EU Officials Want Tracking Devices in All New Cars

[steven johnson]

This Guardian article dated 31 March 2009 details the UK government's plan to track drivers' location, speed and direction of travel using the 5.9 Gigahertz band picked up by detectors at the roadside and mobile phone towers.

If they build it, they will come to use it to spy on us.

The government is backing a project to install a "communication box" in new cars to track the whereabouts of drivers anywhere in Europe, the Guardian can reveal.
Under the proposals, vehicles will emit a constant "heartbeat" revealing their location, speed and direction of travel. The EU officials behind the plan believe it will significantly reduce road accidents, congestion and carbon emissions. A consortium of manufacturers has indicated that the router device could be installed in all new cars as early as 2013.
However, privacy campaigners warned last night that a European-wide car tracking system would create a system of almost total road surveillance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/31/surveillance-transport-communication-box

[rockymountaindem]

1. Why, just today I had someone from Britain tell me the Patriot Act would never be tolerated there

I had to stifle myself.

[paulsby]

4. THAT IS LAUGHABLE

you are correct. england's privacy protections come nowhere NEAR ours.

the english criticizing us for our invasions of citizen privacy is to laugh.

they've had a near complete surveillance society for years.

they also have significantly restricted rights of criminal defendants as compared to the US, not to mention far less speech rights.

[amitten]

2. I think that is a HUGE invasion of privacy.

I would fight this tooth and nail.

[Historic NY]

3. We have them in American cars, you just don't know it...

the black box gives up data on speed and other vehicle conditions such as lights, braking, etc. This info can be used in accident investigation. Any vehicle equipped with On Star or other such system is capable of tracking your movements...hell even your cell phone can/

[AndyTiedye]

8. I Can Turn My Cellphone OFF

[Arctic Dave]

5. Where I work, there are companies that have GPS systems in their

vehicles. If you speed it sends an automatic e-mail to the supervisor of that division. The supervisor can pull up all company vehicles on their computers and track what they are doing. Some are supposed to get cameras installed that keep an eye on the driver.

[Spangle]

6. Cell phone pings

track you now. <shrug>

I've been following a missing child case in Florida where the mother is accused of murdering the child. Cell phone pings are being used to make the time line. They were used to try and figure out where she dumped the body.

Cell phone records from everyone involved have been pulled. That includes text messages.

Fun, fun..

Doesn't OnStar have a mic where the driver can talk to the monitoring station.. Hmm.. I bet it could be turned on at whim..

With cell phones, it's part of what makes it work. Cars are not required to have these things to work. Not yet. Just like cell phones, some how.. I bet this technology will be integrated with our society that we will 'need' it in a few years time.

[PM Martin]

7. How

could you remove your onstar system from a GM car?

[AndyTiedye]

10. It Should be Pretty Easy to Remove Power From It

It can't listen or talk if it doesn't have any power.

Maybe installing OnStar in so many of their cars (when most customers don't want it) is part of the reason GM's costs are so high?

While I am confident that I could disable an OnStar system,
it would bother me to be paying for such a complicated, expensive piece of gear that I don't want.

[Old School Liberal]

9. We'd better watch out

We're not so far off. A similar proposal was made in Oregon, quite recently.
http://www.dhonline.com/articles/2008/12/28/news/local/1aaa02_road.txt

[RedHawk44]

11. Not A Good Idea

This kind of technology concerns me because it is just way too easy to abuse. I hear a lot of people say things like "what are you afraid of if you don't have anything to hide?" and I think that's absurd. Tracking the movement of citizens, facial recognition and a lot of other technologies have more place in a prison than they do in a free society. It's just way too easy for lunatic political parties to come to power and use the tech against the general citizenry. Some people like to say we don't have to fear a tyranny in the US but the hard historical facts speak otherwise. At one time we were a slave nation and if that wasn't bad enough there was the genocide of the Native Americans, concentration camps for Japanese Americans during WWII and many other incidents.

All that said what I think it really comes down to is what kind of nation do we choose to be? Do we really want to be the police state based on fear that Bush created or do we want to be a free and open society based on mutual respect and trust? I believe we can build a better future based on freedom and understanding than we can on fear and negativity.