Toyota's apparently working on the idea of a resident chip snitch in our cars and has shown off such a device in one of its concept cars. Fortunately, a great many ideas do not make it out of this stage but a great many ideas do. As I've said in the past such devices are a very obvious 3rd amendment violation. They are not a search, they house a parasitic chip in your vehicle (or other bit of your property) that serves the interests of the state instead of the interests of the owner.
There is also a great deal of risk of this sort of thing in the home with the introduction of trusted computing as advocates for that sort of system also create a bit of a home snitch that mandates a government presence monitoring your actions.
Posted by TMLutas at February 29, 2004 07:30 AM