Your Brain Waves Are a Password: How Your Next Car Will Check You're Not a Thief 169
cartechboy writes "And you thought stealing cars was hard today? You're facing locks, kill switches, LoJacks, OnStar, and more. But there's worse on the way: Engineers at Japan's Tottori University have developed a prototype theft-prevention system that uses brain waves to identify drivers. That's right: The system samples your brain waves, stores them--and actually shuts down the car if the driver's EEG signals don't match what's on file. It also busts drunk and sleepy drivers, because their brain waves differ from those when you're fully awake and totally sober. One non-Tron downside: If you want to drive, you have to wear a scary-looking set of sensors on your skull so the car can constantly reads your brainwaves."
What about people with migraines? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Hi Boss, I can't come to work today. I have a migraine. Yeah, my car refuses to start until I'm well again. I might be in this afternoon."
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Reminds me of the studies that show how some people's presence can make machines work properly, while other's makes them malfunction.
This might stop joy riding, but it won't stop professional car thieves. It goes a little like this... carefully remove the head lamp cover, remove the lamp, stuff a bunch of tin foil in it. Then kick the bumper. *HONKKkk--zrrrrcccch....* Now pull up the short truck, hook the wench up, drag it up the ramp and into the back, hop out, close the door, drive off. With slight modification to the inside, it forms a perfect Faraday cage for the car's electronics... then drive it to the chop shop... also in a nice big metal cage, chop everything up... remove any tracking devices such as OnStar that weren't disabled when you shorted the battery. Total time from capture to parted out: 2 hours. Which is right about the time you finish filling out that nice long form at the police station about how you had your fancy car parked out front for "only a minute" while you ran inside.
Guys... I don't know how much clearer I can make this; Criminals already just don't fuck with car alarms or ignition interlocks... they just load the car up wholesale into another vehicle. It's only the gang-bangers and joy riders that mess with that.
This technology will slow down a car thief for exactly... zero seconds. They don't even need to get in the vehicle to steal it. It doesn't happen like in Grand Theft Auto or like those crime dramas that seem to be clogging prime time TV. In the real world, a team of six professional car thieves can move a dozen cars in a night.
Oh, I know what you're thinking -- you'll just canvas the local junk yards or ebay and find someone selling your car parts. Yeah, no. Your parts are loaded into large crates, and shipped overseas. Your car is sitting in a dozen different shipping containers a few days after it's stolen. No serial numbers on the parts; Those are just discarded. Don't worry though, when they come back into the country 4--6 months from now, it'll be from a salvage title with new VINs and engine serial numbers. Next time you see a hurricane or a major flood somewhere in the world, think of all those delicious salvage titles being sold off for a few bucks each. Their only value is a new set of serial numbers for a stolen car that was nowhere near the disaster area.
Money laundering is hard, but laundering car parts? Dead simple. It's a multi-billion dollar industry. But if wearing a silly cap with electrodes in it is what it takes for you to feel like car theft is something that only happens to the other guy because you've got the latest car alarm or interlock system, well, okay.
But the thieves don't care. Chances are, your car will be in a hundred pieces before someone asks... "Hey... what do we do with this stupid-looking cap?" ... and it winds up in a dumpster somewhere a few hours later, having performed its only real function: Making you feel better.