Networked Cars: Good For Safety, Bad For Privacy

jfruh writes "Networked cars — cars that can identify each other's location and prevent collisions — are coming soon, and will be a boon for safety, with one estimate having them cut accidents by 70 percent. But what happens to all the data the car will collect — about your location and driving behavior? It's worrisome that nobody seems to be thinking seriously about the privacy side of the equation."

Comments

They don't have to be (just generate a GUID)

[zbobet2012]

They don't have to be, if you just generate a guid for each trip rather than for a single car for its life time the problem is solved.

Re:They don't have to be (just generate a GUID)

[js33]

Yes that's possible in theory, but we all know in practice that never happens. There is absolutely no way on earth that a bunch of proprietary computerized networked gimmickry required to be in your car will ever be designed to protect your privacy. Money and power will inevitably demand unfettered corporate and government access to this data as well as extra restrictions on your own access to it.

Re:They don't have to be (just generate a GUID)

[wvmarle]

For networking cars and collission avoidance, you don't need to know which individual car is where. Just like when you're driving now, you see "oh, there's a car", not "oh, there's car nr KW1234". Which car there is, doesn't matter. Just that there is a car.

Network communication can for sure also be set up in that manner. Using a random ID for each connection (of course you need something to identify a connection) should be good enough. No need to log which cars you encountered, it's not even needed to log that you encountered a car.

Ask a human driver about their trip, how many cars they enountered, and they don't know. No-one remembers, as it's totally unimportant. You often don't remember which traffic light was red, and which was green. Unless something out of the ordinary happens most people don't have any memory of a routine trip, other than that they did it.

Re:They don't have to be (just generate a GUID)

[Tom]

(accident detection isn't that hard: hard breaking, impact, strange manoeuvring, etc)

It isn't hard until you try to actually write code that details what exactly counts as "strange maneuvering", for example. Then it becomes not only hard, but filled with legal trouble. If you record too little, people will whine. If you record too much, people will whine. Basically, no matter what you do, it'll be wrong.

I agree with the use of having a log of what happened just before an accident, but there is no need to keep all the data of all your trips at all times just because an accident might happen. And most people luckily can drive for many years without being involved in an accident.

Agreed on that, but here's a much simpler solution: Keep the data with the car. Encrypt it and store the recovery key with the car papers in your home. Law enforcement has the usual ways of forcing you to hand over the keys in case of an accident, but the data can't be accessed by data collectors just because they can.

Re:They don't have to be (just generate a GUID)

[shentino]

There's this thing called "probable cause" that nicely balances the state's need to prevent crime with my need for privacy.

If they want to search my trip logs they can go to a judge and get a fucking warrant first.

Otherwise they can keep their nose out of my business and let me join the pursuit of happiness without government interference.

Government snooping is interference no matter how benign its intentions. The TSA holding up the line for searches is just one example of many of government paranoia turning into a hassle for me.

If the feds can't come up with a good reason to mess with my life they need to stay the hell out of my way so I can go on about my business.

Because even if I have nothing to hide, putting my own life on hold to satiate their curiosity is a waste of my time.

And that's assuming a rogue hacker doesn't bust through the government's firewalls and scoop up my personal information.

Even a well meaning government that is incompetent can cause trouble if my information falls into the wrong hands.

All the more reason for the government not to possess it in the first place unless they actually need it. Fewer ways to fail, and it keeps my tax dollars from being wasted on precious man hours diverted to rummaging through personal lives that are better off left alone.

Worse?

[Dan East]

Um, considering that more than likely, every person in the car is already being tracked at a personal level via their cell phone (and other devices, such as tablets, etc), I don't see this as being all that much worse than the de facto privacy of the modern digital world.

make human drivers illegal

[ThorGod]

I know our entire world is built against it, at the moment. But I hope that, sometime in my life, robotic systems replace humans in the driver's seat. Driving is one task we humans seem inept at safely executing. It makes sense, most of the time in a car is uneventful. It's the 5% of the time where something really bizarre happens that we have to be prepared for the rest of the time. But human attention span doesn't work that way and so people get lazy, start slurping sodas (or worse), and people wind up dead. So, I hope to see the human driver become a thing of the past in my lifetime. It may not happen, but it is worthy of working toward.

Re:This is why we cant have nice things

[PSVMOrnot]

While there are instances where privacy concerns are legitimate, in cases like this it is my opinion (yes I'm entitled to it, no you dont have to like it or agree with it, and so what if you dont) that the only people concerned with the what if's and maybe's are those who do not abide the law.

Privacy isn't always about hiding wrong-doing; it's about hiding things that some people are too narrow minded or ignorant to understand and accept.

So I believe it would be more accurate would be to say that those who are concerned with the what if's and the maybe's are those who understand that not everyone does - or even should - conform to societies idea of normal. These are the sort of people who understand that in any system there are edge cases, things which are not quite as they seem on the surface and actively try to design around such flaws. These are the programmers, the designers, the engineers of our society.

These are the people who try to make sure that you can pick up your drunken college buddy from a gay bar at 0-dark-30, and not have it bite you in the ass should you later try to run for public office. These are the people who try to prevent you from being labelled a terrorist simply because your club happens to share a community building with an unpopular religion. These are the people who try to to prevent pediatricians from being lynched because some idiots can't tell the difference between a Doctor specializing in children and a pedophile.

So, in future when you are about to call someone paranoid over issues such as this, please consider: it may be that they have realized that what may seem to be a simple system, when applied on a national or international scale, becomes a system in which even relatively small errors can destroy lives.