id plan to stamp out car rebirthing

It is on the morning news channel 9 two days ago

"ID plan to stamp out car rebirthing
From: By Simon Kearney
July 25, 2006
POLICE ministers are considering ways to mark car parts with microscopic identifiers to tackle rebirthing, as fears grow that stolen Australian parts are being used to fund terrorism in the Middle East.

Federal Justice Minister Chris Ellison has revealed he and his state and territory colleagues began to investigate the issue earlier this year.
The national committee of police ministers has ordered a report on the feasibility of compulsory car marking to be ready for consideration by their November meeting.

The Australian understands that concern about the export of stolen cars and parts from Australia is growing because intelligence agencies fear that a suspected link to terrorist financing in the Middle East could be real.

"We have a paper being worked on at the Police Ministers Council looking at the possibility of mandatory marking of vehicles," Senator Ellison said.

"We have to be mindful that we've got industry involved here (but) it's definitely an area of organised crime that we need to shine a big light on."

Marking vehicles with microscopic identifiers is referred to as whole of vehicle identification and involves spraying what are commercially known as data dots on car parts where they can be read using a specially designed magnifying device.

Police from vehicle theft squads around the country have been lobbying for mandatory marking of new vehicles for several years, to make it easier to identify stolen parts and gain convictions for car rebirthing.

Many manufacturers - particularly the makers of cars that had a high rate of theft - have already begun using the system and enjoyed plummeting theft rates as a result.

The federal Government has also partially funded a study to examine how the identification system could be included cheaply in new vehicle manufacturing.

Concern at a national level has grown because of the possibility of a link to terrorist financing.

One experienced state-based car theft investigator told The Australian there had been a long-suspected link between the illegal export of stolen parts to the Middle East and the funding of militant groups.

It is understood that ASIO has been investigating the link between car rebirthing rackets in Australia and terrorist financing overseas.

The Australian Crime Commission has also turned its sights on specific car-rebirthing intelligence operations four times in the past two years.

Exports of stolen car parts by the container load have proved to be a fruitful operation for car thieves, as consignments leaving the country face fewer inspections than shipments coming in.

While vehicle theft has fallen in Australia as manufacturers introduce anti-theft measures, it has mostly affected opportunistic thefts or "joy riding" and not unrecovered vehicles, which are considered the baseline figure for professional car thefts.

The National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council, which is examining ways to reduce the unrecovered vehicle rate, is considering an economic study of the effect of making car immobilisers compulsory in Australia as a measure to reduce theft."

Looking good. Another on the watchlist