‘Big brother’ black boxes to soon be mandatory in all new cars

    (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.

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.

1. This adds cost without adding value to the consumer of the product.

2. The only value add is the ability of a democratic government run by the people...to track its people.

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?

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?

Every day I read HN and politico. I think politico is destroying things faster than HN is building them.

I want to see a PG post titled "Lets Hack Washington". I think the RIAA is too small a target.

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.

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.

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.

Ok.

"...and transmit data"

Wait, what?

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?

Transmitting black-box data is a huge leap beyond simply recording it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3863555

The submitted article is just passing on the content of an Infowars post

http://www.infowars.com/mandatory-big-brother-black-boxes-in...

but the true primary source for this story is one of the United States federal government sources, for example

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s1813/text

with the text of the legislation.

This repost of a repost of a repost of a reposted blog article is useless and needs downmodding.

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.

  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--

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.

Here is CFR part 563 of title 49: http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid...

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).

In fact there is a specific note in this CFR:

   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.

So, is there anything in here to get in a big fuss over? Maybe, but I don't see it.

Should we still keep a rational eye on it and make sure it stays this way? Absolutely.

On a related note, did anybody else cringe a bit when they noticed the original article came from infowars.com?

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.

It's actually been well received especially since normal yearly insurance costs for teenage boys can be 3x the price of your first car!!!

http://www.co-operativeinsurance.co.uk/servlet/Satellite/128...

This is not a problem if you don't do stupid things.

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).

They even can add microphones to the mixture(from the hands free phone system).

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.

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".

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.

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.

Doesn't the public get to vote on these important issues?

(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.)

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.

so I suppose the question is, what's a reasonable time period?

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?