Black boxes on cars?

Three cheers for you Euryale,( I used to have this little discussion with the people who inspected my vehicle about who owned the vehicle" dont put it up there were I have look through it the state police dont own my car) another level of bureauacracy.The " Clovers" are turning up everywhere-Kevin

eurydale…if I had the ability to delete anything from my vehicle it would be the CEL system. Unfortunately…legislation has made that impossible so I guess I will live with the poorly designed CEL system. I don’t like recorders either and I agree with you 100%.

Black boxes can’t help when we already know what causes most crashes and single vehicle accidents. The inability to stay focused on driving is about the biggest cause of these problems. If we all did our best, we would still come up short. When we don’t even think about driving, the results can be tragic.

eurydale, you are right that the data belongs to you and that it can’t be obtained without a warrant. The lawyer who used it in that first case sort of caught everyone off guard and so got away with it, at least in the initial trial. But once the accident happens, this data becomes evidence and if you do anything to destroy that evidence, you could be held criminally liable. But to be used as evidence, all the rules of evidence must be followed including chain of custody from the time of the accident.

OK4450, I don’t know about Oklahoma, but in Tennessee, those license plate scanner are used mainly around schools checking for registered sex offenders that might be on the prowl. At least that was the reason given for obtaining them.

Personally I’m more concerned about security cameras on every corner, capturing your every move on tape and looked at by $5 an hour security folks. They don’t even have to warn you that cameras are in use. Plus the license plate readers, and GPS cell phone signals, tracking your every move. Glad I’m not a teenager again in this day and age.

Keith, the reason given for the scanners in OK City is that would be used on patrol cars to scan traffic for stolen vehicles.

This would also be done with a Federal grant (a.k.a. money from heaven) and even pushing aside the civil liberties issue, it just not sound like a cost effective way of doing something.

GPS cell phone signals, tracking your every move.

This feature saved the life of a friend of my oldest son. He got in an accident and was unconscious. When he was 3 hours late coming back from a HS football game his father was able to track the signal. Without it the car would never have been found until it was too late.

Yep, I have no problem with legitimate short term tracking by authorized folks, but allowing a former boy friend to track the every move of someone should not be allowed simply by buying software. Or cities maintaining data on the whereabouts of cars that were scanned for a year where clerks and others have access should be very limited. I suspect a lot of that Homeland Security money ended up on stuff like this, since there was no legitimate way to spend it all.

ok4450- curious why you would say it’s not cost effective way of doing it. If your argument is they shouldn’t be doing it, fine but this could hardly be beat for cost effectiveness. All they do is go about their normal business until the alarm sounds. Then look to see what that person or car may be wanted for. Human observation cannot possibly compete with the efficiency or comprehensive coverage this provides.

What human can scan virtually every plate at expressway speeds and compare to various databases for violations? Parking authorities use them to great effect as well.

Look for these systems monitoring HOV lanes if you haven’t seen them already.

The reason I say that it’s not cost effective is because car theft is not that big a deal here in comparison to the huge numbers of cars and trucks on the road. Most cars that do get stolen end up in chops shops, out of the country, and so on with very few beco ing daily drivers. Some stolen cars immediately get a legal license plate transferred from another vehicle (junk or otherwise) that the thief owns.

There’s also the issue of spending 16 grand per car to oufit them when the chief of PD is on TV every week talking about short-handed they are and how desperately they need another 200 officers.

What I object to is that the near 100% of people being logged into that database are not criminals and have done nothing wrong. Why should their location, direction traveled, and time they were doing so even be logged in? IF they’re clean, automatic delete.

I agree with OK4450. I’m tired of the spying. I don’t commit crimes, don’t use drugs, don’t drink and drive, don’t have affairs, don’t cheat on my taxes, go to church every Sunday, support law enforcement, have never been a member of a subversive group, belong to the NRA, and put flags out on Veterans Day, but I don’t like my travel locations monitored and recorded on some data base somewhere. It used to be none of their business.

I have also had to defend myself for the activities of a car that I sold six months earlier because the guy didn’t transfer it. If not for my meticulous records, it would have cost me more than a day to get free. Heaven help me with scanners and the car would have been used in a robbery or drug deal and I couldn’t prove where I was or that it wasn’t my car anymore. I also don’t like the idea of someone being able to get tracking information on another citizen that they may have an issue with, like former spouse, boss, lawyer, etc. If the information is recorded, we all know that a clerk has access to and can be bought or persuaded to disclose it. Security is only as good as the least common denominator. Think building security where a $5 janitor has access but a manager does not. Happens quite a bit my friends.

Car theft isn’t a problem until your car is stolen. My daughter’s car was stolen when thieves robbed her house and took the keys. We got it back in less than an hour after it was reported missing because we allowed OnStar to locate it. It was less than 1 mile from her house. If we had depended on the local police, I doubt it ever would have been located. I have OnStar for all my daughter’s cars, and I wish my wife would pay for it on her van.

I find it hard to believe that anyone wants to monitor the whereabouts of all (any?) of us. I have my GPS locator on my phone active and I don’t think that Big Brother has so little time on his hands that he wants to monitor little old me.

“I find it hard to believe that anyone wants to monitor the whereabouts of all (any?) of us”.
Anyone who has attended college has a “black box” secretly embedded in his/her body. It happens when the college student is asleep and is done by the alumni office. Alumni offices are then able to track your location for the rest of your life and hound you for contributions. I think these black boxes go back at least to the 1920s.

A Little OT, But Not That Far Off, An Article In USA Today Concerning Concern For Privacy Under ObamaCare And It’s About Ready To Become Reality.

I say a little off topic because it’s not car related exactly, but if you really want to monitor one’s health then you really need to look at how well they care of themselves and how they keep from taking risks.

My local food stores (and there are only two within 50 miles from me) charge extra for purchasing groceries if one is not registered with the store. The idea is that tourists just grab stuff and pay (so they pay considerably more jacked up prices) and that will keep prices lower for local folks and enhance profit for the store so that they can stay open. When you agree to reasonably normal prices, they keep tabs on what you buy to eat.

I can see a merger of data from doctors, insurance companies, food stores, etcetera, going into ObamaCare computers to use in planning your care and treatment, based on food and beverage choices and whether or not you take risks (risks can even include driving a lot according to my car insurer) and whatever else will be monitored next.

CSA

“Anyone who has attended college has a “black box” secretly embedded in his/her body.”

Golly! All this time, I thought that they tricked you into providing your address for the alumni directory so that they always have a fresh address.

Just because they can collect the information and put it to use, doesn’t mean they should or should be allowed to. There is so much crap health theories floating around, I really am not listening anymore. Drink coffee, don’t drink coffee. Run, don’t run. Eat fish, don’t eat fish and on and on. Let’s look at results instead like dollars spent on health care or repair. I knew the folks in Minnesota who first came up with the whole no smoking/clean air laws and wasn’t impressed. You can relate soda to obesity, but people were a lot thinner when they smoked. According to the computers, I was dead 30 years ago because I had a glass of wine a month and drove 50,000 miles a year. Not at the same time however, but the computers never asked that.

Information gathering is nothing new. And it’s getting way out of hand.

You grocery store is tracking you with those locality cards. They track what you buy and when you buy it. They "Say’ it’s to make your buying experience better…But in reality it’s so they can reduce the sales on items that sell very well on their own.

The place I get my haircut at has a database of everyone that does business with them. I’m complained bitterly to them when they sold their database list (which is done ALL THE TIME). Since then I REFUSE to give out that information. There’s no reason for businesses to have that information on me.

Ever fill out a survey that asks for you email address…then all of a sudden get dozens of unwanted emails. Or buy something from a store like Sears and they ask for your email…then they start sending you emails daily.

Information gathering is a huge business. With faster computers more sophisticated data mining applications it’s a lot easier to get useful information from all the data they gather.

OK4450, I did not mean to argue with you, I’m sure there are many different reasons that cities used to buy these systems with, but once they have them, they are not limited to using them for only that purpose. But you are right to be concerned about privacy issues.

There was a news article last week about a former police officer somewhere in Wisconsin I believe whose records were (unauthorized) accessed over 500 times just because she was particularly attractive and had competed (won?) a body contest. Male officers all over the state were using the information to try to hook up.

As for my, I believe that anyone who spies on me, tracks me, etc is asking for a death penalty, they will die of boredom. But things can happen. About 30 years ago when I lived in Memphis, I got into an altercation with an undercover cop, his fault, not mine, and I didn’t know he was a cop, but he got my license number and after that, my car was hunted down by the cops in Memphis, Not every cop you understand, just his friends. I had friends on the force too, went to church with a lot of them and some of them warned me about what happened and why I was getting so many tickets.

Anyway, every time certain cops would see my car, I would get a ticket. No stops in my other car so I ended up getting rid of the one car and moving out of the city. Glad they didn’t have the internet back then. I was moving anyway, wanted better schools for my kids.

@Bing, one way to ferret through all the advice is to look at who offers it. The adviser has to be an unimpeachable authority or you don’t believe it. Cigarette companies telling you that cigarettes don’t lead to cancer or respiratory ailments are not believable. If a major teaching medical hospital like Duke, Johns Hopkins, the National Institutes of Health, or Mayo Clinic tells you something about the dangers of cigarettes, you should listen. They can’t be bought. They make their money by being the world’s leading authorities on health issues. No one has enough money to bend their opinion to make their products look good. It works for anything. You have to search out the unimpeachable authorities, but they exist for almost everything.

ok4450- no argument on the stolen car aspect, if that’s the ONLY reason for having them. Fact is, once you have the technology, it can be used for many other legitimate purposes. One of those being checking registration for stolen cars. But its sole purpose, nah, agreed not worth it.

I believe the data must be discarded if there is no legitimate reason to retain it, such as evidence in a case against you.

There are companies willing to GIVE AWAY the hardware for a stake in the proceeds from things like parking violations etc. It’s the free razor blade handle marketing ploy. The real money is in the consummable (or in this case, revenues it will generate).

Data mining has been going on as long as credit cards have been around. People haven’t been as aware of it until recently.

What burns my bacon is things like google altering the search results based on perceived desires. I can search for the exact same thing on two different computers (with widely different search histories) and get very different results. Give me the raw search and forget about tailoring!!!

A sitcom (won’t name names) did a funny skit on a character’s TIVO box always suggesting effeminate programming and he was constantly trying to dispel the impression he was gay to his potential girlfriends.