In Malaysia, RFID road tax stickers will track all vehicles

Smart stickers will be fitted onto every vehicle, enabling authorities to monitor real-time traffic and track criminals.

By 2018 every vehicle on Malaysian roads will be trackable via a new RFID system. Starting from October, cars and motorcycles will be fitted with new tax stickers equipped with RFID — Radio Frequency Identification — that enable the police and other authorities to track the movements of all local and foreign vehicles.

The stickers — which cannot be removed or tampered with — are primarily to deter criminals, but will also work in conjunction with a forthcoming electronic payment system and provide real-time traffic monitoring. But the system obviously has problematic implications for citizens’ privacy, and the data — though encrypted — could easily be abused.

How could this technology be adapted into a less dubious concept?