"Proof"? He's speculating on outcome of capability, which should be second nature for you. No wonder they keep sneaking up on techies with surveillance tech - no imagination allowed?

Or you could build a train.

Curious: CAN self driving cars see bicycles? If they can, do they know how to anticipate a bicycle's movements? How about recumbent trikes? Pedal powered vehicles of any time? Anything that isn't a car - how do they fit into the world of computing machines driving speeding tanks?

We are nowhere near ready for robot cars. Humans are general purpose computing machines that can perform pattern recognition tasks that no software can. If we are really concerned about human error to the extent we want to eliminate humans, then we should go back to formula and start building rail lines again. Making cars into trains is inefficient, not to mention impossible. A waste of time and resources in a world rapidly running out of both.

The Bill of Rights never were stone: hence the Amendments.

But the 9th Amendment WAS designed for such things as privacy - "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." I am aware the nuance of the amendment can be argued, but the thrust of the law is obvious. Enumerated rights (the BofR and the Constitution itself) don't mean others don't exist. Such rights, as, say, the right to not have a citizen's horse and carriage tracked forever using ethereal invisible rays broadcast by tiny wizards in a horses's brain. Every conceivable SF possibility didn't have to be painstakingly imagined by the Constitutional Congress in the late 18th century. Nor do we need to create a new amendment every time someone invents something novel that tap dances around the law, or common sense. Or uncommon sense, as most people don't care or don't recognize the possibilities in things such as universal surveillance.

Well, I like that interpretation, and I know the actual law will never be used in that fashion. But it should be.

The GPS functionality will be woven into the brain of the engine, so that blocking or disabling will cause the engine to cease functioning. Ever try to cut out the GPS of your phone? I mean, REALLY kill the circuit? You can't. The phone ceases to function. Cars are rolling networks now, and pretty easy to control.

Disabling GPS could cause the car to yell to the cops, the insurance company, Ford, whatever. Once the pieces are in place, any scenario can be deployed.

Cutting out the GPS will be declared a crime. Eventually. Because terrorism, crime, whatever. Doesn't matter. This is stepwise world engineering here - boil the frog slowly, and no one will care much.

Regardless, GPS modules will be incorporated, permanently, into the engine block or essential structure of every new car. Shortly, modules will be required in all cars by law. So, used or new, you will be tracked. Why? Parking tickets, speeding tickets, movement tracking for any purpose. And of course all cars will be required to be wirelessly networked, so such data will be easily provided. What Have You Got To Hide? It was done to our cell phones nine years ago, by law. Few people noticed (I did - if you can drill back that far, check my increasingly rabid Slashdot posts). Or cared.

Thanks to Snowden, my nation is finally noticing the noose drawing tight around their lives.

I keep my very old car running, and probably will spend ten grand rebuilding the body. It's pre-black box, not to mention non-GPSed. It's a statement, not a dodge, as cameras are tracking our cars and opting-out isn't possible.

I've read many of the comments, and not one mentioned software failure, sensor failure, GPS failure, power failure, design failure, or hardware failure of any sort I can't envision. Or being hit by a non-automated car - which could make the system fail and drive the car into further danger. Is it possible techies cannot conceive of a computer system that does not work 100% of the time? (Makes me reflect back on all those posts I used to make contending that voting systems were inherently designed for cheating. No imagination. Machines *always work* in techies' view, it seems) A little too much programming - no experience in actual machines operating in the real world.

Computers *fail* in the real world. The more complex the system, the more certain the failure. An airplane can get away with automated flight, as there is room to maneuver and pilots are always standing close by. Cars have no safety margins for failure in traffic. None. This will not work, not unless people are willfully blind when the failures accumulate - possible.

What happens if someone spoofs a GPS signal? It's been done to drones, making them dive and kill themselves. What if a HERF gun blows out the brains of the car with EMP - or someone simply makes an EMP "bomb" and detonates it on an overpass?

Question again: who's responsible when the perfect machine fails and causes an accident?

We need a VCR equivalent. Been looking for one for a while.
For all you young people, a VCR - Video Cassette Recorder - let us record live TV - unencrypted - onto tapes. I'm only half kidding about the education here.
We need a simple box that records OTA in 1080P onto a hard drive or USB stick. There are several out there, of various flavors. The key for searching for such is "converter box" with recording capabilities.
A PC with media software is not sufficient. We need a simple solution.

This might be a contender very soon:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1500872/channel-master-cm-7500-2-tuner-ota-dvr-with-guide

Remember to contract private companies to build machines and systems to count votes as well. Nothing could possibly go wrong, and those companies will be as assiduous in detecting flaws in voting systems and their front ends as they are in counting vast quantities of cash. Because, you know, they will. 'Cause. Perfect.

Spooks don't need keys. They either have masters or have a little toy or two that opens the locks. Our doors and windows are paradoxically designed so that they can be opened, not to keep people out. If we had real door locking tech - steel frames/door plates and amazing locks - firemen couldn't get in, and police would be REALLY pissed off and have them outlawed... hmm. Probably are outlawed.

Scientology operatives of various levels of competence love to let you know they've been there. Basic tactics: make the person insecure and neurotic about their home and theirr privacy, especially as law enforcement will not believe you, or care. The target lives a miserable life, and the thugs don't even have to make a return visit. Once does it.

Three of the four systems he had installed (good man!) were deactivated. The agency who broke in just weren't expecting that many layers (they will now be aware of super-tinfoilhatting). Whipping out the Occam's Razor, they are doing this to every effective anti-spying activists they can - but those hundreds or thousands of targets didn't have four layers of armor.

Now the challenge: let's get some pictures! Let's see these little sneaks.

So few of even those who understand what the government is doing were interested, much less concerned, or more properly, panicked and furious beyond belief. Maybe this will ring a bell that means something to them?

The sky did fall. The protestors of the 1800's were correct. The people displaced by technology in the 1800s fell into poverty and early death, and England, for instance, was home to immense poverty and despair. We don't want to remember, which is not the same thing as not-happened. We choose to remember the happy industrialist and middle-class lifestyles which came from impoverishing the workers, not the majority of miserable people they created by re-distributing the wealth from the majority of the working people to their own class.

thing to remember is that the people who were protesting their replacement by machines weren't really asking for history to be rolled back - they wanted to be *cut in on the profits* created by removing them from the books. They wanted some income redistribution. They lost. Since they didn't run university history courses, as industrialists did, they have been expunged from our collective memory and rendered into silly people who didn't want to stop making horse collars by hand.

The price of all this will be misery, violence, hunger and early death for hundreds of millions of people, eventually, if history repeats. Looks like "yes". And no one will want to take notice, other than intense coverage of the violence in the "bad" neighborhoods.

More prisons, more Randism, more upper class loathing of the "lazy", less food assistance, less of any financial assistance, removal of affordable housing, drastic anti-loitering laws, and finally really nasty anti-rioting weapons and roundup tactics against agitators.

I'm not describing the dystopic future - I'm describing the reaction right now. And the anti-poor crackdown will only intensify. The riots will be christened "terrorism" and all those lovely laws we've created since 2001 will finally find their real use.