In 2021 when Congress was jamming through Biden’s massive, trillion dollar, 2702 page “infrastructure” bill, senators still wanted time to ruffle through the pages. It seemed prudent to maybe see what was in there, even with Schumer yelling “GO! GO! GO!” in the rush to hand Biden a win.

… Time is not limitless. Schumer has repeatedly warned that he was prepared to keep lawmakers in Washington for as long as it took to complete votes on both the bipartisan infrastructure plan and a budget blueprint that would allow the Senate to begin work later this year on a massive, $3.5 trillion social, health and environmental bill.

Republicans counter that they just had a chance to begin fully reviewing the bill late Sunday.

“We shouldn’t sacrifice adequate time on this bill merely because the Democratic leader would like to spend next week jamming a 100% partisan piece of legislation through the United States Senate,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota.

But there’s no one on earth who can dig through the minutiae contained in almost 3000 pages in dedicated weeks of study, and conduct other business besides. So the abomination was signed into law with the mocking echoes of Nancy Pelosi’s “have to pass it to find out what’s in it” Democratic legislative truism ringing in the air again.

Among the miracles promised by a White House crowing about the accomplishment:

Fact Sheet: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal

..This Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal will rebuild America’s roads, bridges and rails, expand access to clean drinking water, ensure every American has access to high-speed internet, tackle the climate crisis, advance environmental justice, and invest in communities that have too often been left behind. The legislation will help ease inflationary pressures and strengthen supply chains by making long overdue improvements for our nation’s ports, airports, rail, and roads. It will drive the creation of good-paying union jobs and grow the economy sustainably and equitably so that everyone gets ahead for decades to come. Combined with the President’s Build Back Framework, it will add on average 1.5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years.

Yeah. For all the bazillions down the tubes, how’s that “1.5M new jobs a year” going by the way?

Besides the pipedreams, word of one nasty surprise contained in the voluminous legislation started leaking out shortly after the bill was signed. Something about a mandate for a “vehicle kill switch” which would go into effect for all vehicles manufactured in 2026 and beyond.

That got people’s attention. Former Rep Bob Barr wrote what was probably the first op-ed warning of the discovery in late November of 2021.

Buried deep within the massive infrastructure legislation recently signed by President Joe Biden is a little-noticed “safety” measure that will take effect in five years. Marketed to Congress as a benign tool to help prevent drunk driving, the measure will mandate that automobile manufacturers build into every car what amounts to a “vehicle kill switch.”

As has become standard for legislative mandates passed by Congress, this measure is disturbingly short on details. What we do know is that the “safety” device must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”

Everything about this mandatory measure should set off red flares.

First, use of the word “passively” suggests the system will always be on and constantly monitoring the vehicle. Secondly, the system must connect to the vehicle’s operational controls, so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected. Thirdly, it will be an “open” system, or at least one with a backdoor, meaning authorized (or unauthorized) third-parties can remotely access the system’s data at any time.

The conservative firebrand was promptly labeled a paranoid conspiracy freak, especially as he questioned the line they must have sold to whatever legislators were aware of the mandate insertion to begin with.

…Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, there also is no detail in the legislation about who would have access to the data collected and stored by the system. Could it be used by police, and could they access this information without a warrant? What about insurance companies, eager to know with what frequency their customers drove after drinking alcohol, even if it was below the legal limit? Such a trove of data presents a lucrative prize to all manner of public and private entities (including hackers), none of which have our best interests at heart.

Over the next year, the kill switch issue would resurface and be shot down by “fact checkers” assuring those few members of the public who were aware of the looming regulation that all was well. Nothing nefarious was planned or could possibly be inferred by it, and implementation would have zero impact on anyone’s beloved “freedom” of anything.

Witness the careful word parsing the AP uses while “debunking” all the conspiracies being floated. Take a look who their Experts™ are (when they’re even named as opposed to merely being referenced as such en masse) – they have monitoring and control skin in the game – yet are assuring the public both their freedom of movement and privacy are safe.

Posts distort infrastructure law’s rule on impaired driving technology

CLAIM: President Joe Biden signed a bill that will give law enforcement access to a “kill switch” that will be attached to ALL new cars in 2026.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. While the bipartisan infrastructure bill Biden signed last year requires advanced drunk and impaired driving technology to become standard equipment in new cars, experts say that technology doesn’t amount to a “kill switch,” and nothing in the bill gives law enforcement access to those systems.

THE FACTS: In November 2021, Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, ushering into law a $1 trillion bipartisan deal to maintain and upgrade the country’s roads, bridges, ports and more.

One provision in the legislation aims to prevent drunk driving deaths by requiring all new vehicles to soon include “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology” as “standard equipment.”

…Robert Strassburger, president and CEO of the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety, is involved in a public-private partnership with NHTSA to develop an alcohol detection system for vehicles. He said the partnership agreement includes a requirement to build security measures that would prevent third parties from accessing any data collected by the technology.

…Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a nonprofit which advocated for those bills and helped draft their language, said it would not support giving law enforcement or commercial entities access to any of the impaired driving data that will be collected in vehicles.

“What’s circulating online is absolutely false,” said Stephanie Manning, chief government affairs officer at MADD. “MADD is completely committed to a vehicle technology standard that protects driver privacy. We’re not interested in any of that information being used other than very briefly to either disable a vehicle from being operated by a drunk driver or to safely bring an in motion vehicle to an appropriate stop.”

NHTSA did not respond to a request for comment.

Right. All advocates working hand in glove with federal agencies for monitoring drivers. Additionally, no assurances that, while third parties might not “access” data, that the same data would never be provided to them. And MADD even helped draft the legislation? Pfft.

One should worry.

…But what is certain is that the provisions included within the trillion-dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will eventually result in some form of driver monitoring. That’s likely to come by either an ignition interlocking device that would require drivers to utilize a breathalyzer before setting off, or some kind of comprehensive driver monitoring system that uses audio-visual cues to determine the driver’s present status.

Someone who has read and understood the implications of the mandate is Rep Thomas Massie (R-KY). Yesterday he offered a tutoring session on the mandate’s provisions while trying to get an amendment passed defunding the kill switch.

During debate last night on my amendment to defund the 2026 kill-switch mandate for cars, some Democrats claimed the technology wouldn’t monitor or disable cars. Here’s the actual law I had to read to them:

My amendment failed. Link to the roll call vote: https://t.co/YWufj9C2C3 pic.twitter.com/JDN1TltaDo

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) November 8, 2023

Massie’s attempt to kill the kill switch failed with the help of 19 Republicans.

Right now the SOLE justification is about “saving lives,” like COVID lockdowns were. Remember how that went? And how “for the children” has been weaponized? But it’s not really about any of them.

It’s totally about control.

I’m old enough to remember certain states shutting down their borders during Covid Lockdowns, so only “essential” Americans could travel. Don’t think that the government kill switch on your car —19 Republicans voted to save it—won’t be used to restrict your freedom of movement.

— Matt Kibbe (@mkibbe) November 8, 2023

And then it will be your social credit score, the friends you keep, the bugs you won’t eat…

So much easier when it’s a mandated EV.

Want to borrow my tinfoil hat?