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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."
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.
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.
Better known as 318230.
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.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
There's a giant plate identifying me or the driver on the back of the car(and in most states, front too).
Given the chance of damage I don't know if privacy is something I want in a car.
You're not thinking long or deep enough.
Yes, everyone could theoretically be followed and logged today. Currently, that is far too time consuming. But this type of thing, and ANPR, has the potential to store everyones movements, forever.
You are not interesting enough to worry about today. But a decade from now, when you decide to run for school board or state congress...you will be interesting to your opponent.
For the price of a case of beer to his brother in law the cop....your opponent can delve into all of your movements for the last decade with a simple SQL statement. "Oh look... RyuuzakiTetsuya frequented a gay bar back in 2013!"
(Yes, you were just there with some college buddies, no big deal. But now you have to defend against the increasingly negative political ads - and in some areas of the country, that type of thing matters)
All of your movements, everyone you hang out with...on someone else's server, forever.
FTFA:
Because the cars in the Ann Arbor test only need to know the location of other vehicles within 300 meters, there’s no need to connect to the Internet or record your car’s location, says van der Jagt. And since the system doesn’t collect any data from the car’s registration or VIN, there’s no way for Ford or anyone else to know who you are and where you’re going, he adds.
You're right, and came to the same conclusion the car makers did. The article writer is assuming that they'll start recording and sharing this data, and explains why it would be bad if that happens. (Kinda tautological.) It's similar to arguing that we should have never invented tabulating machines (and later computers) because they could be used by someone like the Nazis. That's a very regressive argument, but the author expands it. His point is that the privacy invading features could later be added, not that they exist now. (So we shouldn't develop anything at all, because everything is a prerequisite technology for something evil.)
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.