Infowars. Right. Also:<p><pre><code> (b) Limitations on Information Retrieval-
(1) OWNERSHIP OF DATA- Any data in an event data recorder required
under part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, regardless of
when the passenger motor vehicle in which it is installed was
manufactured, is the property of the owner, or in the case of a leased
vehicle, the lessee of the passenger motor vehicle in which the data
recorder is installed.
(2) PRIVACY- Data recorded or transmitted by such a data recorder may
not be retrieved by a person other than the owner or lessee of the
motor vehicle in which the recorder is installed unless--
(A) a court authorizes retrieval of the information in furtherance of
a legal proceeding;
(B) the owner or lessee consents to the retrieval of the information
for any purpose, including the purpose of diagnosing, servicing, or
repairing the motor vehicle;
(C) the information is retrieved pursuant to an investigation or
inspection authorized under section 1131(a) or 30166 of title 49,
United States Code, and the personally identifiable information of the
owner, lessee, or driver of the vehicle and the vehicle identification
number is not disclosed in connection with the retrieved information;
or
(D) the information is retrieved for the purpose of determining the
need for, or facilitating, emergency medical response in response to a
motor vehicle crash.
</code></pre>
You're wondering, "section 1131(a) or 30166 of title 49"? That's the NTSB. Highway safety investigations.<p>For perspective: had this standard not been pushed federally, the private sector could probably do far worse; your (mandated, and reasonably so!) car insurance influences all sorts of standards on the vehicles we drive.
Civil liberties are under attack on so many fronts, it seems like the few who cared initially are punch drunk. This is such a painfully bad idea on so many levels. Here's a list:<p>1. This adds cost without adding value to the consumer of the product.<p>2. The only value add is the ability of a democratic government run by the people...to track its people.<p>3. We already carry cell phones and use facebook. Do you really to build a whole new physical platform to get this done? Can you do it better than the cell phone providers and facebook?<p>4. We're not deep enough in debt yet? Want me to skip to the end game and just cut out my liver and hand it to you?<p>Every day I read HN and politico. I think politico is destroying things faster than HN is building them.<p>I want to see a PG post titled "Lets Hack Washington". I think the RIAA is too small a target.
I think it's time to be clear about what the concern is here, because it's become a bit of a cottage industry to call out provocative headlines, wave your arms around a bit, and then claim the readers are being manipulated. Kind of "Nothing to see here, folks. Please move along."<p>What we've learned through repeated experience is that data collection always leads to some future configuration that we are not happy with. Maybe it's advertisers tracking our every move on the web. Maybe it's the police getting all of our cell phone records simply by filling out a form. Perhaps it's the government tracking all international calls. Maybe it's the cops taking COTS GPS devices and using them to track cars without a warrant. Whatever. The pattern is clear: one day we start collecting data. Somewhere down the road somebody starts using that data in a way we do not like. Big Data is simply too attractive to too many entities to leave alone.<p>While the cops angle is the one that's most emotional, my money says the real players behind the scenes here are the insurance companies. Initially, the spin will be for accident litigation, but within a few years they'll have "collecting any relevant data" clauses in all their new car insurance policies. And then they'll be able to see exactly how you drive. Insurance companies are already trying to do this voluntarily. I think Progressive has some kind of Orwellian name for it like "Safe Driver Program" or something. Don't know. All I know is that whenever I see their commercials it reminds me of how stupid they think their customers are.<p>It's a fair cop to say that many of these stories are overblown, emotional, and manipulative. But that's a far cry from saying they are useless. The problem here is trying to guess a future world in which this goes south. For every ten guesses, maybe one is close. So looking at it from that angle, what a terrible track record! But looking at it from the proper (in my opinion) angle, the problem is simply one of style. Nobody wants to read a long-winded discussion of the problems here, but everybody will click on "The police are checking your underwear every night using your iPad!" stories. Simply because that's the nature of the business doesn't mean there aren't also serious concerns.
<i>"the primary function of the black box devices would be to record..."</i><p>Ok.<p><i>"...and transmit data"</i><p>Wait, what?<p>Are there any further details on how this is supposedly going to work? Do the boxes have built-in cellular modems with permanently-activated SIMs? What network are they connecting to? Where are they transmitting the data? Who maintains the servers?<p>Transmitting black-box data is a huge leap beyond simply recording it.
The subcomment by jen_h has the best information in this thread.<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3863555" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3863555</a><p>The submitted article is just passing on the content of an Infowars post<p><a href="http://www.infowars.com/mandatory-big-brother-black-boxes-in-all-new-cars-from-2015/" rel="nofollow">http://www.infowars.com/mandatory-big-brother-black-boxes-in...</a><p>but the true primary source for this story is one of the United States federal government sources, for example<p><a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s1813/text" rel="nofollow">http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s1813/text</a><p>with the text of the legislation.
Event data recorders are already in almost all new cars. They record what was going on just before and just after something causes the airbags to trigger, and in the event of any sort of severe crash, the accident investigators will download the data from the box. The privacy implications are mild.<p>This repost of a repost of a repost of a reposted blog article is useless and needs downmodding.
If the primary use for these really is to help find the car in an event of an accident then why are there penalties in place for circumventing the tracking. Shouldn't this be as politically controversial as forcing me to buy health insurance?
"While the primary function of the black box devices would be to record and transmit data that could be used to assist a driver and passengers in the event of an accident..."<p>I'm not even convinced the primary use case is helpful. Most people have cell phones nowadays, and sometimes systems like OnStar. Furthermore, who is going to handle the data (storage, responses, etc.)? How much money are we going to spend on this? Scary monitoring implications aside, this seems like a terrible idea.
While the common meaning of the word 'transmit' generally implies wireless communication nowadays, it can also be used to mean any transfer of information - wireless, wired, even written letters sent over snail mail. The text of this bill uses the word 14 times, and in almost all of them, it's clear that the latter meaning is the intended one. It's used only once in reference to these black boxes, in a section that starts with:<p><pre><code> Data recorded or transmitted by such a data recorder may not
be retrieved by a person other than the owner or lessee of
the motor vehicle in which the recorder is installed unless--
</code></pre>
And proceeds to list a bunch of limitations that all sound fine to me. It's essentially saying that the police need a warrant to retrieve the data (duh), and that if you rent a car, the car's owner can't use the black box to monitor you without written consent.<p>I see nothing in there to imply that these devices must transmit wirelessly. Much more likely, the device will transmit data the same way an airplane's black box does - via some sort of physical port that you have to plug into.
Section 31406 of this bill says that "Secretary shall revise part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, to require, beginning with model year 2015, that new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States be equipped with an event data recorder".<p>Here is CFR part 563 of title 49: <a href="http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=7bf119326a224d36a4a35bcfc817451c&rgn=div5&view=text&node=49:6.1.2.3.31&idno=49" rel="nofollow">http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid...</a><p>and you'll notice that all of the "data elements" captured are regarding velocity/acceleration, air bags and seat belts. There is nothing about the actual driver/occupants (except maybe how many occupants and in what seats) or location (gps tracking).<p>In fact there is a specific note in this CFR:<p><pre><code> These data can help provide a better understanding of
the circumstances in which crashes and injuries occur.
NOTE: EDR data are recorded by your vehicle only if a
non-trivial crash situation occurs; no data are recorded
by the EDR under normal driving conditions and no
personal data (e.g., name, gender, age, and crash
location) are recorded. However, other parties, such as
law enforcement, could combine the EDR data with the
type of personally identifying data routinely acquired
during a crash investigation.
</code></pre>
Here are further limitations as outlined in Section of 31406 of the linked bill: [EDIT: removed as `tptacek` already linked to this, see above]<p>So, is there anything in here to get in a big fuss over? Maybe, but I don't see it.<p>Should we still keep a rational eye on it and make sure it stays this way? Absolutely.<p>On a related note, did anybody else cringe a bit when they noticed the original article came from infowars.com?
Black boxes are already in use here in the UK.<p>They're actually a new initiative provided by the 1 insurance company, fitted to cars owned by young drivers. The data indicates your driving style in an attempt to bring car insurance down for more responsible young drivers. There's even an online dashboard to track your own info.<p>It's actually been well received especially since normal yearly insurance costs for teenage boys can be 3x the price of your first car!!!<p><a href="http://www.co-operativeinsurance.co.uk/servlet/Satellite/1280989445872,CFSweb/Page/Insurance-Car" rel="nofollow">http://www.co-operativeinsurance.co.uk/servlet/Satellite/128...</a>
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
A car transponder I would like to see is one that coordinates self-driving cars to eliminate traffic congestion. You can do a rough version of this by reading traffic reports, but finer grained decisions would require something invasive like this. I care about my privacy, but I think privacy would lose over the safety and convenience such a system would provide.
If someone does stupid things with the car and has an accident it is going to be recorded.<p>This is not a problem if you don't do stupid things.<p>Is going to take less than a megabyte to record an entire day(I use smartphones to record inertial movements), and everything is already on place on cars accelerometers, gyros, gps, and 3d compass(plus tacometers and maps).<p>They even can add microphones to the mixture(from the hands free phone system).<p>The problem in USA is the Patriot Act, every info the government takes about you should be clear, and it is not, they want to spy on you and they have no limits.<p>The problem is also the facebooks: "give us your inertial information and you will have a discount, or a free lollipop, or your friends will be able to know were you are driving".<p>This will happen, maybe it is a good thing. We need the wrong things that could happen with technology to happen fast so people develop antibodies as they do with every new tech.
Isn't this just like putting GPS on everyone's cars without a warrant and then giving access to authorities to that information? Didn't the Supreme Court decide that's unconstitutional?
>> The U.S. Senate has already passed a bill that will make
>> the devices a requirement, and the House is expected to
>> approve the bill as well.<p>I'm not very well versed with the political process in the US
but why aren't these bill ever discussed (or voted on) before
they are passed.<p>Doesn't the public get to vote on these important issues?<p>(By the way, I come from a country where I don't get to vote on
individual bills. Just thought things were slightly better in America.)
I have privacy concerns like everyone else. But fatal traffic accidents are a tragedy, more often than not caused by irresponsible people. In Canada, 34% of motor vehicle deaths are associated with alcohol use. In Australia, 40% are associated with driving too fast.<p>Driving is a privilege, not a right. It's also a responsibility which more than a few-bad-apples don't take seriously. If you don't like it, don't drive.
quote the bill, "(1) shall require event data recorders to capture and store data related to motor vehicle safety covering a reasonable time period before, during, and after a motor vehicle crash or airbag deployment, including a rollover;"<p>so I suppose the question is, what's a reasonable time period?
Court orders, how do they work?<p>Seriously, what oversight is there over court orders? Wiretaps, getting private information from social networking sites, now car black boxes- who monitors and evaluates court orders to make sure the judges made the right decision?
Prediction: there will be a black market for hacked data recorders that tell my insurance company I drive like a granny and never leave my house except to go to the grocery store.