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Big Brother will be watching while you drive
Submitted by acohill on Fri, 11/12/2004 - 12:12.
In a deeply disturbing ruling, the National Transportation Safety Board has ruled that car manufacturers must put black box data recorders in new cars and trucks. The boxes will record speed, acceleration, braking, direction, and other data that could be used to reconstruct accidents, among other things.
The problem with this is that the data does not belong to the vehicle owner--it can be accessed by third parties without your consent. Traffic safety experts like to talk at length about how the data is valuable in analyzing accidents and improving vehicle safety. Fair enough, but forcing private property owners to both buy the system and to give law enforcement officials, officers of the court, and other third parties access to the data without the permission of the property owner is not acceptable.
Expect a big fight over this one, and there should be a big fight. This is abusive technology--the fact that we now have the technology to monitor and collect this kind of data does not mean we should automatically force everyone to use, at great loss to our privacy.
Abusive technology
No it isn't. It's often said that alcohol and Brits don't mix; I can say that cars and Brits don't miss either. For the time I drove in Britain I found that in a great many instances people were pathologically unsuited to being behind a wheel. I saw countless examples of road rage, for no apparent reason.
When society has significantly failed to instill in people the need to be self controlled and courteous on the road, then it's time to use whatever methods available to curb childish instincts.