California is one of the US states that have introduced digital license plates, amid opposition from a number of rights advocates.
Now, there is a legislative effort to have GPS location tracking embedded in these, to all intents and purposes, devices attached to the car.
Sponsored by Democrat Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, Bill 3138 is currently making its way through the state’s legislature. It refers to “License plates and registration cards: alternative devices,” and the bill has another sponsor – Reviver.
The company was founded by Neville Boston, formerly of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and promotes itself as the first digital license plates platform. It has made its way to both this proposal, and the law the current draft builds on – AB 984 (also sponsored by Wilson) – which was signed into law two years ago.
The problem with Reviver is that it has already had a security breach that allowed hackers to track those using the company’s digital plates in real-time. It doesn’t help, either, that the company is effectively a monopoly – the only one, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes, “that currently has state authorization to sell digital plates in California.”
Meanwhile, the key problem with AB 3138, warns EFF, is that it “directly undoes the deal from 2022 and explicitly calls for location tracking in digital license plates for passenger cars.”
Hellbound and Down 