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Auto Black-Box Data Being Used In Court
DrEnter writes "Yahoo! is running this USAToday article about automobile electronic data recorder (EDR or "black-box") data being used in civil and criminal court cases. Most owners of cars so equipped don't know they have them, or that they can be used against them. The NHTSA has been investigating EDRs and is collecting public comments to determine if and how these devices should be regulated."
I would suspect that the police would have to go through the normal means of obtaining a warrant before they could grab the data from the GPS system in the car. This would be no different that the police getting a warrant to rifle through a guy's home looking for evidence to convict him. It's just that a GPS system gives much more accurate data than a few hairs or a spot of blood could, in terms of location and time.
If the government is able to have access to this data without a warrant, that would be unconstitutional, and might be a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. Even the patriot act doesn't allow that.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
This isn't some nasty privacy thing - cars are dangerous things. If someone is driving like an idiot and causes an accident, they need to be banned from driving, and if these black boxes - which only record the last five seconds of data before the airbag inflates anyway - are the only way to get the evidence to do so, then so be it. Conversely of course, if the other driver claims you were speeding and your black box records that you were doing 30mph in the last five seconds, it'll let you off the hook.
These things aren't recording your speed over large periods of time, they aren't downloading info to any police car that asks for it, they aren't transmitting your position to some control centre. So the engineer can look at it, so what, he/she gets to see how slowly you drove the car across their service station forecourt. So at the moment, I see them as nothing but good.
Car ECU's do seem to hold a lot more information than perhaps most people think they do... and I personally think its for the better.
I am certain that on a number of higher priced cars (such as Porsches or BMW's) they record lots of little details.. like the number of standing 'sprint' starts you have made as a pose to just regular pulling away from lights etc.
A friend recently had to visit the dealership to have his ECU reprogrammed on his brand new Peugeot 206 - they were able to determine from that what, amongst other things, his top speed had been since owning it.
I feel its a good idea for car manufacturers to do it though.. it helps them when it comes down to court cases and complaints about the 'quality' of their car, if they can see how their cars are been driven. They can then gauge if the wear on parts relates to the style of driving and can absolve themselves from any responsibility.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
From the ref. article:
"the data from black boxes, which are on about 40 million cars in the USA"
6 of the 8 posts so far show that they aren't even awware that such a thing exists on cars. Is this an informed society? Or a purposely misinformed, under-informed or engineered society?
Maybe 10 billion of our clothes already contain RFID tags? A few billion of our wrist watches already contain bugs? Seems like paranoia is the only sensible option to remain sane.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
My '97 Starun SC2 had an electrical problem a little while ago, something called the RKE module fried. OK not a big deal I thought to myself, it's a machine and things fail. What caught my attention was the fact that I always ask for the old parts back. I think there is a california state law about it or something, and just to make sure I am not getting ripped off. The funny thing is the dealership refused to let me have it. Some BS about security and the car alarm ( At the time I thought the mechanic I was talking to just made this up for whatever reason) so I didn't argue as the car worked.
But now I read this and am wondering... is the standard GM "black box" contained in the RKE module? Does anyone know what exactly goes on in the RKE besides car alarm functions. Seems like a rather big box for just an alarm, even factoring in GM's bloated-lo-tech way of doing things.
Or am I just paranoid?
In the airplane industry, the hundreds of little black boxes that belong to a typical jetliner can only be read and interpreted by the specific airplane manufacturer that made them. The resulting simulation may appear to be an unbiased account of what truly happened, but we really don't know that -- the system used to decode them is a closely guarded trade secret.
In the automobile industry, those same black boxes will serve the interest of whoever develops them and puts them in your car. If your car manufacturer puts them in, they will be biased in favor of your car manufacturer. If your rental company puts them in, they will be biased in favor of your rental company. And if your car insurance company makes you put them in, they will biased in favor of your insurance company.
May be I'm just paranoid, but I would really like to see somekind of black box kit we could develop ourselves and install ourselves.
I guess I am torn on this issue.
On one hand, if black box data is used against you, you could claim discrimination since not all cars have the boxes and therefore you are being punished to a greater extent as a direct result of the car you chose to purchase.
On the other hand, I think it would be a good idea (Big Brother paranoia aside) for the industry to create a standard for what kind of dasta is collected and mandate the use of these devices on all new cars. Unbiased witnesses in courtrooms is badly needed these days due to blatant disregard for truth and justice.
Now how do you stop Big Brother from tapping this info? You KNOW they're gonna wanna give this thing an IP address that maps to your Social Security Number and is able to broadcast on wireless networks...
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
advocacy, informational website
Discusses OBDII, not from a completely unbiased source
information is accurate, some of it is incomplete though
Straight from the horses mouth,
US Environmental Protection Agency
More information than you care to read, in the search box, enter 'OBDII' without single quotes. This should enlighten you on the original intent of the OBD legislation, as well as the legal basis it stands on(see also, Clean Air Act,1970)
If you care about the future, this one is more serious than most as far as privacy goes. Please, please, if you don't ever write your representative again, write about this.
Here's a breakdown of OBDIII, what it means for your car, and what it means for your privacy
OBDIII summarized at University of Minnesota, Mechanical Engineering dept.
This talks about the current status of diagnostics, legislation, and what's coming on the horizon like locus in egypt.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
OK, if everyone'e car had one of these devices it would make reconstruction of an accident a bit easier. However what happens if you're in an accident with someone who drives an older car?
Would the other driver be able to introduce your black box into evidence even though he had no such box? So he could say "I swear that I was driving within the speed limits, the black box shows that the other guy was going 5 MPH over the limit, therefore the accident was clearly his fault." You could only prove the speed of the car with the black box, not the other car.
That frightens me because it would only give a biased view of the accident. Maybe I sped up to avoid his speeding car. Maybe I was blindsided so I didn't hit the breaks. But only my black box would be revealed, so I'd be the only one with direct proof against him.
The article posted shows a very clear-cut example of how this technology could be good, and does not give any example of how it could be misused. Heck, by reading the article, you'd agree that a non-consenting blood alcohol test would be a good idea, but that clearly was not permissible in this case. Why would a non-consenting black-box reading be permissible? Why are the two things different?