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California Protects Black-Box Data Privacy
Snowgen writes "According to a story at SFGate.com, California has recently passed a law regulating the little black boxes found in many modern automobiles. The new law requires that manufacturers disclose the existence of such boxes in the vehicle's operators' manual. The law also prohibits the use of data from such boxes without a court order or the permission of the vehicle's owner, unless the data is used in such a way that it can not be traced back to the owner."
The new law requires that manufacturers disclose the existence of such boxes in the vehicle's operators' manual
Who reads the manual?
SCO to Hell
Easy. Ask yourself, "Did I do that at thair age?" If the answer's yes, then odds are they're doing it
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
So what they mean is, unless you get sued... You crash a car into someone. You say you were going under the limit, the insurance company knows your car has one of these black boxes in it. Insurance company says to court "we don't think he was going the limit due to skid marks/someone saying he looked like he was going pretty fast/previous record", gets court order, information obtained, insurance claim denied. say the person you hit wants a piece of the actio, they say "his insurance company isn't paying out, I think he was going too fast, give me the black box data", gets a court order, sues your ass off.
So basically it's as useful as the constitutional amendments that begin "Congress shall make no law..." and end in "unless it makes a law that says it can"
California is a weird state but sometimes ... they get things right. I'm impressed (and a bit shaken ... I didn't know the OBD modules were being used that way.)
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The collection of vehicle control evidence is a crucial step in the investigation of traffic accidents. Sheltering that information from the authorities has only one purpose, to shield delinquent drivers from retribution for their unlawful acts.C T-style.
I think we've already been through the loop about "If you aren't ${someevilthing}, then you have nothing to worry about." Well, haven't you ever been late to a critical meeting and gone 10mph above the limit? Haven't you ever forgotten to buckle your seatbelt? And don't even get me started on video/audio data collection... My conversations within a car are indeed private, and should not be accesible by the police, the SS or DHS, or what ever. Especially not at-a-distance-we-don't-have-to-tell-you-PATRIOT-A
Shall we also say again that driving a car is a mere PRIVILEGE and far from being a right????
That very well may be, and probably is, but the possesion of that privilege does not nullify a more fundamental right to privacy.
#define DRM chmod 000
...if my insurance company in exchange would give me a sizable break on my $$$ premiums.
That's fine by me, but only so long as I'm allowed to remotely download the black box of any police car whenever I choose.
before going to court *you* should get your box's data analyzed by a third party. Obviously you have a right to view the data contained within your own automobile. This law doesn't restrict your personal use.
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This does nothig to protect a person from the abuse of the information when they Rent a car (c.f. the story of the "speeding penalty" enacted by the one rental agency) or when a person has a "company car".
Finally, one wonders whether this separates the purchasers and leasees of cars into two separately and unequally protected classes.
After all, if you lease a car, your leasing company owns it. So the police could end-around and make a request of them to access the black-box.
Then again, section 215 lets the FBI do any dang thing they want in the search and seizure arena despite the Constitution.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Who's to say what is speeding? Without data to confirm the speed of the cars around you, who's to say you were just not keeping up with traffic? On most roads/highways (at least here in Ontario) a slower driver is more likely to cause accidents due to pissed off people trying to pass. Unless there is data regarding the speed of everyone around you, your argument can just be "I was just going as fast as everyone around me". There would be no way to prove either side of this 100% without data from all the cars around you. Eyewitnesses don't count as most people under/over estimate speed by quite a bit..
Just my thoughts
K Man
Absolutely. However, should one choose to break the law and that choice becomes a contributing factor in an accident, then the individual should be held responsible for making that choice.
Davis took a big hit with motorists when he jacked up license fees. He's trying to mitigate that damage. You have the recall to thank for that, and anything other pro-motorist acts that mysteriously get signed during the next two weeks. Feel free to fall for it.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I'm still convinced that we're headed toward having these things in all of cars.
We'll probably have our speeds monitored (and our insurance companies notified or even worse, our bank accounts debited) in real time.
Nothing we can do about it. The roads will still have posted speed limits of 55, even though the practical speed of traffic flow is closer to 70. Care to complain? Hey - you were speeding, we have the black box to prove it. Great source of revenue for the states and insurance companies for whom state legislatures have been creating traffic penalties to enrich them.
Downloading content on a public network is an eminently public act, and those who do it shall have no more expectations of privacy than someone picking his nose in front of Sack's Fifth Avenue on the morning rush-hour.
The subpenaing of personally identifying information is a crucial step in the investigation of copyright violations. Sheltering that information from the RIAA has only one purpose, to shield delinquent downloaders from retribution for their unlawful acts.
Even moreso, all online activities should be associated with personal identifying information, and be downloadable at distance by law enforcement.
Shall we also say again that using the internet is a mere PRIVILEGE and far from being a right????
Like bascially all laws (such as copyright laws), traffic laws are designed with a certain amount of assumed flexibility in enforcement: flexibility that is destroyed by complete and mandatory disclosing of all data.
My parallel is slightly tongue in cheek... but only slightly. And I can adapt your argument the same way for almost anything. For example, the existance of cash in our economy allows a great deal of crime to take place, because it grants a certain anonymity. Do you really espouse the complete desctruction of the idea of anonymity in our society, in place of a big-brotheresque system that enforces total accountability of everything?
What privacy? There never, ever, was any privacy, nor any to be expected, when publicly driving a car in plain public view in the middle of a street.
There was never, ever, any kind of privacy in operating a vehicle on the road.
So? I am merely restating that driving **IS** a privilege, because people think it's a right.
Damn fine well they can. The State has the obligation to see to public safety, and any hazard towards public safety shall be eradicated as swiftly as possible.
It is still **REQUIRED** to be allowed to drive a car. Just like one is **REQUIRED** to be licensed to be called an engineer.
Just like you have to ***EARN*** your driving license.
You just proven my point.
A right is far more important than a privilege. You have the right to go free; removing that right, by jailing you, is a pretty involved process. By contrast, pulling your driving privilege is far more easier to do.
I would damn well be affected by such a law, because it would tremenduously increase the road safety, and thus decrease the likelihood of me being hit by a car whenever I'm walking (on the sidewalk) or riding my bicycle.
No, I don't give a flying fuck about what motorist say, I don't have to because everything is done for them and they certainly never listen to others, and nothing is done for pedestrians, public tr
The "Black Box" system that everyone is crying about is part of the OBDII standard, or On Board Diagnostics that all cars produced since the early 90's are required to support. This is a set of standards that includes what data is to be accessible via diagnostics. There are several modes of retrieving data, and they are all intended for aiding in diagnosing the emissions welness of the vehicle as well as other faults your vehilce may encounter. The feature that has everyone up in arms is the "Freeze frame data" feature of OBD-II. What this does is, whenever there is a sensor fault (Ie: front of your car gets blown up in a collision, or something simple like your Oxygen sensor goes bad), the previous 5-30 seconds of data (varies depending on the car) is logged to *aid the technitian* in diagnosing the fault. Unfortunately, someone figured out that when you get in a wreck, there's usually some sort of sensor fault, and the car's computer conviently records a lot of variables relevent to the collision.
It is impossible to remove this "black box" because on any car that supports OBD, *EVERY* computer in the car logs some sort of data. The important stuff is logged in the same computer that controls how your engine runs. It IS possible to clear the data using a diagnostic tool designed to do so. See the SAE J1979 standard if you're interested learning how to do this.