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Black Boxes In Cars Raise Privacy Concerns
hessian writes "In the next few days, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected to propose long-delayed regulations requiring auto manufacturers to include event data recorders — better known as 'black boxes' — in all new cars and light trucks. But the agency is behind the curve. Automakers have been quietly tucking the devices, which automatically record the actions of drivers and the responses of their vehicles in a continuous information loop, into most new cars for years. Data collected by the recorders is increasingly showing up in lawsuits, criminal cases and high-profile accidents. Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray initially said that he wasn't speeding and that he was wearing his seat belt when he crashed a government-owned car last year. But the Ford Crown Victoria's data recorder told a different story: It showed the car was traveling more than 100 mph and Murray wasn't belted in."
I was born and raised in Massachusetts and this is just the culture of the State Police. Anyone who regularly drives on the highways has been passed by a cruiser with it's lights off doing 90 in the passing lane. After his first lies didn't pan out he retcon'd a new story about being asleep that fit the black box data.
I live in the United States, where people enjoy the right to not testify against themselves. That means nothing if a person is forced to pay for and travel with a device that will record possibly incriminating testimony which must then be surrendered to the courts. Sorry, but the right to be free from self-incrimination is the historically progressive innovation here. What you're talking about belongs to the days of the Inquisition. From the way you tell it, it seems like it's the Old World that's a little behind on the times.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
- Last time I checked it wasn't slashdot.us either
- Yes, even americans do wander in some "foreign" websites (as if it meant anything on internet) and voice their opinions. What's wrong with it either way ?
Those rules will change. For safety. Always for safety. First it will be unavailable. Then it will be logged for "simplicity and ease of access" but only by a court order. Then a court order will become easier to get. Then it will be rubber stamped. Then any police department will be able to access the data.
And don't say "slippery slope fallacy". It's only a fallacy when there's no clear way for it to progress that way. Just like security cameras, traffic cameras, and phone records are sliding that way black boxes will.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I live in the United States, where people enjoy the right to not testify against themselves. That means nothing if a person is forced to pay for and travel with a device that will record possibly incriminating testimony which must then be surrendered to the courts. Sorry, but the right to be free from self-incrimination is the historically progressive innovation here. What you're talking about belongs to the days of the Inquisition. From the way you tell it, it seems like it's the Old World that's a little behind on the times.
In this case the vehicle was not owned by him, it is owned by the employer i.e. the government who has every right to sue and claim damages of their property and also have the right to instal any sort of device on their car without requiring the consent but the after disclosing the fact to the user.
That's the particular problem with this 'black box' is people are going to think it's like an airplanes black box. Airplanes have people looking at them to make sure all the sensors are working. Your car, maybe once a year at inspection. I have an older car that the seat belt sensor sometimes says I'm not buckled in, which is wrong, I feel naked without the buckle on. But, if I got in a wreck and the sensor showed me not buckled in, I'd have a job of proving I was.
I have a feeling that lawyers will turn this in to a fiasco of prove your 'black box' isn't making shit up, in which they will be right to do.
Just look at what you wrote, think about the meaning you were apparently trying to convey, then about what meaning was actually conveyed.
America's a big place with lots of different people. Some of them are interested in the wider world, some aren't. I've met some of the most ignorant (racist) and provincial people in Europe, but I don't extrapolate that to EVERY EUROPEAN.
I would like to say thank you for pointing this out!! It goes both ways! It can help prove your innocence as well!
As someone who was involved in a fatal traffic accident where a 14 year old boy skateboarded out into the middle of the road in front of my truck(it was pitch dark out, the kid was wearing ALL black with no protection crossing a busy/main 4 lane road, oh and from the toxicology report, stoned off his ass), without that black box in my truck I would be in jail for manslaughter right now. The reasons for such is that the police were able to identify 1) Speed information before and after crash 2) Braking information - When did I apply my brakes, How long did it take to reach a complete stop, etc. 3) Steering Information/Angle 4) Seat belt information 5)Impact information and with this information they were able to ascertain that there was no possible way for me to stop in time without my prior speed having been an endangerment to other drivers (35 in a 55 zone to have stopped in time based on where I was first able to see the kid).