The rumors we first reported on back in December have turned out to be true: the United States federal government is apparently in the process of trying to force automakers to install kill switches in their vehicles that authorities can use to shut down any newer vehicle.
The law comes as part of President Biden’s infrastructure bill, which was recently signed into law, according to Yahoo. The government kill switch is – like all good thefts of civil liberties – being positioned as a “safety measure”. The mandate needs to be put into effect by 2026, Muscle Cars & Trucks reported.
We noted last month that former Rep. Bob Barr, writing for The Daily Caller, called the measure included in the bill “disturbingly short on details”, but for the fact that the proposed device must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”
Which, of course, is code for some kind of device that is constantly on and monitoring your vehicle – and will likely have the power to shut down your vehicle anytime it wants.
“This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through the Congress reveals — yet again — how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents,” The Daily Caller wrote.
It appears that in President Biden’s future, not only will you not be in charge of your own personal health decisions, but you also won’t be in charge of whether or not you can fire up your car, which you bought with your hard-earned money, to drive it somewhere, when you deem fit.
That decision will now “rest in the hands of an algorithm”, the report said. Similar monitoring and control devices have faced constitutional opposition, the report notes, “notably with the 5th Amendment’s right to not self-incriminate, and the 6th Amendment’s right to face one’s accuser.”
Barr concluded: “Unless this regulatory mandate is not quickly removed or defanged by way of an appropriations rider preventing its implementation, the freedom of the open road that individual car ownership brought to the American Dream, will be but another vague memory of an era no longer to be enjoyed by future generations.”
Where is the government kill switch?
That’s a bill I could back