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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."
...can be found here.
Finally a reason to be proud of california
Getting Rid of Spam, *AND* protecting us from little black boxes. I'm starting to dig this whole recall thing...
It sure is helping us little guys...
Shoot.
How the heck am I going to determine if my kids have been:
1. speeding
2. not wearing seatbelt
3. popping air-bags
4. drifting
5. figure-eighting
6. parking off a secluded roadside
Big brother, I miss ya!
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"
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.
Even moreso, vehicular event recorders should hold at least 30 minutes of data, including video data, and be downloadable at distance by law enforcement.
Shall we also say again that driving a car is a mere PRIVILEGE and far from being a right????
The manufacturer could paint the box blue.
Now if only the government gave the foggiest shit about electronic privacy. People understand "little black box sitting in your car", and they just don't seem to get the other privacy atrocities that go on every day.
For those interested, here is a link to the text of Assembly Bill 213, sponsored by Assemblyman Tim Leslie:
CA Assembly Bill 213
...if my insurance company in exchange would give me a sizable break on my $$$ premiums.
The recording is made in a constant 5 second loop to normal RAM. As soon as an airbag deployment event (or "near deployment" - whatever that means) occurs that 5 seconds of RAM data is copied to non-volatile write-once RAM. That is why you need to replace your SDM (Sensing Diagnostic Module) after the air bags have been deployed.
Speaking of car manuals, too bad more people wouldn't read them. Here in Canada most cars are equipped with daytime running lights which engage a low power high beam when the car is running (it increases visibility, even in bright clear days). The problem is that people tend to be overly paranoid about their car battery at the drive-in, so they incessantly start and then turn off their car. The little tidbit in most manuals, however, is that engaging your parking brake (including in automatics) before turning on the car turns off the daytime running lights. Just a little factoid to be aware of.
Of course I didn't learn this from the manual (though I verified that it was there): I discovered it after running out from the car and returning with the parking brake engaged.
My understanding is that they are quickly becoming an intrigal part of the on-board computer. If that's true then removal might not be very safe and would definitely void your warranty....
Reading a manual when you first buy something or start a project is fine. It only makes you less of a man if you start on a project and have to look at the manual halfway through. Then you're admitting defeat.
Drive in?
You guys are like really still in the 90's arn't you? Btw when 2000 comes along for you, dont worry its a bunch of hype.
Not really, but seriously I renember seeing that when I was a kid, but are you sure its car battery paranoia or defrosting their windows and heating the air?
see: US Code Title 15, Chapter 60, sections 2301-2312
I've been making modifications to my vehicles for years, and never had warranty claims problems on other ares of the vehicle. I've completely replaced the *entire* computer on my ducati and it's still covered. The new computer is not, but the rest of the bike that the manufacturer provided is.
Revolutions are never about freedom or justice. They're about who's going to be top dog. -- Kilgore Trout
We have the right to travel freely. Driving is a form of transportation. Is it realistic to say that someone does not need to drive in society today in general? For a large percentage of us, driving is something we need to be able to do.
Not being able to drive is a pretty serious limit on ones freedom to travel.
If driving is indeed a right, by nature, why then do we license it? Safety. Those that do drive have a reasonable expectation of safe roads and qualified drivers. Driving is a right that can be lost if exercised irresponsibly just as many other rights can be.
Let me put it this way. If someone demonstrates they are qualified to drive, is there a reason why they should not get a license? Do they have any expectation such denial will occur? Of course not because everyone has a right to drive provided they do not abuse other people rights while exercising theirs. (Hitting someone with your car infringes on their right to live and prosper for example.)
We deny someone their ability to drive as punishment for poor execution, not because we can. Same for other rights. You might lose your right to move freely if you use that right to kill someone for example. 'nuff said about that, either we agree or not, but I wanted to have the other view present on this thread.
I agree with you regarding driving being a public act, however that does not, in itself, support your idea that law enforcement should be able to access this device at a distance. I think it does support the traffic accident reporting particularly when people are killed. The survivors or other interested parties need to know what happened so the correct decisions can be made. Nothing but good there.
The main problem I have with your distance query is the same problem I have with automated speed detectors; namely, that we should be judged by our peers. That is how the law is written and it is one of the founding principles of this country.
Getting a ticket for doing 5 miles over by an automated machine is simply a tax, nothing more. Think about it. What is punishment without explanation. It's cruel and pointless.
Getting that same ticket because a warm body thought you might deserve it (or not) for some reason is being judged by your peers. That peer who chooses, or not, to write you that ticket will, in the case of writing it, let you know why it is being done and what you should do to avoid having it happen again. That action is what justice and law enforcement are all about. Those same actions can be shown to benefit society in a measurable way.
Those tickets from the automated machine, justifed or not, are simply a tax because no justice was done, no peer involvment took place; thus no corrective action and benefit to society will happen as a result.
So, a cop might download the last 20 minutes of driving. Lets say they do it right after people have traveled down an incline. Every last one of them will be speeding somewhat because that is what the vehicle naturally wants to do in that case. Our law enforcement could then write a ticket, or heck mail a bunch of them without having seen or judged the act.
A possible result: Navigating in traffic down an incline gets more dangerous as everyone concentrates on over control of their vehicle fearing an unwarranted ticket instead of the task at hand; namely, getting down that incline along with everyone else in an orderly manner.
This is exactly why I choose older cars. I can know completly the technologies used and how they will affect me. You don't want too old of a car because you lose the benefit of ongoing engineering however.
Good for California, they want people to know they might be judged in an automated fashion. Knowing the device is there makes a difference in how people react to it. This goes to another right we should have:
We all should have the right of full disclosure on any technology we make use of. If it does something without telling us, it is doing something wrong and potentially harmful that we should know about.
Blogging because I can...
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.