At first I thought it was a mistake for him to say that and that Ford would receive a lot of backlash. However, some further research revealed that, according to Yahoo Autos, all new cars made after September 1st, 2014 are required to have these capabilities. It's also important to note that 96% of cars currently being made already have this feature.
It's called a "black box" and it mostly used for post accident data, e.i. how fast your car was traveling at the time. Although that's all it's used for now, I can imagine a time in the future where cities looking for more money from speeding tickets would take this data to give speeders tickets without needed police to see them.
Do you think this is an invasion of privacy? How do you think the data will be used?
A "black box" that will be in every new car. Photo by Harris Technical Services
I actually don't think this is an invasion of your privacy. As of right now they aren't using the data for much. But even if the government did use the data for things like speeding I wouldn't have much of a problem with it. To do so they would have to raise the speed limit because according to a recent chicago tribune article 97% of drivers speed. All it would be is another precaution to enforce the law, similar to traffic cams. In this instance (and only in this instance) I think we should question the law itself rather than how or how widely/consistently we enforce it.
ReplyDeleteThis "black box" technology actually already exists. In fact it's a required FFA regulation for all commercial aviation air craft to have them on board. This way, if there is a crash, you can detect what went wrong (supposedly). I would be interested to see how far this technology will go in the automobile industry, as I see how some might call it an invasion of their personal privacy. But, then shouldn't the aviation black boxes be an invasion of your privacy as well?
ReplyDeleteMany people don't realize that most cars already have this. They can use it to see what the circumstances were in an accident. It was the Ford employee's statement that was scary in my opinion though, that they can use the GPS to do more than diagnose accidents.
Delete