Steve Jobs hated Big Brother, too

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This is an interesting nugget about Jobs’ disdain for state-issued license plates:

The multitude of mysteries revealed following the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ death now includes one that puzzled car enthusiasts for years: How did Jobs get away with driving without a license plate? It was common knowledge that Jobs would park his Mercedes SL55 AMG in a handicapped spot at Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, with nothing to identify his vehicle other than the tiny bar code that usually rests behind the rear license plate. According to Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Jobs wanted to avoid having a plate for privacy reasons..

For years, rumors swirled that Jobs had either won a special dispensation from California authorities or was just daring police to stop him. While the why remains somewhat cloudy, an interview by ITWire with a former Apple security executive reveals the real reason: a little-known loophole in California vehicle laws that gives owners up to six months to get plates for their vehicles.

According to Jon Callas, now chief technical officer of Entrust, Jobs would arrange with his vehicle leasing company to switch out his silver Mercedes every six months with a new, identical model — just another of the complicated and expensive ways Jobs thought differently.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Google “Right to Travel” or go to http://www.apfn.org/apfn/travel.htm There are at least 10 Supreme Court cases that declared that no state may require any citizen to have a drivers license. They continue do so anyway. I have a friend who has been driving without one since 1998. Occasionally, he gets pulled over for some minor infraction. He carries a copy of the Pennsylvania Constitution with him, and when the cop invariably hauls him to a magistrate, he shows the magistrate the appropriate section, and he says to the cop, “Well, officer, ya gotta let him go.” There is a video of a guy in California who fought the system and won also, when Reagan was governor. If you have the original title to your car from the manufacturer and it was never titled in a state and you paid cash for it, you don’t need to license it either.

    • Hi Leon,

      I’ve had people lay this out before – and while I absolutely agree in principle, there’s also the reality that “the law” is whatever the cop says it is. Yes, you maybe can eventually make your point – and even win – when it gets before a judge. But you’ll still probably be arrested and have your vehicle impounded (along with all the costs associated with getting it – and you – out of hock, as well as fines and lawyer fees, etc.) which for most people represents a very daunting (and difficult) way to live.I applaud people brave enough and willing enough to challenge the system in this way, but I wonder whether it will accomplish anything in a broader sense – and meanwhile, these people are still being carted off to the clink, etc.

      Thoughts?

    • I don’t believe these stories of people ‘beating the system’. I can see it happening once or even twice but continually? No. Why? because I too have confronted the system with the written law. The judges *refuse* to read it and/or declare they ‘know the law’. They call me liar. The law is what they say it is.

      While licensing schemes are nothing more than scams those in government operate they just don’t say ‘Oh, this guy knows the truth, we’ll just let him go’. Most cops and judges don’t even grasp it is a scam and all of them get angry that some dared resist their authoritah.

      The only thing I have had that has been close to successful is confronting cops at the time of ticketing with the law. Some will back down. Others have commanded me to ‘shut up’ with a threat if I do not. I don’t believe that someone could persist in a licenseless state indefinately.

      As to titling, what you are describing is a loophole of acting as a dealer, which of course requires…. a government license. That’s the only way a person will get the manufacturer’s title unless you can find a new car dealer that is willing to violate the law and risk his license. Plus certificates of title don’t do what many think they do. It’s just a state monopoly of what should be a private system that verifies ownership.

      • Brent, I had an acquaintance in Virginia that “traveled by right in his private conveyance.” What “beating the system” amounted to was a great deal of time, trouble and inconvenience to this fellow at a frequency most of us would find unacceptable. He drove an old beat up Opel that he had “free and clear title” to via the bill of sale someone had executed for him with no “encumbrances”, as I recall. He was pretty safe as long as he didn’t leave his immediate area, since the sheriff and local constabulary knew him. When they hired a new cop or he had to go to Richmond, he would often end up in custody; after showing the cop his court papers and pointing out his homemade plates on the car with a case number on them. If it was Friday evening through the weekend he’d have to sit in the pokey waiting for a magistrate until Monday (they did this on purpose to intimidate and dissuade him and he knew it).

        This was back in the day when Bill Cooper still broadcast The Hour of the Time on shortwave (before the local cops gunned him down in his front yard) and computer BBS’s were the main way “mundanes” communicated with the Internet, if at all. The “Patriot Movement” was in full swing and all sorts of theories and strategies for regaining our liberty were being tossed around. I had no desire to be a martyr back then nor do I now. I know the cops were a lot less nationalized, militarized and polarized back then.

        Even twenty years ago, what this course of action boiled down to was my acquaintance barely lived above the poverty level in a house trailer so he could spend most of his time fighting the good fight. Call me decadent, pragmatic and even hypocritical if you wish; I have somewhat higher aspirations in terms of affluence and comfort. I lead a life many would consider austere in this country, but I am very much aware of how wealthy I am with respect to the rest of the world and I am thankful for that. Do I consider myself free? Certainly not! But I am at least self sufficient, live a peaceful life and understand the reality of the present situation in Amerika today. I am under no illusions about how this system works.

        Nowadays, the “travel by right” stance will probably get you a complementary “wood shampoo” by the Stasi, battery charges for putting your hands between the baton and your face and a stay at Hotel Graybar. You might ultimately “win” in court if you’re persistent and knowledgeable enough. Then again you may be sitting in the corner at the “home” drooling on yourself from that closed head injury incurred while you were “resisting arrest”. I’ll take my chances with paying the state protection and maintaining a low profile. Be as wise as the Serpent and as a gentle as a dove.

        • “Even twenty years ago, what this course of action boiled down to was my acquaintance barely lived above the poverty level in a house trailer so he could spend most of his time fighting the good fight.”

          The expectation to be impoverished to fight is an ever present one. In .debates. with the conditioned majority, out-of-power statists, and clovers I find they will often bring up the fact that I do not do everything I can to resist the system. That because I choose not to live in poverty (the other option government gives us) that somehow invalidates my arguments. If we are impoverished, the government still wins just as much as it would if we bought into the system with full faith.
          Another one I have encountered is that I don.t resist cops to the point where they arrest me. The person usually making this argument is a statist who would prefer that he and those like him ran the society. He doesn.t understand his arrests are meaningless. The government still wins despite the fact he.ll beat the charges in lowest levels of court. The cops don.t care if we beat the charges or not and neither does the rest of government. The harassment itself was the goal.
          I really don.t see what any of it achieves. Remaining free to educate people that they are being scammed is far more effective than being on the police blotter as the kook who was arrested again because he won.t get a driver.s license. Sure we may never be able to overcome the mainstream media and the government schools but they are much softer targets than cops and the courts. Getting arrested typically means that people just hear the government.s side of things if they hear anything at all. Nobody cares. But maybe in the future when something negatively impacts a person.s life he.ll remember what someone else told him once on that topic and through that awaken.

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