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[Pre-order a copy of David Horowitz’s next book, America Betrayed, by clicking here. Orders will begin shipping on May 7th.]
Soon the government might shut down your car.
President Joe Biden’s new infrastructure gives bureaucrats that power.
You probably didn’t hear about that because when media covered it, few mentioned the requirement that by 2026, every American car must “monitor” the driver, determine if he is impaired and, if so, “limit vehicle operation.”
Rep. Thomas Massie objected, complaining that the law makes government “judge, jury and executioner on such a fundamental right!”
Congress approved the law anyway.
A USA Today “fact check” told readers, don’t worry, “There’s no kill switch in Biden’s bill.”
“They didn’t read it, because it’s there!” says automotive engineer and former vintage race car driver Lauren Fix in my new video. The clause is buried under Section 24220 of the law.
USA Today’s “fact” check didn’t lie, exactly. It acknowledged that the law requires “new cars to have technology that identifies if a driver is impaired and prevents operation.” Apparently, they just didn’t like the term “kill switch.”
But it is a kill switch.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving wants that.
I say to Fix, “It would save lives.”
“Are you willing to give up every bit of control of your life?” she asks. “Once you give that up, you have no more freedom. This computer decides you can’t drive your vehicle. Great. Unless someone’s having a heart attack and trying to get to the hospital.”
The kill switch is just one of several ways the government proposes to control how we drive.
California lawmakers want new cars to have a speed governor that prevents you from going more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.
That would reduce speeding. But not being able to speed is dangerous, too, says Fix. If “something’s coming at you, you have to make an adjustment.”
New cars will have a special button on the dash. If you suddenly need to speed and manage to find the button when trying to drive out of some bad situation, and it lets you speed for 15 seconds.
For all these new safety devices to work, cars need to spy on drivers. Before I researched this, I didn’t realize that they already do.
The Mozilla Foundation reports that car makers “Collect things like your age, gender, ethnicity, driver’s license number, your purchase history and tendencies.” Nissan and Kia “collect information about your sex life.”
How? Cars aim video cameras at passengers. Other devices listen to conversations and intercept text messages.
Then, says Mozilla, 76% of the car companies “sell your data.”
“I just bought a new car,” I say to Fix. “Nobody told me about this.”
“Oh, it’s there,” she replies. “Buy a new car, you get that really long document. … The small print says, ‘We’re collecting your data. We know everything you’re doing in your car, and we own (the data). There’s nothing you can do about it.'”
Finally, Biden’s infrastructure bill also includes a pilot program to tax you based on how far we drive.”A mileage charge seems fair,” I say to Fix. “You pay for your damage to the road.”
“Correct,” she replies. “But when you start allowing them to do this, they could say, ‘We don’t want you to buy a firearm.’ … ‘We don’t want you to go to that destination. So we’re not going to let you start your car.’ It’s about control.”
I push back. “They’re not controlling me.”
“They can,” she replies. “Wait until you get a bill for your carbon footprint. ‘You’re at your maximum for carbon credits. We’re not going to let you drive today! Take the train. Take the electric bus.'”
“This is paranoia,” I suggest.
“Maybe,” says Fix. “But so far, everything that I’ve said about these things, each step keeps coming through.”
Turn off al the Power to the District of Criminals and Useless Nations turn off all the Power to Gore DiCaprio David(Laurie)Biden and the leaders of all the major Eco-Freak Groups
Given the $34 trillion dollar debt that may happen soon, the British went from having a world wide empire, to bankruptcy in 50 years, if it could happen to them then the U.S government is NOT immune. .
My Honda is fifteen years old, I’m almost 70 years old. Not too many years ago my mom bought a new car, and said ‘I hope to drive this new car into eternity.’ I likewise hope to drive my Honda into eternity.
Mark I had to smile and agree. I have a 2000 Jeep Cherokee Sport in mint condition with only 140,000 original miles. Run like a top. I to hope to drive it to the Pearly Gates.
Concerning this article, we all have to try in some way to resist the totalitarian impulses of the Progressive Left, here and in every wesern country, they have become a subversive, enemy within.
Stay well and have a great summer.
The left is pushing hard to achieve their totalitarian dream in the United States. Control of the commoners is the goal – while the powerful will still enjoy the freedoms we used to have – as always happens in Marxist societies.
Thanks, John, for continuing to use your skill as a genuine watchdog journalist – alerting us to danger in our “backyard” and in our very “house”.
We love reading your reporting at Front Page Magazine 🙂
There’s a real money making prospect for someone that has the knowledge to deactivate their controls.
Apparently, they can be hacked.
ANYTHING made of parts and components can be hacked.
They will pass laws to make it ILLEGAL with to severe penalties to disable any monitoring device. That’s what totalitarians do!
Good luck enforcing those, if the monitoring devices are removed, or disabled they won’t even know that the car is there
I’m reading a book called “The Circle” by Dave Eggars. It’s about a young woman employed by a Google like company.
Working there is like working in heaven. Everything is provided (including a nice paycheck and free items, including lunch). Slowly but surely the young woman, called Mae, gives up her humanity and dignity-and doesn’t even realize it.
She doesn’t realize (after all, she’s just a young woman-in her mid 20’s) that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Yes, everything is nice and free, but the cost is being completely surveilled in what the company (called “The Circle”) claims will be a completely transparent society.
At this time, cars manufacturers now seem to be providing the technology for our Government to provide a complete surveillance of the individual.
Stossel has now alerted us to the fact that the Government is going to use that surveillance so it can control us.
So tell me which is just a fiction and which is a non-fiction horror?
By the way, while the Google like company provides free lunches, Joe Biden and his cadre of tyrannical technocrats has us paying for the “free lunch (ie. the cars we must pay for).
You can bet limos for the government and the elite won’t have this crap, and what happens when someone like China hacks the system and shuts all the cars down?
This is a really bad idea. What happens in an emergency? No fleeing from criminals, violent mobs, natural disasters, or dashes to the hospital. These things take more than 15 seconds. Cars losing power on busy freeways already cause accidents, and just traffic jams, if you’re lucky. I can also foresee people’s cars being shut down just when they’re driving and eating,
The privacy issues with what they’re already doing are mind boggling. Health privacy violations galore. You can bet the government already has access to that data and surveillance, along with anybody that can hack the system.
I’ve got an older vehicle, but I won’t buy a new one unless I can disable and wipe it.
I’m a non-driver, but even my non-existent expertise would lead me to question how any manufacturer can guarantee that shut-down would occur in a safe and controlled way. What if the car stops itself suddenly and the driver behind you rams your car? Unless an on-board computer can evaluate all of the external factors, there is no way that this is any safer than relying on human judgement (most people want to survive, which is the sort of consideration that is unlikely to be factored into a computer’s processes).
This has been the issue with autonomous vehicles, and why they are slow to reach the market. Whilst they may work reasonably well under controlled conditions, how can they anticipate a deer, or a human jumping out into the road, and stop in time, especially on wet or icy pavement? Whomever has control over the kill switch would have less information about the on site situation then the computer in an autonomous driving vehicle would from it’s sensing devices .
Good luck on them trying to mange MY old car. Its a 1985 pickup, and the diesel engine in it returns fantastic fuel economy, and has NO electronics of any kind. It is an all-mechanical system.
I also have a newer ride, a 1998, also diesel, bu electronic. Great workhorse but drinks more than twice what the older littie dude drinks. Still, no “recievers” to get gummit signals for anything. No radio reporting, either. No sell phone interface, data storage devices… just feed it and it runs.
And if thngs get so bad they wont “let” me use my own personal property, why, I will just have to ride my bike then. As in push bike. Let them try and traack or control me on THAT.Drop the movil fon into a small tin cacn, farraday cage. Can’t even be traced that way. No numbers visible on it for tracking. If I suspect they might be anyway, bring along a few different coloured jerseys… might see a red one, then forty kiles down the road a blue one.Same guy? Hard to tell….
One way to immobilise most of these electronic remote control devices is to figure out where the receiving antenna is, then wrap that with a ew layers of copper screen, pass a high frequency current through the mesh and they got no signal any more.
Unfortunately young people will never know what privacy and freedom are (were).
Just like they don’t know what freedom of speech is – though some of them think it’s the right to chant pro-Palestinian mantras without checking out Middle Eastern history.
1984.
We’re plebes. We will accept the control.
Our betters? I do not need to name them; they will not notice anything different.
NEVER, EVER vote for a Dem, progressive, liberal or RINO.
Congressional term limits. Twelve years LIFETIME maximum.
No retirement benefits.
Afterall, it is “Public Service.”
Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment.
Restore States rights.
I’ve heard if this before, imagine an interstate highway, where the cars cruise along at 70 mph, and some hacker, or misguided government employee hist this kills switch? There would be a 40 car pileup, with dead and injured all over the place. Terrorists wouldn’t have to use car bombs anymore, just shut off some cars on a busy, fast moving highway, and enjoy the carnage from an overpass. These are like the “dumb” wireless electric meters, they don’t make things more secure, they do the opposite, there is a kill switch in some of those too. I wonder how long before the aftermarket will start selling a way to kill for the kill switch, along with the surveillance equipment, if they are not already?