RFID comes to Brazil

It will take Brazil over a decade to implement digital television. Broadband internet access is still a luxury few can afford, cell phones tend to take a year after their launch in first world countries to hit our shelves, and you'll have to shell out some 5 thousand dollars for an HDTV (480p, that is).

But fear not, for when it comes to the safety of its citizens, the federal government will spare no expenses (or public money) to provide its citizens with the bleeding edge of technology. Case in point, Contran (National Traffic Council) has approved a resolution (in Portuguese) that "has the objective of planning and implementing actions to fight car and cargo theft as well as manage traffic control".

How, you ask? By demanding that every vehicle in the country have a chip installed on its windshield (a passive RFID tag, I assume), storing data such as license plate, chassis number, national registry and taxes expiration dates, at a price of US$ 25 - to be paid by the owners or, where it so decides, city hall.

To monitor that, the government will install antennas connected to digital cameras throughout the country. With that, they intend to monitor traffic and find stolen vehicles with more ease. Oh, and also emit tickets for anyone who's behind on their taxes.

Apart from the obvious privacy concerns - in a country where the government illegally broke bank secrecy on the account of a client in a federal bank, because he was a key witness in a case against the Finance minister -, there are two things the government seems to have forgotten.

First, that there's no way to prevent a thief from ripping the tag off the windshield. And while I believe there will also be some sort of electromagnetic sensor to check whether a car passes some of the antennas without a tag, it seems quite unlikely this will make the police's effort any easier. It might even make it harder, sending cops on wild goose chases after someone who legally owns the car but didn't install the damn tag - for which he'll be fined R$ 127,69, get five points in his license (over 20 in a year and it is revoked) and have the car impounded (for which he'll also have to pay to get it back, and not without first installing a tag).

But there's also the not so small matter of cloning these tags. Either a corrupt cop (and Brazil's track record in that regard is not a good one) could print out false tags, or someone with very little knowledge could build a sniffer, go to a mall's parking lot and copy a LOT of tags in a manner of minutes.

All in all, I'd say the government is making crooks' lives potentially easier, while building an expensive and rather unpleasant surveillance network of its law-abiding citizens. Citizens who, one way or the other, will end up paying for it and, as far as I can tell, have never been asked whether they'd like to be monitored in such a manner.

P.S.: Portuguese speaking readers can search for this story on any major national newspaper, such as Folha de S. Paulo.

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