On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:18:02 -0500, Alex Rodriguez <
[email protected]>
wrote:
>In article <[email protected]>,
>[email protected] says...
>
>> Another good reason not to own a modern car. They track everything,
>>especially if you have On-Star.
>
>Not a problem. Antennas break, or get disconnected.
>
>>I've been hearing anecdotal stories of
>>insurance companies refusing payment based on data extracted from the
>>on-board management systems which track and/or control speed, braking
>>etc... Then with the satelite tracking stuff there's a record of
>>everywhere you went.
>
>IIRC there is legislation in the works to protect your privacy. It makes
>the car owner the owner of the data in the computer. The data cannot be
>accessed without your consent or a search warrant.
>--------------
>Alex
I think all of this is nonsense at this point. There are two separate
issues, neither tied together at this point AFAIK, but probably will
in the near future.
GPS tracking is most prevalent in fleet use and the tracking is less
by insurance and far more by the owner. My brother uses it all the
time with the fleet of semis that report to him. Yep, he knows when
his drivers get to a particular point, he knows how long they stay
(either because they have mandatory rest periods or because they are
supposed to be on the road and moving) and they have alerts built in
(not enough mandatory stops, stopping too long in certain areas where
hijacking is a known problem, etc.). OTOH, the record keeping data
moves through three stages in his system and keeping it available to
support logs is NOT the norm, as you pay for the increased storage of
data. He does get his eventually in CD form, but he pays extra.
The same type system is bing made available in two types of pilot
programs in the U.S. for individuals. One has made headlines and is
now comercially available I believe, and is marketed to parents of
teens. The storage of info is minimal and it is primarily a real-time
way to check on where they are located. You have info on speeding,
etc. for the last trip and the info belongs to the parent, but they
don't keep much that would be evidence in court or for insurance
purposes.
Several insurance companies are also doing the same, and it is a
voluntary program that starts with you getting a discount on your
insurance for signing on. As in voluntary.
Most of the privacy concerns right now are about the proposed black
box programs about. These are proposed as a way to address safety
concerns, the information kept would be a loop, with old info being
erased as new info is added, and there are laws to prevent use of the
data in the specific case. They are trying to split the difference
between your insurance company cherry picking reimbursements versus
the state being able to use the data in the case of extreme negligence
in a criminal case. I'm guessing it will all end up being disallowed
as evidence in most states. In any event, currently this is collected
from on-board sensors, not GPS, although I'm sure it may be included
at some point. Since they want consistent data, GPS would at most be
supllementary.
The sheer volume of info and the difficulty in culling that info for
useful data makes an off-site storage of universal GPS data unlikely
in the near future. If the cooperation and compliance among the
various state and federal authorities is typical, you have no real
worry at all. Since most people do not have GPS at this time, no one
is using this other than those fleets. Why track spotty information on
the chance of finding out something the court would probably rule out
anyway?
And the only people with black boxes had them added and know about it.
There are probably others that suspect it highly - you can tell them -
they're wearing aluminum (aluminium) about their heads to keep the
aliens from taking control.
Some day they will be right. Some day you will look at the governor of
California and think the only explanation of much of what he or she
does would be aliens beaming rays. But not today. I'm almost sure of
it...
Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)