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GPS Maker TomTom Submits Your Speed Data To Police
An anonymous reader writes "The GPS systems in TomTom's Live range all feature built-in 3G data cards, which feed location and route information back to a central server. According to CNET, this data, along with users' speed information, is being made available to local governments and the police."
From the article: "Knowing the cops can see where you're driving and how fast you're going is eye-opening stuff, but TomTom says the data is anonymous and can never be traced back to an individual user or device. Ordinarily, we'd be reassured by this, but we recall Apple saying something similar before the location-tracking excrement hit the phone-carrying fan."
No. Those cameras cause accidents. Speeding is not a danger. People noticing the cameras and ramming their brakes on is.
I have fond memories of the idiot who slammed their brakes on in front of me to haul down to 50mph on seeing a speed camera, even though we were already driving at 70mph in a 70mph speed limit.
Fortunately I drive at a safe distance from the car in front; if I'd been an idiot tailgater I'd have gone straight into the back of them.
I don't have a TomTom (got an Android and TomTom in the same birthday), but I don't believe you have to register for any TomTom service, you just buy the thing, plug it in, and it does map-stuff. Unless you sign up for their map update service, I doubt they HAVE your information to give to LEOs. What can they tell you, the serial number of the unit in your car? I'm sure law enforcement, with the ten minutes a month they don't spend trying to hunt down people with insignificant personal quantities of marijuana, will set up a checkpoint so they can check the serial numbers of every TomTom looking for that bastard with serial #93824920535326469 who went 5 miles over the speed limit last week at 4am.