If everyone knows the Russians have hacked our computers, then why would the Federal Government mandate a hackable gps computer for a semi?
Everyone knows the Chinese, N.Korea & ISIS have also hacked us, so why mandate a hackable Trojan Horse computer be installed on a semi's engine?
​
Just in today: Jan.7, 2019. Wired magazine headlined that a major hack of the German government, revealed much personal information:
"There is no doubt that personal data leaks can be dangerous. It's difficult to offer protection to the victims."
LUKASZ OLEJNIK, OXFORD UNIVERSITY
​
And these are supposedly guarded systems full of nationally vital information.
So we ask again: why risk mandating a defective, low grade computer, when even the best are unsafe?
“My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total.
I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution,
the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.” — US Rep Barbara Jordan, 1974
​
We need to start off with a short condensed history of how we got to this juncture, because history provides perspective to understand the present.
Did you know, that in an effort to speed up the recovery from the 1930’s recession, President Roosevelt supported unlimited hours for truck drivers? Perhaps in the 30’s and early 40’s this was not as hazardous an issue as it is today. As trucking grew in response to a growing economy, the rules had to change. The government supported regional monopolies, where any new trucking company had to ask the government for permission to start up and then the government would ask the carrier that had the regional monopoly if this new business could start, which gave the established carriers too much power over startups. By the early 1980’s, President Carter was persuaded to deregulate trucking, supposedly to create competition in rates. With this relaxing of oversight, a need arose to create a framework of rules reducing the hours that drivers could work, to a more reasonable level ie 70 hours down from 100.
What was not done, was to establish an equitable pay system. The ICC made no changes regarding being paid to drive, but turned a blind eye to carriers deciding not to pay for all other work, like loading, fueling and maintenance. We have concluded this was a result of a gross misunderstanding of the Fair Labor Standards Act by the ICC, which posited that drivers are not covered under the overtime provisions that protect other workers.
But this was also a calculated strategy by the carriers to keep their profits up, and because they still had the ear of the government, they were allowed to launch this initiative which the administrators knew or cared little or nothing about. President Eisenhower warned us about this, but we have not heeded his words.
Logically then, drivers were compelled to create as many hours for driving, as they reasonably could, while minimizing all their nondriving hours. The new rules included recording these payless hours, but turned a blind eye on how these shorted a driver’s income. It was inevitable that drivers and carriers pushed to make as many miles a day as they could and it was inevitable this caught up to some, with the resultant over fatigue and the problems stemming from that, including falling asleep and poor judgement.
Since FMCSA and FLSA refused to ask the only question that mattered, “why drivers risked over fatigue and a possible accident” they, being non-drivers, presumed we were criminals, thumbing our noses at the rules.
Because the DOT and Congress considered us criminals, they created a new way to ‘punish’ us into submission to their broken rules. In 2007, DOT did just that, when they first proposed ELDs as punishment for 400+ carriers, out of 10,000, for HOS violations. www.gpo.gov/…/p…/CHRG110shrg79551/html/CHRG-110shrg79551.htm They mandated an electronic tracking machine, called the electronic logging device, ELD, claiming this would prevent carriers from pushing their drivers past their legal limit of working hours. In 2017, at the urging of the very carriers who had been 'punished' by the ELD, the DOT's FMCSA enlarged the ELD coverage to include all drivers. The carriers did this about face, claiming they were just trying to 'level the playing field', because the hit to their income was large. But, by doing this, the government has broken a number of laws, the first being that no one but a designated law enforcement official can install and monitor electronic tracking equipment without sufficient proof presented to a Judge, with jurisdiction, proving that the activity being watched is a crime ie murder, theft or drugs, or any offense punishable by death or by imprisonment for more than one year under title 18 of the United States Code. www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2516 , 18 U.S. Code §â€¯2516.Authorization for interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications. So the ELD rule, just by its existence, is illegal by default.
The ELD rule, by inference, contends that truck driving is a criminal activity. This is also against the 8th and 14th Amendments, criminalizing one’s status. Robinson v. California. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/370/660 “Any statute that criminalizes the status of a person inflicts a cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment. The ELD is a rule for the specific purpose of 24 hour gps tracking strictly for the profession of truck driving.
From this initial violation, other violations follow;
1. the ELD forces independent owner operators into employee status, without benefits such as Social Security.
2. the ELD violates Congresses directive for a simple and inexpensive method of electronically recording a driver’s duty status. It’s cost us $10,000 more in fuel from
having to drive faster.
3. the ELD creates more fatigue, rather than reducing it as promised, from shrinking the time to do our work, but not reducing our workload, without
compensating us for lost income, forcing us to drive faster and take less breaks.
And finally, and most seriously,
4. the ELD is a Trojan Horse device, that because of its internet operation, opens a commercial vehicle up to remote hijacking of its brakes, engine and steering. www.nmfta.org/pages/HVCS The ELD is a danger for us, but it is a gift to our enemies. The FBI, Homeland Security, NHTSA, UMTRI, even the engineers of the Trojan Horse computer, have admitted this danger, that these Trojan Horse computer chip enabled ELD's allow hijacking of our vehicles, including disconnecting our brakes, shutting off our engine and wresting control of our steering, all while traveling at 65 mph. The proof of secret Trojan Horse chips in computers has been known for 20 years. It is also known that it is impossible to remove the Trojan Horse chip; you can only remove the whole ELD, because internet connected computers won't operate without this two way chip. Our enemies are cyber savvy and have already used cyber attacks against us, yet we build them a Trojan Horse and even put it at the gate?
All in all, when a government announces a 'safety rule', out of the blue, in a political process so misty, with no shred of evidence that it would benefit the drivers who are the backbone of our economy, it further erodes trust in government. The ELD is a defective, expensive and profiteering program, a prime example of the collusion President Eisenhower warned us about. Further proof is emerging that the ELD is a profit making device: "ZED is just the latest of the no-subscription-fee ELD providers to go under. The pricing model was attractive to owner-operators. Pay once for the hardware and then receive the service for free forever after. Unfortunately, as former no-fee ELD provider One20 found, when you’re not changing a subscription fee, investors find it “easier… just to close the doors.” https://www.thetruckersreport.com/another-no-fee-eld-system-shuts/
"When a moment raises questions of liberty versus autocracy, prosperity versus poverty, life versus death, citizens must tune out the rhetoric of self serving industry and feel good bureaucrats and tune in on the essentials of freedom and dignity. Only then, will it allow them to determine whether to embrace or resist the snake oil remedies, sold by idealogues and con artists to an acquiescent congress, quite wittingly, because they are allowed to launch initiatives which the administrators know little or nothing about." as John Nichols so succinctley phrased it. We cannot allow ourselves to forget that we the people are the sovereigns and Congress and the separate departments therein, are our servants. If the administrators know little or nothing about how this device violates these several laws and NHTSA's defective products rules, in spite of the workshops on this sponsored by the NMFTA, www.nmfta.org/pages/HVCS, they must be as legally liable as the manufacturers, because they gave permission to sell their defective equipment.
WHAT THE JUDGE IN GENERAL FLYNN'S TRIAL SAID, WILL BE APPLIED TO ALL THESE COLLABORATORS, WHEN THEIR TIME COMES TO BE ACCOUNTABLE.
​
Arguably, you sold your country out. The Court's going to consider all of that. I cannot assure you that if you proceed today you will not receive a sentence of incarceration.
The ELD quite reminds us of the Emperor’s new clothes: clothing its naked truth with the flimsy threads of safety. You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken or refuse to see; but, because the warnings have been published for nearly 20 years now, we must conclude FMCSA has chosen the low road and turned a blind eye to this illegal and dangerous device; marching solemnly behind the Emporer, nodding and smiling, patting themselves on the back for ‘fixing’ yet another problem. But there are laws for that too!
​
We have successfully navigated the changing tides of professional trucking for over 30 years. It is not for the faint of heart, but at the same time, rewards the flexible and bold in numerous ways including reconfirming our belief that most of us are the brave and noble knights of the road that we have always thought ourselves to be. The introduction of the internet has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because we have weather and road conditions at our fingertips and maps right to our customer's doors and can stay in touch with our loved ones daily rather than weekly. This has helped strengthen our family ties, making the Life easier to bear. A curse, because it has emboldened the crook and replaced the personal touch with impersonal algorithms, making us all invisible to each other and creating the impression that we are just interchangable parts with no redeeming qualities. This has set the stage for the inevitable power grab that is the Trojan Horse ELD .
​
Congress has just announced it must address the growing scourge of spying, tracking and privacy invasions that has grown to epidemic proportions in our country. This is a window of opportunity we cannot allow to pass us by.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
The further a society drifts from the Truth, the more it will hate those that speak it. George Orwell But change is in the wind. James Madison, our 4th President, said: "a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." This is the goal of this site, to arm ourselves and our champions to win. The final curtain, however, has yet to fall; making it imperative that we press our advantage and stay the fight to its just and noble end -
~ putting the Trojan Horse down for good. ~
Our brave men and women in uniform risk their lives in service to our nation - Congress owes it to them to seriously examine the costs and consequences of the equipment we allow them to work with, once they return to civilian life.
The Trojan Horse computer threatens the lives and safety of our returning veterans. A poor way of showing honor.
How this ELD came about, the engineers and DOT followed a time tested playbook. They began by translating driver fatigue into a national threat. Then they asserted that the best way to address this crisis was to impose 24 hour gps tracking on us, to further restrict the hours we have to make a living. Since the engineers have the ear of DOT, their ELD widgit came to be viewed as the ultimate safety widgit, disregarding its Trojan Horse personality. They said, 'hey, we just invented the ELD, it's your problem to avoid the consequences."
*History*
Drivers' work hours, labeled HOS (hours of service) are limited by DOL, as most workers' are. But current HOS rules lack equity & predictability.
The design of HOS has two major flaws -
A: Drivers are not paid for loading or unloading or any other work except driving.
B: Their available hours vary daily.
​
1. Irregular hours & irregular pay take a toll
2. Drivers may spend up to 12 hours a day on non-driving tasks.
3. They get no pay for this work. This is wage theft in California.
4. Because of this inequitable pay, drivers would record a minimum of unpaid work hours on their handwritten logs so as to leave as many hours to drive as they reasonably could. Some drivers pushed this option too far, at times, and got over fatigued. Redesigning HOS so drivers are paid for all hours worked and to create regularity in a drivers work day is a perfect example of Elegance.
ELD profiteers spun the lie of safety and the Fed's, like the Emperor, clothed their mandate in its fragile virtual weave. Never the less, we call the ELD by it's proper name, digital slavery. The garment of safety quickly unravels to reveal an illegal gps tracker, and a Trojan Horse disguised as a friend, which forces us drivers to drive faster and more carelessly because of the loss of elasticity inherent in paper logs.
ELD: a device that reduces drivers to machines, replacing their professional judgement with algorithms and threatening their lives and their livelihood.
From The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey says, "Our basic nature is to act, and not be acted upon. As well as it enables us to choose our response to particular circumstances, this nature empowers us to create circumstances. ELD, the Trojan Horse, conspires to strip us of our power while opening us up to attacks by our enemies, just for trying to do our job under unrealistic rules devised by bureaucrats.
www.worldcat.org/wepa/servlet/DCARead?
The most essential protection of American law, is the precept that there can be no crime without intent. But the opposite is also true. The fact that the Trojan Horse computer, ELD, which operates as warrantless electronic surveillance, is the proof of the opposite, that the ELD is an illegal tool of oppression. So, besides its Trojan Horse defect, ELD violates unwarranted electronic surveillance laws like in AZ and WI.
REGULARITY OF WORK SCHEDULES
In the early 1980s, trucking was deregulated. Prior to the 80s, carriers had monopolies on geographical areas, and the President was persuaded that this deregulation would stimulate competition. It Did!
And the arena was driver's wages. DOL also allowed drivers hours to be 70 per week, nearly twice a normal worker's hours, "because they sat most of the day". DOL also exempted drivers from overtime.
In addition to this, an irregular daily schedule was designed. I can find no justification for this:
1. We can work 14 hours a day & drive only 11 of them.
2. We can work up to 70 hours in 8 days:
a. that's 11 driving per day for 6 days, 4 for 1 day & sit for 1 day, if you try to max them out.
3. We record these hours in a column, adding each day to the bottom and removing the 7th day off the top. In essence, a revolving daily hourly maximum. So if you only work 4 hours last Tuesday, you only can work 4 hours the next Tuesday, unless you have several other short days which you can add to this.
4. Complicating this varied daily allowance is the time we spend on nondriving work, like loading, unloading, fueling - if we can only drive 11 hours, any time over 3 hours of nondriving work, shortens our driving time, which is our sole way of earning. Some days we earn zip!
5. The DOL has allowed carriers to short drivers' pay like this, by allowing them to only pay for driving work. The DOL, and the industry, have interpreted the 'overtime' exemption to allow this. IT IS NOT TRUE. California courts have just ruled this is wage theft. The DOT need take heed that this will change.
THE ELEGANT SAFETY SOLUTION
Now that you have gained understanding of the trucking profession and its rules, you can easily see that the ELD is a mistake by a lax DOT, empowered by corporate greed, which does not address the simple issue that has been revealed. PAY
We drivers have had imposed upon us an unrealistic and nearly impossible set of work rules that we had no part in shaping. Most of us have had the wisdom and initiative to work around them. So, who but we drivers know what changes we need to stay at the top of our game, make a decent living and stay safe, so as to come back home to our families?
​
1. First solution is to change the current varied work day to 11 hours total, every day.
2. Second solution is to pay us for every hour, irregardless of whether it is driving or nondriving work .
a. computing this: simply take mileage pay, figure this at 50 mph for pay per hour, which in turn, would be the pay for nondriving work.
b. each day's pay would be a combination of nondriving pay, as calculated above, and driving pay.
1. this would create a regular income
2. the hourly would be charged to Shippers and Receivers; the fueling and other maintenance work charged to carriers.
3. this would have the advantage of forcing S & R's to be more efficient and would restrict carriers from pushing us past our hours.
4. best of all, it would encourage regular balanced meals and reduce driver stress which would support the return of road courtesy.
3. Third solution is this would remove the false justification for the ELD , forcing the recall of this Trojan Horse and keep us all safer.
IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBTS ABOUT THE DANGER ASSOCIATED WITH THE ELD THEY WILL BE GONE AFTER YOU READ THIS EXCERPT
​
In 2015 NMFTA conducted research regarding the status of heavy vehicle cyber security. “Engineers it seems, have assumed that the computerized vehicle would not have to operate in a hostile environment”………in 2015?
“Additionally, fleet operators have added 3rd party communication systems such as Qualcomm (now called Omnitracs) and others*. This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, it adds another IP address to each vehicle, i.e. could possibly be seen/accessed from the Internet anywhere around the world; and, secondly, it centralizes access to whole fleets of trucks from a single server infrastructure located either at the service provider or the fleet operator. this introduces a large systematic vulnerability for individual fleet operators by making it possible to leverage a single attack or design for self-replicating malware against an entire fleet.
Our research demonstrates that the issue of vehicle cyber security is not a topic that we must address sometime in the future, but is a serious problem upon us today. Real world hacks are being done against light vehicles. The attacker’s capabilities have grown rapidly in sophistication and reach. Hackers have established tools for interfacing with vehicle network traffic, growing libraries of control command messages, and commercial tools to reverse engineer the OEM programming of most any ECUs and replace it with arbitrary malicious code.”
Reality Chek Never the Less Safer Highways ATA Insights 25 Reasons
Interested in further exploring the ELD menace? Above are pdfs of the links below for you to study. They further expand the ideas here as well as provide links or copies for your own research.
https://americanhero168.wixsite.com/never-the-less
https://ata9313.wixsite.com/ata-insights
https://nomdplume.wixsite.com/safer-highways
https://johnwaynessite.wixsite.com/reality-chek
https://25reasons.home.blog/2018/11/04/lets-stop-this-tragedy-before-it-hurts/