Privacy Experts Shun Black Boxes (in cars)

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,132056,00.html

WASHINGTON - Some safety and privacy experts are reacting with apprehension, others with all out condemnation over a recent ruling by the National Transportation Safety Board (search) to require electronic data recorders or "black boxes" in all new cars manufactured in the United States.

"I take offense that this personal property of individuals is now being designed by the federal government," said Jim Harper, privacy attorney and editor of Privacilla.org.

Black boxes (search), or "EDRs" have been fitted into every General Motors car in its 2004 line and is in a number of Ford models - about 15 percent of all vehicles on the road today, according to road safety experts.

We should shun black boxes in voting machines, too.

This is a deceptive claim regarding privacy. Rather than deal with
the nofly lists and the real areas where privacy is grossly eroded,
they pick this non-issue of helping to improve road safety.

so I think the TSA ruling is an invasion of privacy.

I agree that there are other larger issues that we need to fight against, though. :-)

and embedded microphones so they can listen to your conversations at all times. I mean after all, it's for your own saftey! Right?

And notice that you tend to do grocery shopping on saturday nights,
and it seems you like hot salza, and use kleenex's at the rate of
8 per week. As well, you bought something on Ebay that was out of
your normal spending pattern and we launched a secret investigation.
We see that you're cash spending habits are acyclical and that you've
pulled out more cash on a few occasions, so we've provisionally marked
you as buying cocaine or cannabis, though your profile suggests
an 85% likelihood that you have between 3-8 grams of cannabis somewhere
in your bedroom.

So we let the FBI build a huge database of all our credit card and
bank transactions, let them contact any bookseller and/or library
and get secret details, look at any bank transaction, or any other
thing in the uinverse on a computer... but OOH!! they want to put
a black box in my sacred car.

It would take me about 5 minutes to find the microphones and cut
the wires.

It is up to Congress and the DOT to act
on those recommendations.

As long as EDRs only collect pre-crash data,
as flight data recorders do, leaving no long
term record, there is little opportunity for abuse.
The important thing is to keep them from
mutating into vehicle tracking systems.