Networked Cars: Good For Safety, Bad For Privacy 327
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 (just generate a GUID) (Score:5, Insightful)
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Am I doin it rite?
O I forgot, this is corporate America (FUCK YEAH!)
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Re:They don't have to be (just generate a GUID) (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yay. Finally, we'll be able to get rid of all those license plate scanners in police cars and along roadways.
Doh, now they'll be replaced with smaller, cheaper, more accurate devices that log all the info your car is broadcasting.
Of course, it'll be easier for criminals to subvert, because now they won't have to have a fake license plate, they can just broadcast fake info.
Win-win-win for everyone!
Re:They don't have to be (just generate a GUID) (Score:4, Interesting)
What I think will be interesting is, once ubiquitous data is available on all peoples' behaviour at all times (and it will be, sooner or later), whether public pressure builds to change some of our stupider laws. There are a great number of laws which in principle are not always what the average person would call 'just' - but we tolerate them because 'they're only applied to bad people'. Once automated law enforcement is implemented, people will start realising just how important discretion is, or alternately, just how many laws should be fixed or repealed.
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Unless you feel entitled to speed (or otherwise break the road rules) sometimes.
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear! Just let the government install surveillance cameras in every room of your house. What are you hiding? And because it's theoretically possible (but highly unlikely) for individuals to overthrow the government, the government is made up of perfect beings who could never harm you and could never make mistakes.
I couldn't care less if I get drug tested because I don't use them.
I don't use them, but I care for other people. It's bad because it punishes people who don't do drugs simply because there are people that do. Much like the TSA.
You do too, or you wouldn't object.
No, I ju
Re:They don't have to be (just generate a GUID) (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:They don't have to be (just generate a GUID) (Score:4, Insightful)
I couldn't care less if I get drug tested because I don't use them. If I did, I'd be all about the "privacy issues" surrounding drug testing.
We live in a world where you can be fired for eating a poppyseed muffin, if it suits HR. You should care, this is about basic personal rights. I guess you never read the poem about how there being no one left to stand up for you when they come to get you. You are a sorry excuse for a citizen.
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Re:They don't have to be (just generate a GUID) (Score:5, Insightful)
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) (Score:5, Informative)
One moment there are two cars near you; one to the left and on a long distance in front of you. A few seconds later there is a car to the left and one very closely in front of you. Does it make a difference if the car in front of you now has just overtaken you (soon to be followed by another car already on your left) or whether it was the car a long distance away that is standing still?
Traffic is dynamic, so you need to be able to track all it's dynamic components.
You may not read license plates, but you are identifying and remembering cars near you all the time.
Re:They don't have to be (just generate a GUID) (Score:5, Insightful)
(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.
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128 bits ought to be enough for everyone.
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i don't know ... (Score:3)
... what you are doing, but you better start looking for a lawyer :-)
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Yeah and all those other idiots are speeding because everyone else is too.
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Which is one reason why the police usually pull over one of the lead drivers as everybody else is usually required to drive with the flow of traffic. And it's not random at all. As long as you're not the first driver and speeding, you're not going to be pulled over for speeding. What's more, the odds go up drastically when you're engaged in other dangerous practices like sudden starts and stops and weaving between lanes. If you're just going with the flow of traffic you're not going to get a ticket.
By the s
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Driving with the flow of traffic is one thing, speeding is another. Just because someone else is speeding doesn't make it OK for you to speed as well. A cop may pull over just the first one, or a random in-between one, a speed camera will take photos of everyone and fines will be mailed to everyone.
And on the "too slow" driving: the only roads that I know with minimum speeds are motorways. Cyclists are not allowed there of course, nor are vehicles like mopeds, farm vehicles, and other motor vehicles that ca
Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Worse? (Score:4, Interesting)
So make vehicles only identify where they are (and how fast they're moving, etc). You don't have to put an ID to every vehicle...just like a you don't have to identify individual electrons to direct electron flow competently.
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In the absence of "smart infrastructure" (which has far more dramatic "Big Brother" concerns), to get the dramatic traffic-flow benefits cars need to "discuss" what's going on around/ahead of them, which is simplified by giving each car a unique "name" (ID), not to mention that networked communication typically requires a unique ID such as a MAC address, which provides a convenient ready-made name.
Your vehicle can probably only directly detect the vehicles immediately adjacent to it, to build a picture larg
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Not to mention they advertise their every move on Facebook or Twitter
Exactly. Just because THEY don't value their privacy, doesn't me WE don't a have right to ours.
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That's a good point! Insurance wont go the way of a dinosaur, but it should get so cheap as to be negligible.
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Consider the following situation - you get into an accident with another person. Records show that you generally stay within the
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Yep you are basically saying that the information is only viewable in specific instances.
Its only when someone has access to it without a specific reason when you get privacy implications.
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Not worried. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not worried. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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I openly frequent gay bars now. Your point?
I mean, yes, my movements could be tracked and blah blah blah. On foot, bad idea. Sure, I'll grant that. But right now I don't have a car. I live in Brooklyn, I take mass transit everywhere. My metro card identifies me and tracks me.
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The point, as you probably are aware, is that we currently tend to reject anyone we see dirt on.
You visited a gay bar - you're not like me, I should break off our friendship. Or you posted a drunken party to Facebook, can I risk my company's image by employing you? Or ... etc. At the moment most of what we do is not carefully tracked and tagged to us, so we can do normal things with a reasonable expectation that it won't get dredged up out of context. However as tracking becomes more prevalent, that assumpt
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But who knows, maybe the next generation will require their leaders to have lived their entire lives squeaky clean.
i suspect that the existing ruling elite will learn to teach their kids how to avoid leaving "incriminating stuff" online, teach to avoid facebook etc. after all their kids will be brought up to know that they are likely to be the ruling elite and will understand the need. the average joe however doesn't believe he or his kids will ever be in the public eye so won't bother.
the upshot will be
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But who knows, maybe the next generation will require their leaders to have lived their entire lives squeaky clean.
i suspect that the existing ruling elite will learn to teach their kids how to avoid leaving "incriminating stuff" online, teach to avoid facebook etc. after all their kids will be brought up to know that they are likely to be the ruling elite and will understand the need.
Or, they will hire a professional "Face" to be the public face of their offspring, while protecting the real offspring with jamming devices against recording... said offspring will meanwhile indulge in building pyramids for their afterlife until the whole egypt fad fades off... at least according to Kelly Link http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/summer_2011/valley_of_the_girls_by_kelly_link [subterraneanpress.com]
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I believe that while security concerns are valid, but it ignores the advance we get from the technology.
Privacy isn't a technological problem to solve by rejecting what's new just because. It's a social one and if we are comfortable with having no privacy, don't blame google or Honda or whoever, let's fix the problem and don't blame the companies involved and not be so complacent.
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I don't quite get what you mean.
"... it ignores the advances we get from the technology..."
So when assessing the benefit of something (in this case networked cars) we should weigh privacy fairly against the benefit (safety)
"if we are comfortable with having no privacy, don't blame ..."
This is where I was a bit lost. The point was having your location history accessible to the police is a loss of privacy. That loss came as a side-effect of some new technology which makes the world a safer place. I don't s
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Yes, everyone could theoretically be followed and logged today. Currently, that is far too time consuming.
Oh really? [ted.com]
Re:Not worried. (Score:5, Interesting)
has the potential to store everyones movements, forever.
*sigh* People who know nothing about privacy worrying about privacy...
No, it does not store anyones' movements. It stores an ID chips movements. Ten years ago there was a panel discussion about the coupon cards (or whatever you call them in your part of the world) that were just emerging. You know, these PayBack and whatever "customer cards" that give you a few % off if you put them down when shopping? And which, of course, log your shopping habbits and send them back to some big database to be datamined? I'm fairly confident (and said so) that the company doesn't give a flying fuck about you, they are looking for large patterns - e.g. x% of people who buy A are also buying B so maybe we should move the locations of A and B in the shop around.
However, there was a simple solution to the privacy problem that I suggested and that was immediately executed by a few people in the audience: Stand up and exchange your card with someone else. Repeat every now and then.
So you are worried that someone is tracking your car? Talk to your neighbour. Drive his car for a week while he drives yours. Borrow a car from a friend for your trip down to the local strip club. Switch cars with your wife more often. Of stop owning a car and rent one every now and then.
Sure, it isn't as simple as exchanging a card, but do you really care about privacy or are you just whining?
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I understand that, as you can see if you finish reading my post. I simply don't see why allowing a peek into my shopping profile should automatically lead to a dossier about me, a particular shopper, rather than an anonymous profile of a class of shopper.
Because that is the deal you sign when you sign up for that that discount card. If you don't like it, then don't do it. It really is that simple.
Now if you want to have your cake and it it, too - then that's what I consider whining. Either your privacy is worth the few bucks you pay more than the guy who does a virtual strip every shopping trip, or it isn't.
Good for you. I assume that you feel you don't need to worry about your privacy right now because of your particular situation, so you don't care about other's privacy or what will happen when your own particular circumstances change.
I maintain that you have a choice. Sure, sometimes that choice is more difficult (like when you don't have much money, those few bucks might really matt
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Only politicians? How about your soon to be ex's lawyer? They're already doing that with EZPass.
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I'm sorry, but isn't transparency something we'd like more from politicians???
Yes, and because it is something we would like to have, they will be the first group to become exceptions to the law.
And yes, this is EXACTLY how it will play out, under the guise of "protecting our public servants" or some other bullshit excuse to protect THEIR privacy and NOT yours.
Don't mark my words. Feel free to bet on them. Any moron can see it's a guaranteed winning bet. All you have to do is open a history book.
They are thinking VERY seriously about it (Score:4, Informative)
And the outcome doesn't look positive. Police/Feds/DHS/TSA are all salivating over this - they're thinking exactly how to collect, store and use this information.
make human drivers illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:make human drivers illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and the vitriol the AC expresses proves my point better than a thousand words could. People get emotionally clouded, distracted, or even just fail to register all information (because we only have 2 eyes after all). It's best if they're not in charge of piloting thousands of pounds of metal at speed.
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Can you point at anything that substantiates that statement?
Or is this just another un-substantiated opinion?
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The alternative would be to assert that most people *are* injured in an auto accident at some point, which seems a less likely assertion - how many of your friends have been injured in an accident?
Most people being involved in a minor fender bender at some point in their lives I might believe, maybe even an average lifetime accident injury rate above 50% since it would be heavily skewed by repeat offenders. But if you're claiming a majority of people do get injured in an auto accident at some point, well t
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..and of course machines will be perfect right? where have I heard this before? With computer driven cars, you're one blocked/failed sensor away from a computer that will happily drive you and everyone else in that area off a cliff with no ability to override because 'computers never lie.' ..and of course the state and corporates won't want to use that power to dictate when and where you may travel, right??
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No you will be probably about a half dozen failed sensors away from that scenario.
Multiple, redundant, and different technologies. That will be the mantra.
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Well I'm sure, but what about the algorithms? that's where this gets tricky.. I guarantee there's no way for even the brightest engineers to account for everything that can happen on the street. The technology is far away from the 'infinite safety' the safetards around here assume for anything driven by computers. The fact we can't even get network security right in sensitive equipment driven by them (eg SCADA) does not make me hopeful for future developments.
If safety, and not control, is the real motiva
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Well, what we have now is reasonable and far better than in the past. The cars are about as safe as the laws of physics will allow, as are the roads, over reasonable cost. If anything, they're too safe and insulating, causing the driver to relax too much/get sleepy. Allowing more road noise into the cabin would also go a long way to fixing any inattention issues.
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And no, noise won't help you (there's plenty of it already). The only real thing that can help is to human completely out of the control loop and/or add systems to compensate for inevitable human errors.
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sorry, but traffic is much safer today than it used to be. It's just that society's way too over sensitized now. You talk like machines are infallible. They're not. They're designed and programmed by humans after all. No, the only thing this grants is external control for the more panicky and control freakish humans so they can 'feel' safe and 'empowered' at the expense of others' sanity/rights/happiness/control/other things that make life worth living.
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You talk like machines are infallible. They're not. They're designed and programmed by humans after all.
Yup. And that means that the improvements we make in their programming would be cumulative over time. While each and every human driver has to learn from scratch.
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So build your own fucking road and drive on it. But when you're on a public road - shove your 'responsibility' up your ass and use automatic system.
Because we for many prefer not to be driven into by an idiot who thinks that they can drive 'safely'.
No.
Go build your own fucking totalitarian country where you have no privacy and no freedom.
How dare you attempt to tell everyone they must all give up their privacy and freedom simply to ensure your safety, after so many have given their lives to give freedom to all of us. Trust me, you're not that important. It's not worth even a million just like you.
What hubris!
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
Strat
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Everyone who puts their entire focus on driving is either OCD or driving WAY too fast for conditions.
And most who believe that controlling 3,000 pounds of steel down a narrow lane at 50+MPH somehow doesn't require serious focus and concentration usually end up being nothing but a number...to feed the "it'll never happen to me" death statistics.
We were ALL 110% focused the first few times behind the wheel. Comfort and ignorance changed that mentality, not logic.
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So what's the solution? handing off control to computers programmed to obey the will of some transportation authority run by minimum wage slaves and self-important politicrats? Frankly, I don't care what they think as they're not the ones behind the wheel.
Two million miles (Score:2, Interesting)
In the last ten years alone I have driven two million miles incident free. That is around four times the average American drives in their lifetime. I have three million miles to go before I get a fancy safety bonus. This is normal for professional drivers.
Everyone that can't concentrate for 14 hours straight can't get a professional license. I guess they are more than human.
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I am pretty sure you will be fine with a better driving simulation test (it will simulate all sorts of people driving around you, test your reaction time, etc) then. If you pass you get to drive, if not let a machine drive for you.
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yea, I drive 2 hours a day for the last 8 years, no wrecks, simulate that during rush hour
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well duh, we shouldn't get x-ray'd for doing that either. That's a terrible justification. Your stats suck too because driving is one of the most common things we all do...and equating that with supporting murderers is extremely disingenuous and fallacious.
If our society was mature enough to handle such power centralization without running roughshod over people's rights, you might have a point. Since that's not ever going to happen, I'd rather have the higher risk and keep the control I have over my equi
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Wrong. The average death rate from accidents worldwide is 98 per 100,000 vehicles from the World Health Organization. You have less than .1% chance of dying. And in many countries the rate is closer to .01%.
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Unfortunately, this is because insecurity runs rampant in today's society. It's a natural instinct, of course, as most animals spend large parts of their lives feeling insecure about some aspect of their existence. Will there be food here? Will the herd reject me? Will I be killed by a predator? These questions are a constant instinctive tussle for them, and for humans as well. Thus it is easy to trigger it in people with half assed/manipulated stats and fallacious reasoning. Today, we have a society
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In fact, quote opposite is true. Libertardian rants are modded up more often than not.
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You do realize there has been many advances over the last 50-100 years in being able to see around a vehicle. There has also been a lot of advances in the last 10-20 years about processing that data to the point that it can currently function on a road. (sorry wild speculation time) Over the next 10-20 years these advances will equal then far exceed the two tunnel visioned eyeballs and puny ears you have, as well as the slow reaction time and limited interface to the vehicle.
Some saw this coming... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah's_Children [wikipedia.org]
He even has a part where someone modifies the chip in the car to hide their ID as they slip off a monitored road onto an illegal side road...
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Automation and identification are not codependent (Score:5, Interesting)
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it doesn't 'have' to, but you can be the government (and marketers) will want it to..and they'll want remote control as well.
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If the car was fully automated (self-driving), why would it need to store information on where the owner (or occupant) is? It's basically just personalized mass transit at that point - buses and subways don't report the names of their passengers so why should an automated car?
IANAL, but I believe "personalized" would be the trigger word here. Legally it is likely a matter of ownership, which may be all a lawyer needs to hold anything and everything against YOU, because of the simple fact that it is YOUR car. The burden is now likely upon YOU to prove that it wasn't you driving. Open your checkbook and have fun with that.
Re:Automation and identification are not codepende (Score:5, Informative)
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.)
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This is why we cant have nice things (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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the only people concerned with the what if's and maybe's are those who do not abide the law
Yes! Exactly! A thousand times yes! ;)
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This is why we can't seem to maintain free societies. Insecure people start demanding that safety take precedence over freedom over what if's and maybes, quick derail other's abilities to have a say in their fates before all of civilization falls. While there are instances where safety concerns are legitimate, in cases like this, the only people concerned with the what ifs and maybes are those who are control freaks or have some other agenda driven by unbelievable personal insecurity.
Re:This is why we cant have nice things (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is why we cant have nice things (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
And thus perpetrating the system where ignorant bigots have power.
Think about it, would have it been better if gay activists in 60-s used privacy protection to shield their private lives instead of openly admitting their sexual orientation and fighting for their rights?
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With zero privacy you could be turned down for a job because you use the wrong brand of toothpaste, or because you a black cat crossed your path that morning and you would bring bad luck to the company (of course that wouldn't be the official reason).
So make sure that such behavior is illegal. By supporting, say, worker unions or tougher regulations.
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If they hesitate use that lull in the conversation to assert that you do so, regularly, with his wife. It won't win the argument but it will be hilarious which, really, is all that matters because life is short and we all need a black eye at some point.
Stop trying to stop information -- let more out! (Score:2)
Vehicle data already being sent. (Score:2)
I work on in-vehicle systems and the servers that talk to them. There are plenty of existing, deployed services that combine external information with the location of your vehicle (e.g. concierge, route planning with points of interest, vehicle locator, charge station finder for EVs, geo-fencing, insurance scoring, and many more). For all of these, your location data must be sent to a server. And any in-vehicle system that provides at least some services that need vehicle location, will make a habit of send
Waze (Score:2)
Who REALLY wants this info? (Score:2)
Do you drive 5 pmh over the limit all the time? You're more of a risk and your premiums go up.
Did you slow down and then just blow off a stop sign at 3AM? You're more of a risk and your premiums go up.
You might not have a DUI, but if your car always goes to the parkling lot of ChiChi's Boom Boom Room? You're more of a risk and your premiums go up.
etc.
That's who really wants this data. They want to strangle every last dime out of the consumer before automated cars take over
Re: (Score:2)
And by more of a risk obviously that means you are likely to cost the insurance company more so yes your premiums necessarily should go up.
Ohh, but you're the exception to the risk. I get it. Then shop around and get insurance from a company that will accept your promise that your risky behavior is not a risk to them.
The Black Box (Score:2)
Every car will have data in it like aircraft do. It will know what your actions were, were you were and what you were doing. It's comforting to know my ex wife, the insurance company, the police and the rest of government won't get access to that data. Uh huh. Sure.
Re: (Score:2)
Er... This already happens. Most (new) cars have this installed. Fortunately mine doesn't, but you can bet your ass the first one I buy that DOES will have it immediately removed/deactivated/destroyed.
Simple enough (Score:2)
Remember... (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember when they told us that traffic light cameras wouldn't be used for anything but managing traffic jams at that intersection?
Facebook car (Score:3)
Meet the new Facebook car! Get in, it's free!
Re:Cell Phone (Score:5, Interesting)
Every driver already has a tracking device...
Plus, California uses electronic toll transponders to track cars on the freeways to determine traffic flows.
I thought they used to be more up front about this use, but the only reference I could find on the Bay Area Fastrak site is buried in the terms of use:
http://www.bayareafastrak.com/dynamic/signup/terms.html [bayareafastrak.com]
You agree that the Toll Tag may be read to provide anonymous traffic flow data to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's '511' project, a real time traffic information service. No information identifying a FasTrak account, person or vehicle using the Toll Tag will be collected by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission or '511'. If you do not want your Toll Tag's presence to be noted by '511', remove the Toll Tag from your windshield and place it in the special bag you received with the Toll Tag. Be sure to replace the Toll Tag on your windshield before you enter a FasTrak lane in order to avoid toll violation charges. If you would like additional information about '511', please visit www.511.org.
Re: (Score:2)
No, no they don't
Re: (Score:2)
Don't be silly, insurance rates will rise across the board. After all, all these fancy new electronics make the cars more expensive and therefore more expensive to repair in a crash, therefore, everybody's insurance rates need to go up. Furthermore, insurance rates will rise even more for those of us who refuse to enable the tracking data, as obviously only filthy terrorists would value their privacy.
Re: (Score:2)
Good point. There are some very sophisticated automated driving systems out there, from Google's vehicles to automated race cars which can handle 180mph speeds on challenging tracks in the pouring rain. (And the combination seems like a winner - navigating traffic and controlling a car near it's physical limits in difficult circumstances seem to me to be orthogonal challenges. I'll take both, thanks!) But I can't say that I'd trust auto-makers to secure the systems against hostile interference - these a