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Malaysia Wants To RFID Tag All License Plates

Written by Evan Schuman
December 12th, 2006

Reports out of Malaysia have the government wanting to embed into every car license plate an RFID chip with vehicle and owner information.

My favorite comment on this move came from a Wired blog post: “It’s not exactly clear how this will help since Road Transport Department Director-General Ahmad Mustapha was quoted by New Straits Times as saying ‘The first thing thieves do after a car theft is change the registration plates.'”

Perhaps it could help catch thieves in the first minutes after a theft? It would also force the thieves to defeat the RFID chip. Depending on the sophistication of law enforcement, they might then simply search for any license plates that do not generate working RFID signals and label them suspect. At the very least, it would force the car thieves to either fabricate RFID chips to send out false signals or–frighteningly–steal cars in such a way that it’s either not reported or at least not reported for a very long time.

Posted in Mobile/Wireless/Contactless, RFID, Security/Fraud
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