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By GERMANIA RODRIGUEZ POLEO FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 18:48 BST, 11 September 2023 | UPDATED: 20:20 BST, 11 September 2023

Americans' cars now have 'unmatched power to watch, listen and collect information about what you do and where you go' - with at least 84% of 25 car brands in bombshell study sharing or selling personal data | Daily Mail Online

FWIW

It almost makes you never want to buy a new car.

Fortunately, all my cars are much older than the rise of the ubiquitous spy network.

But, new cars are also too expensive for we mere serfs to afford anyway. So it's a first world problem mostly for the affluent GenX to worry about.

So, m strategy is let those spy laden cars sit on the dealership showroom floor. But then the last time I darkened a dealership door was circa 1982. And got ripped off with such a lemon that I vowed 41 years ago to never give them another chance to do that stunt again.

I've instead found assorted hand-me-downs from individuals, gotten some at seized vehicle auctions, and other sources where the dealers=crooks racket really can't flimflam like they are trained to do.

Of course I spend a lot of time turning a wrench on assorted cars and trucks, but that's just part of the price paid for freedom from that kind of dystopian surveillance.

Oh, one helpful trick to mess with the license plate scanning cameras. If you have any property in New Mexico, which doesn't issue a front plate, register a car in NM. Then get a cheap trailer to tow, that is registered (and kept current) by an LLC shell corporation. You don't have to tow it everywhere - but strap some shovels and a wheelbarrow down on that. It hides the towing vehicle license plate so what they scan is the trailer plate.

As long as you don't keep the vehicle in Texas for more than 60 days, you don't have to transfer the registration. Ideally, drive the NM car for a month, make a quick run across the state line to retrieve the TX car and drive it a few days, etc.

The oil companies here, or at least some of the well service outfits, if they have an office in Pennsylvania, do this vehicle shell game with company fleet vehicles. I see a BUNCH of PA plates on the streets out here. What they do is, drive them here for a few days less than the legal maximum, and then swap trucks / cars with others also with PA plates that they have in Oklahoma, NM, Wyoming, etc - and just steadily rotate vehicles through, renewing them every year in PA.

Oklahoma has similar nonresident time limits on cars there. So when something has been running around Oklahoma for almost too long, they swap vehicles with one from Texas or another state, so none of them stay on the roads in any state for more than 60 days (or 30, or 90 depending on the particular states' motor vehicle code)

There's always some kind of loophole to continue doing various things. 

The no front NM plate with a trailer hiding the rear plate however, is quite an interesting ploy though!

FWIW

How can renew a vehicle in PA unless you live there? We aren’t oil companies with addresses all over the country.

Someone on the forums a decade or so ago had as his sig line, "The only real freedom is the ability to slip between the cracks of various layers of bureaucracy"

Showtalk said:

How can renew a vehicle in PA unless you live there?

You could set up an LLC which is then what actually owns the vehicle, and incorporate it in the state you want it to be in, depending of course on how the laws there are structured to set up an LLC with out of state ownership of the LLC.

So when they do scan the plates and automagically run them as you are driving through the Texas panhandle between Tulia and Borger, for example, it just comes up as a company vehicle, not necessarily who's driving it.

For an extra touch, stick a couple of magnetic signs that suggest it's for some kind of service gig - like "Frank's Electronics Salvage" and actually register a domain, even print a QR code on a corner of the sign.

$1,661.87 in cats (ROCKETMAN_S) said...

"The only real freedom is the ability to slip between the cracks of various layers of bureaucracy"

LOL... Interesting way of putting it!

FWIW

Yep I thought it was a pretty accurate way to depict the modern world.