The Car Is Squealing...
from the privacy,-schmivacy,-people-want-convenience dept
The NY Times (yes, you need to register or miss out on reading) has an article about the potential threat towards privacy of various telematics gadgets increasingly showing up in cars these days. I remember, years ago, in NY people being afraid to use EZ-Pass, because they thought they were being tracked. Now, with GPS and systems like OnStar and car "black boxes" in plenty of new cars being shipped every day, should we be concerned about our privacy? Most folks don't think it's a big deal, and many of the technologies require a car occupant to turn them on before they can actually transmit anything. Of course, once a few more examples of privacy violations show up, I imagine that consumers might get a bit angrier. I'm surprised that car companies haven't tried to squeeze something about all this into the terrorism bill. It seems like every other industry has come up with some way to get their pet projects in.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Already been done
Yes, it's been used in litigation to prove the driver in a GM vehicle did not apply brakes and was travelling at a high rate of speed.
On a funnier note, some years ago a friend of the family had a Mitsubishi that talked. He got in an accident. When he came to he heard the computer repeating "the left rear door is open..., the left rear door is open...". He was banging on the dash trying to stop it and yelling "Of course it's open! There's a VOLKSWAGEN stuck in it!!"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]