Without reading the NYT again, data practices privacy rules will vary by state. Somewhat screwed up by software contracts which the feds should be doing something about instead of worrying about ice melt.
All fitbit data is transferred to servers in some foreign country I have read. Read their terms of service and get back to me! It does not appear there is any concern about ice melt from our current administration, though there should be.
Ice melt is a far greater threat to our way of life than the supposed loss of privacy.
to make it car related maybe and the current administration lack of concern, does this affect cars?
11 states sue EPA over attempt to reverse ban on ozone-harming HFCs
They claim the agency is skirting the law on climate-changing chemicals.
That āarticleā is laughable 
hereās a cut-and-paste
ācarmakersā charging fees to independent repair shops that need access to vehicle data to service a vehicle purchased for tens of thousands of dollars.ā
Thatās already been the case for some time now . . .
Because . . . information is a commodity. Manufacturerās technical websites arenāt free
Troll, where do dig up this 
. . . ?!
I wonder if that is the same for other industries? Do washing machine repair shops have to pay a lot of loot for a subscription to the Whirlpool, Maytag service databases? I guess not that many technical gadgets are repaired these days, vehicles and home appliances being the only major examples I can think of. I wonder if airplane repair shops have to pay a big fee to Cessna and Piper for their service data?
Yup. Your car knows how much you, and your front seat passenger, weigh so it can properly deploy the airbag system in case of a collision. Simple as that.
George, if you run an independent auto repair shop, you should expect to spend a lot of money every year for tools, services, etc.
The fees for the technical information services are part of the cost of doing business
Information is a tool
If you donāt buy tools, you canāt do your job
If you canāt do your job, you canāt earn money, and youāll be out of business
Even our fleet . . . which isnāt in the private sector, as you know . . . pays good money every year to subscribe to technical information service, so that its mechanics have the knowledge needed to service and repair our vehicles
Imagine if a brand new and/or unfamiliar vehicle showed up in my stall, and I was expected to repair and/or service it, yet our fleet didnāt have access to a technical information website?
So Iām supposed to spend all day performing google searches, just to save a few bucks?
How professional is that?
How efficient is that?
Service data or repair information is just one of many tools an automotive facility uses to maintain and repair cars. Toyota doesnāt give you free wrenches to service their cars, why would they give away service manuals?
Toyota canāt afford to print hundreds of thousands of free service manuals for folks to look at on a whim , no disagreement there. But couldnāt an argument be made that providing free service data in an electronic format (website for example) would be good for a brand? Thereās not much incremental cost per copy for electronic service data.
Iām not saying service data has no value. It certainly does. But it might make more sense in terms of profits for the manufacturer to provide it for free anyway. If it results in lower repair fees and causes more customers to buy more of their cars.
No it would not . There is no reason to give away what was an expensive data base to make . It also has to be updated as revised parts and service technics are developed .
Considering the small amount of actual do it yourself vehicle owners there are this eliminates the ones who would not follow the directions and then complain because they could not fix the problem.
Is it happening in other industries? This is what the big flap has been between farmers and John Deere. They are trying to force the farmers to have the equipment transported to the dealer for repair and donāt allow access to the farmer who has paid for the equipment and could repair it himself with the information. I think the courts were ruling on it.
I think we deserve to know what we are buying. Are we buying machines or are we buying the services of a machine? The more the sellers control the operation of a machine and keep ownership of all sorts of data that has only a small relationship to the car, the more it looks like a lease to me.
When Daimler Benz bought Chrysler, they would not release repair information to anyone but their own dealers. My 2002 Chrysler Town and Countryās manual claimed thet if the brakes had to be bled, the car had to be towed to a Chrysler dealer. I asked my closest mechanic if he could do it because there was so much crud in my brake fluid that it was plugging the return ports in the M/C and hanging up two wheels.He asked his computer guy said no, we canāt get the code for the ABS.
I just siphoned all the fluid I could get out of the M/C once a week until it stayed clean and it solved the problem.
I asked the mechanic about it again a year or two later and he said,no problem, we have the codes.
I donāt know if someone put pressure on Mercedes but I never found out just what happened.
There is a website called Right to Repair about this issue mostly about John Deere, but it mentions GM also because GM maintains the ownership of the software when they sell you a car and you have no right to hack it.