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Transportation Privacy United States

Driver Privacy Act Introduced In US Senate 69

greatgreygreengreasy writes "In 2005, then-governor of North Dakota John Hoeven signed into law a bill 'ensuring drivers' ownership of their EDR (Electronic Data Recorder) data.' Now a U.S. senator, Hoeven (R-ND) has teamed up with Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, to introduce similar legislation at the Federal level. 'Under this legislation, EDR data could only be retrieved [for specific reasons].' The EFF has expressed concern in the past over the so-called black boxes and their privacy implications. This legislation, however, would not address the recent revelations by a Ford executive on their access to data, since in those cases, 'The vehicle owner or lessee consents to the data retrieval.' The bill has gained the support of about 20 senators so far."
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Driver Privacy Act Introduced In US Senate

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  • by sixoh1 ( 996418 ) on Friday January 17, 2014 @06:11PM (#45992847) Homepage

    Not that I'm skeptical or anything... but I would expect this to end up being just like the "Privacy Policy" notices we all get from banks and other places, or HIPPA - a nice sounding bit of legislation with so many holes in it, the 100-200 page bill will end up doing nothing but giving jobs to "compliance officers" while actually resulting in less opportunity for the "consumer" to sue or block the data access. Think about how HIPPA actually works, since the insurance company needs to know what the doctor treated you for, your "data" gets sent to them (if not the actual paper chart, a summary of what boil on what limb, or what infectious disease test was used). Expect that car companies will hammer this hard in lobbying...

    • by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Friday January 17, 2014 @06:39PM (#45993227) Homepage Journal

      Not that I'm skeptical or anything... but I would expect this to end up being just like the "Privacy Policy" notices we all get from banks and other places, or HIPPA - a nice sounding bit of legislation with so many holes in it, the 100-200 page bill will end up doing nothing but giving jobs to "compliance officers" while actually resulting in less opportunity for the "consumer" to sue or block the data access. Think about how HIPPA actually works, since the insurance company needs to know what the doctor treated you for, your "data" gets sent to them (if not the actual paper chart, a summary of what boil on what limb, or what infectious disease test was used). Expect that car companies will hammer this hard in lobbying...

      You think it means something ...

      ... until you see some guy named Sarek Vulcansden scampering off to the embassy of a South American nation with a Thumbdrive full of evidence the NSA has been tracking your every move and the President denies such claims until they trickle out in the media, including Angela Merkel's predilection for Krispy Kreme whenever she's in the US. About that time you realize laws don't mean much if there be people who think they only apply to other agencies.

      • As with online surfing, I am far less concerned with the big companies learning I drive to which stores than I am he government having access to it.

        "Nobody can gain access without (a law for NSA? A warrant?). Isn't government abuse of spying the reason for all these protections?

    • The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
    • Note that the law says that your data is your property.Car rental companies will fight this, as will hospitals, advertisers and everyone who wants to own someone else's data, but over time they'll get the same kind of respect we now show towards people who believe they can own human beings.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    And so, manufacturers write another line into a sales contract stating that by purchasing this vehicle you explicitly confer them rights of ownership over said data.

    • by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Friday January 17, 2014 @06:44PM (#45993269)
      Not the manufacturers per se, but expect fleet operators and car-rental companies to fight this tooth and nail. Meanwhile, the insurance companies will offer cheaper policies if you waive your rights on this, and, of course, opposing lawyers will subpena your black box records in every little accident.
      • by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

        Insurance companies already are working on getting people to have black boxes. These are not for your benefit. They will not make your insurance cheaper. They are there to raise the average insurance revenue.

        You can expect data to mysteriously disappear during or shortly after wrecks, if it was ever collected at all.

        • There is no way to know what they will do until they do it. They might consider what you describe to be too high-risk behavior. They might instead just drop the policies of the worst 2% of drivers.

          • by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

            They might instead just drop the policies of the worst 2% of drivers.

            Won't happen - they must take high risk pool drivers.

    • by Arker ( 91948 )

      "And so, manufacturers write another line into a sales contract stating that by purchasing this vehicle you explicitly confer them rights of ownership over said data."

      Won't give them any rights with a second owner.

      • by mysidia ( 191772 )

        Won't give them any rights with a second owner.

        So they add an additional clause....

        "This Agreement shall be binding upon and shall inure to the benefit of the parties and their permitted successors and assigns."

        "Any assignment or transfer of an asset covered by this agreement, may only be performed, if there is also a binding assumption section of responsibility for performance under this agreement, by the assignee."

        • by Arker ( 91948 )

          You should study contract law a little if you think it works that way. It does not.

          At best it might allow you to sue the first owner for selling in violation of your contract, if you find out about it, but good luck covering the lawyers fees in the process. It still gives you no rights whatsoever against the second owner, who is not a party to the contract.

          • by mysidia ( 191772 )

            It still gives you no rights whatsoever against the second owner, who is not a party to the contract.

            The rights are encumbered ownership to the property, and to the monitoring, recording data about its use --- the next owner doesn't obtain the right to the property, free and clear of the encumbrances. You don't need to obtain rights "against the second owner"; as the first owner gave you rights against the property, that the first owner is incapable of taking back without your consent ----- even if th

    • by pepty ( 1976012 )
      They already do.
  • Only the user has the right to there data. Be it the cars back box or there cell phone or whatever else somebody cooks up. In no case my a company use that data or share with others. Is it that hard? Hell force them to serve any warrants to the owners of the data aka the person the data is about.

    • Here in the US the data belongs to whoever collected it, not to who they collected it about.

      • And if were going to go through the time, expense, and effort to put in a new law why not fix that?

        • Because there is not a push for that.

          If you can convince people to care enough for it to be an election issue, then it will get changed.

          Whereas vehicle data can privacy can be added with less effort.

          • Because there is not a push for that.

            If you can convince people to care enough for it to be an election issue, then it will get changed.

            Perfect campaign slogan:

            "Somebody's making money off your data, shouldn't it be you?"

  • If your car was 100% stripped of computers/etc, you'd still be tracked by cellular, CCTV, plates/tags, dashboard cameras, eye witnesses, etc. Let's tone down the EDR, crank up external mechanisms and look good at the same time!!
  • It's an Event Data Recorder, not an Electronic Data Recorder..

    WASHINGTON â" Senators John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) today introduced their Driver Privacy Act, legislation that protects a driverâ(TM)s personal privacy by making it clear that the owner of a vehicle is also the owner of any information collected by an Event Data Recorder (EDR).

  • There was a deadly vehicular altercation here locally, in which a black box was recovered from one of the involved automobiles to be used against the driver by the powers that be.
  • I said this last time... Consent doesn't mean the same thing for legislators and corporations as it does for you peons. Consent is, you used it, thought about it, looked at it... thanks to intellectual property, it's not dissimilar to rape. And I believe it was a Congressman who said... hey, if it's gonna happen, you might as well enjoy it. But you know, if the intellectual property is illegitimate, then the consumer has ways of shutting that whole thing down, right?

    • Consent is, you used it, thought about it, looked at it... thanks to intellectual property, it's not dissimilar to rape. And I believe it was a Congressman who said... hey, if it's gonna happen, you might as well enjoy it.

      Almost.

      It was Clayton Williams of Midland during his failed run for Governor of Texas against Anne Richards in the '90 gubernatorial campaign.

      Likening eminent rape to the weather, he quipped, If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.

      His stock fell faster than Blackberry's.

  • I'd like a very specific warrant if they want to touch that too.

  • by TrollstonButterbeans ( 2914995 ) on Friday January 17, 2014 @07:04PM (#45993475)
    Driving is a priviledge, not a right.

    You can't drive drunk, high, stupid, menacing, without a seat belt, over the speed limit or run over pedestrians. And you must have insurance.

    If someone wants driving privacy, go to a private track.

    There are places to worried about government intrusion, but this isn't one of them. About 80% of my driving is either to work or to a store for groceries or what not. I just want it to be safe and efficient.
    • by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Friday January 17, 2014 @07:36PM (#45993853) Homepage Journal

      Walking is also a privilege, not a right. You will comply when gov't requires you to wear a GPS device around your neck at all times to track your location. It is for a safe and efficient society.

      • by davecb ( 6526 )
        Actually, use of the public road is a right. Driving a 2-ton clumsy-box at high speed is the thing that's a privilege. Asmittedly, horses and bicycles are annoyingly slow, but no-one can make riding them a privilege (;-))
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        Most driver's that want "rights" have very dirty laundry.

        1. Repeat drunk driver who tends to blow stop signs doesn't like having to have special license plates.

        2. Drug runner guy doesn't cameras or cops following them around.

        3. Old coot who can't see doesn't like to take driving test every 5 years.

        4. Pot smoker dude wants an app to show police checkpoints

        But cars are dangerous 2-ton equipment.

        "More than 2.3 million adult drivers and passengers were treated in emergency departments as the result of bei
        • It's not so much driver's rights, as it is property owner's rights.

          Rights that are apparently so important, they used to be the main criteria in deciding whether or not you were allowed to vote.

          Most driver's that want "rights" have very dirty laundry.

          What a cute way to re-word "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide." Aside from the fact that, thanks to a little phenomena known as overcriminalization [nacdl.org] pretty much every single American over the age of 6 is technically guilty of committing some sort of infraction, the point of it all is that the gove

          • Most people that get injured or die outside the home under 50 involves an automobile.

            And automobile accidents only take a little bit of inattentiveness.

            Funny enough, I used to be against states continually lowering the BAC numbers but seeing the death/injury stats a few years ago made me realize automobile realities should yield to the statistics of how and who are causing these accidents and when.

            Hint: Friday and Saturday nights after 10 PM, unsurprisingly, are very dangerous. So are summer afternoons
            • I think you missed my points, so I'll summarize:

              - People tracking you against your will has nothing to do with driving, other than the fact they're doing it while you're driving.

              - Your fear of automobile accidents does not justify taking away the Constitutional rights of everyone around you.

        • Most people that want "rights" have very dirty laundry.

          0. Sensational "journalists" who tend to blow things out of proportion only likes censorship when it exposes their closet skeletons.

          1. Drug users who don't care whether or not the state says it's OK to use Heroin, Cocaine, Marijuana, Tobacco, Tylenol, Vinegar, Sugar, Catchup, Water, etc.

          2. Young folks who can't see why failing business models based on artificial scarcity should be propped up by the state and breech of civil contract elevated to a felony

        • by Mashdar ( 876825 )
          Argumentum ad hominem much? People who don't want their every movement tracked are old druggy drunks who kill people?
      • Walking is also a privilege, not a right. You will comply when gov't requires you to wear a GPS device around your neck at all times to track your location. It is for a safe and efficient society.

        You mean a cellphone? ;)
        Pardon my 2 year old stats...
        http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/06/prepaid-mobile-phone-users-in-america-hit-record-high/ [arstechnica.com] says most US phones are run by contract (75% users as of that article posting)
        IIRC, contracts normally come with carrot-stick: you actually want those hmmm-tasty subsidies to knock half off that phone's MSRP, so you must pass a credit check. But that credit check is tied to your social security number, which gives the government your identity. And my retort isn'

    • There is a whole lot of fail there. Driving is a privilege, so if we want to ban drunk driving, we can [did]. And if we want to regulate privacy of Event Data Recorders installed in vehicles, we can [will].

      And a private track is exactly where many regulations don't apply, not a place people go for regulated driving.

  • Oh hell, and here I came in becase I thought they were somehow talking about privacy issues within OS drivers.

    You might recover my "black box" after an accident -- just like in an airplane crash -- but otherwise my on-board GPS is going to have "an unfortunate accident" the first day I have it. (I, of course, will NOT be buying the enhanced navigation console.)

    If you want to know where I am, you can call me and ask, or wiretap my phone like they did it back in grandpa's day -- with a physical wire.
  • Soon as a pig pulls you over and takes your cell phone/gps data.
  • Jim Farley knows what John Hoeven is up to... http://www.businessinsider.com/ford-exec-gps-2014-1 [businessinsider.com]
  • License plate readers and traffic cameras are very soon to ubiquitous.
  • Here's me hoping that those recorders are accurate!

    If they are i would much rather like them telling the story of a crash than multiple seperate arguments from the people in a crash.

    I'd want them if and only if they are accurate and verifiable!

    But, that's an iffy if...

  • What about all the )(*@)#!# cameras, RFID scanners, license plate scanners and such? This is like a tiny part of the Iceberg here and this legislation needs to cover those aspects as well. I'm less worried about Ford having this than I am some Barney Fife police agency who has no data retention policies and just collects it just for the hell of it. Ford at least can be handled by the courts and brought to account in a class action lawsuit. If you have systems like OnStar, rip them out all they have beco

  • It should be abundantly clear by now that if you don't want data misused, the absolute best way to do is to not collect it in the first place, with a poor second being to reliably destroy it some short period after the collection. Certainly once you've transmitted it beyond the collection point to a third party, it can be assumed to be available forever.

    If you want useful legislation, require that the data not be recorded or transmitted. But of course we already have legislation and regulation (OBD-III) r

    • by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Certainly once you've transmitted it beyond the collection point to a third party, it can be assumed to be available forever.

      Encrypt the data at the point of collection with a key only accessible to the user.

      And make sure the transmision is securely to a third party outside the local, national, and co-operating international parties jurisdictions in which the person the data is about resides.

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