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The Government’s New Love for a Kill Switch

The Government’s New Love for a Kill Switch
By Todd Strandberg

When Congress passed the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, few people knew that the government insisted on a new requirement for automakers. Tucked into the whopping $1 trillion bipartisan spending bill is a provision requiring car companies to prescribe a “federal motor vehicle safety standard for advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology, and for other purposes.”

What the government is asking for is a kill switch that can be applied to all cars. We already have the ignition interlock device (IID), a breathalyzer that is installed in vehicles to prevent drinking and driving. It is made up of a mouthpiece, a handheld unit that attaches to your vehicle’s ignition system. This new system would be more proactive and could monitor all drivers.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. Barr wrote an article that warned this system is a very dangerous threat to our liberties. He explains:

Everything about this mandatory measure should set off red flares. First, use of the word “passively” suggests the system will always be on and constantly monitoring the vehicle. Secondly, the system must connect to the vehicle’s operational controls so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected. Thirdly, it will be an “open” system, or at least one with a backdoor, meaning authorized (or unauthorized) third parties can remotely access the system’s data at any time.

This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through Congress reveals — yet again — how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents…. The lack of ultimate control over one’s vehicle presents numerous and extremely serious safety issues…. If that is not reason enough for concern, there are serious legal issues with this mandate. Other vehicle-related enforcement methods used by the Nanny State, such as traffic cameras and license plate readers, have long presented constitutional problems, notably with the 5th Amendment’s right to not self-incriminate and the 6th Amendment’s right to face one’s accuser.

…These “vehicle kill switches” may be sold to the public as a safety measure aimed at keeping drunk drivers off the roads, but they will quickly become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to put the government in the driver’s seat while rendering null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Many people could get killed by a system that suddenly decided they were drunk and disabled their car. Drivers on a busy freeway could get rear-ended. Someone in a very hot or very cold environment could succumb to the elements. It will probably be 50 years before we have software that can safely drive a car. It would be a far greater task to have a computer judge someone’s level of impairment.

A growing number of people would love to turn America into a Nanny state. The former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, wanted to control the size of soft drinkers for health reasons. The average home in Bloomberg’s world would have an Alexa-type system managing people’s lives. Someone going to the kitchen for a Pepsi would be asked to step on a scale before the system would unlock the refrigerator. If you were overweight, Alexa would advise you to have a glass of water. If you used more than your 15 gallons of water to show, the water would cut off. If a student had a big test the next day, there would be no TV or video game access.

It is now possible to have such a system in every household. One of my neighbors has Alexa in their house. The system turns on lights, plays music, and answers basic questions. I would never have Alexa in my house because you could never know if you were being monitored by Big Brother.

The fallen nature of mankind is the key reason why we should reject the concept of a kill switch. If we provide the government with the ability to control our lives, at some point it will choose that option.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

– Todd

Original Article

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