ARS Technica: Privacy experts warn that new car black box...

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ARS Technica: Privacy experts warn that new car black box...

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There's currently a bill pending in Congress, known to those inside the Beltway as MAP-21, which would "reauthorize Federal-aid highway and highway safety construction programs." But the part of the bill that has gotten the attention of privacy and tech activists is Section 31406, which says, "beginning with model year 2015... new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States [will] be equipped with an event data recorder that meets the requirements under that part."

Last month, the bill passed in the Senate as S. 1813, where its House equivalent, H.R. 14 is likely to come up for a vote in the coming months. While some conservative news websites have pre-emptively gotten their knickers in a twist about this provision, others have been quick to point out that nearly all new cars sold in the United States since 1996 already have an event data recorder (EDR). In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports current usage rates at 91.6 percent.

The EDR "must keep a record of 15 discrete variables in the seconds before a crash," says IEEE Spectrum. "Among them are the car’s speed, how far the accelerator was pressed, the engine revolutions per minute, whether the driver hit the brakes, whether the driver was wearing a safety belt, and how long it took for the airbags to deploy."

Since 2011, car manufacturers have been required to disclose the presence and physical location of an EDR in a car's owner's manual. Seven years earlier, California became the first state to mandate such disclosure.

Data protection

Beyond requiring the auto industry holdouts (we're looking at you, Mercedes-Benz and Audi) to include EDRs, the new law also provides an interesting provision specifically pertaining to privacy and how the data in the devices would be used. Some privacy and legal experts say that while the new bill provides a step in the right direction, the legislation doesn't go far enough in ensuring bulletproof consumer protection. (Continued)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... ated_right
Sean Haight, PhD

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