Is it "pre-crime" if it activates once you are speeding? Surely we can agree that is a crime
So the individual privacy at risk is the privacy of not having your location at any given time being knowable to a car manufacturer/ government agency.
Used by whom? The mechanic who services my car?
I see the problem if the location data is being broadcast to some central server... so don't do that. But that's not necessary for implementation. The ideal implementation in my mind would be to have speed limit signs broadcast speeds on some short-distance frequency and have cars read that passively: much more reliable than cameras, no violation of privacy.
Incidentally, cars broadcasting location to a central server is already a problem--they don't need speed limiting to do that. OnStar has been doing this for decades.
It seems like a lot of HN users who likely happily broadcast their location to Google Maps are suddenly worried about location privacy when it's used to prevent them from speeding. Minor convenience? Sure! Take my privacy! Can't put other people's lives at risk to get to my destination a few seconds faster? How dare you! Privacy is a human right!
That's where the concern is. If the government is mandating it, it seems reasonable to think that more likely than not, they will want access to it. Even if for no other reason than to hand out tickets. The potential for that data to leak out is there.
> so don't do that
It's nice that you have a solution that would respect privacy concerns, but where should we be getting confidence from that a government will protect/enforce a system that is privacy-first? Look at how the EU has been handling encryption in messaging apps, they don't really seem to be in favor of protecting privacy as a "right".
> cars broadcasting location to a central server is already a problem
Correct, it's a problem that exists, and it's a problem that is made worse by this legislation. There are currently options that exist that don't use OnStar, or that don't phone home to their manufacturer. This legislation opens the door for further reduction in privacy, and that's the concern. Just because something is already going down a concerning path, it doesn't mean people shouldn't be concerned when things seem to be getting worse.
FWIW I don't use google maps, primarily because I don't want them tracking where I am
Sorry, how? You keep claiming this is a privacy concern, but so far, I see no evidence whatsoever that implementation of this anti-speeding regulation requires violations of privacy rights, or is planned to include violations of privacy rights.
It's beginning to sound like you just want to speed and are trying to justify that position by claiming that it's a violation of privacy when it simply isn't. If some form of enforcement violates people's rights to privacy, I'll oppose that, but I'm not going to oppose speeding regulation that saves lives on the basis that hypothetical enforcement options violate privacy rights. There are plenty of ways to implement anti-speeding enforcement that don't violate privacy rights.
Your argument right now is tantamount to claiming we can't have laws that might be enforced by violating people's privacy, but that logic applies to a whole lot of laws which you obviously don't support reversing. Should child pornography be legal? Should blowing up planes? Laws against those things have been implemented in ways that violate people's rights to privacy far more often than speeding. And I do agree that we should enforce those laws without violating people's privacy, but obviously we agree we can't just legalize those things because they might be enforced using methods that violate the right to privacy.
I re-wrote this to the top to try and find common ground between us, rather than just bickering:
I think that what would immediately dissolve any difference in opinion that you and I have would be this: legislation is also passed that expressly defines privacy-preserving requirements that car manufacturers (and the government) need to obey. That would mean a blind (no PII), no-backdoor, encrypted, non-tracked system for implementing a speed-limiter (bonus points if it applies to any/all phoning home that cars do). If something like that was clearly defined, the privacy concerns I (and others) have are actually accounted for.
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And then to clarify what I've been trying to say/ respond to what you've written:
We have laws against speeding, those are laws regardless of if speed limiters exist. You're painting my argument out to be "I don't like the enforcement of this law, so it shouldn't be a law at all" and that is just simply not what I am saying.
It's the method of enforcement that causes the privacy concern, not the law itself. We can (and always will/should) have laws against speeding. We do not have to mandate every new car have a new privacy risk added to effectively enforce speeding laws.
Constantly adding ever more invasive mandates to enforce laws just takes us further and further down the path of privacy violations. You say that there's no evidence that this regulation requires violating privacy rights, but when the legislation doesn't expressly account for preserving privacy, than it's a safe bet that privacy will not be protected, and will (eventually) be abused.
And that's a problem: car accidents are the #1 killer of people under 40 in the US and speeding is one of the top 3 reasons for that (the other two being drunk driving and distracted driving).
> Constantly adding ever more invasive mandates to enforce laws just takes us further and further down the path of privacy violations. You say that there's no evidence that this regulation requires violating privacy rights, but when the legislation doesn't expressly account for preserving privacy, than it's a safe bet that privacy will not be protected, and will (eventually) be abused.
Wouldn't it be easier to simply have blanket laws regulating what data can be collected by companies and law enforcement, and what data can be sent to law enforcement, not specific to speed limiters?
To be clear, I'm a personal privacy absolutist: I share your concerns with privacy, but I don't think the approach you're suggesting, of having privacy baked into every individual law, is particularly effective for a few reasons:
1. It dissipates the fight for privacy across a million different small laws, spreading resources being used to fight for privacy rights too thin.
2. It pits privacy against a bunch of other legitimate causes: if you hold up this law because of privacy concerns, you're making privacy the enemy of car safety advocacy. That's obviously not your intent, but car safety advocates are going to view it that way. If you hold up a law forcing insurance companies to pay for gene therapy because there are genetic privacy concerns, you're now making enemies of families of people with genetic diseases. If you hold up a law forcing employers to give sick leave because there are medical privacy concerns, you make an enemy of workers rights advocates. Spread across a bunch of different political issues, this create a ton of political enemies for privacy, and adds real grassroots support to the anti-privacy movement.
3. It's ineffective in actually enforcing privacy, because it isn't at a high enough level. Invaders of privacy need only find a loophole in one law and then collect all the data they want in that context, or even collect that data in a context where it's illegal and then pretend it was collected in a context where it's legal (i.e. parallel construction[1]).
Privacy doesn't need to, and shouldn't, permeate every law that is made. Instead what we need is comprehensive privacy legislation that blanket prevents companies and law enforcement from collecting data on people and storing it in central repositories, and provides real penalties for violating that.
Also once this is in place what is "legal" today will be "illegal" tomorrow.
We have much better cars than 50 years ago and speed limits remained the same. Now they are lowering them bit by bit. Think of the children, think of the environment etc
Won't matter anyway when all there is are robotaxis.