex one!

Anyway, if your biometric data is on the card and there are iris/fingerprint readers that link you to the card, then the criminal CAN'T use them.

[TerryG]

Copying any type of card (chip, magnetic or proximity) is really easy, I had a reader where I used to work we use for copying magnetic entry cards that can do chips as well and it had no problem copying my credit card onto a blank (I tried it just to see if u could) and it worked fine (also tried it in the till at work) you can read in the raw data so you (assuming you knew what you were looking for) make changes to it and write it back. No matter how secure you make it if somebody is determined enough to break into it they will.

[lowedb]

Copying any type of card (chip, magnetic or proximity) is really easy,

I beg to differ. For example, a SIM card on a phone can't be copied really easily. Because it's not just a piece of memory, but a processor in it's own right, certain things can't be read in order to be copied. Take for example the PIN code. When your phone needs to check if the PIN you've just entered matches the one on the card, it doesn't read the pin off the SIM because it can't. What it does is ask the SIM if the PIN you entered matches the one on the SIM and the SIM only replies with 'yes or no'. To get at data like this you have to try much harder. I assume the PIN stored on the chip and pin versions of credit cards is similar, but I don't know anything about these. If it wasn't, it would be really easy to steal a card, and simply read the PIN off the card.

[Cam]

Copying any type of card (chip, magnetic or proximity) is really easy, I had a reader where I used to work we use for copying magnetic entry cards that can do chips as well and it had no problem copying my credit card onto a blank (I tried it just to see if u could) and it worked fine (also tried it in the till at work) you can read in the raw data so you (assuming you knew what you were looking for) make changes to it and write it back. No matter how secure you make it if somebody is determined enough to break into it they will.

Yes, copying the raw data is easy, but it's the altering of it that makes it near impossible if you use proper encryption techniques. Large research centres spend lots of money trying to crack these codes to see how secure they are. Every code is able to be broken in theory. the power of the code is how long it takes to break it. If the code takes a few years to break using the fastest technology available today, then it's a good code! These types are what should be used. Especially if interwoven into error correction coding. Then it becomes REALLY powerful. A collegue of mine is researching this technology at the moment and the results are excellent.

Of course if you use an external CPU in the card to read and compare the data then it's even more difficult to extract the data especially if you have a limit to the number of times you can try (to stop repeat robot readers). In these cases, the SIM/card becomes blocked and useless.