Interesting....
By Peter Wayner
Is your car going to snitch on you? It’s a question on the minds of
many enthusiasts given this year’s version of the annual transportation
bill meandering through Congress: It contains a section mandating event
data recorders, a.k.a. black boxes, for all cars sold in the U.S. as of
model year 2015. The bill also purports to resolve a debate over who
owns information gathered by the devices—which, it should be noted,
already have been installed in most cars for years—by giving the owner
clear control over the numbers inside, but the data still could be
accessed by government agencies via court order or in other
circumstances.
Quick legislative-branch review: Each house of Congress, the House of
Representatives and the Senate, pass different versions of bills. These
then have to be reconciled before they become a law. (Thanks,
“Schoolhouse Rock”!) In this case, the details in the bill (Senate Bill 1813)
could change when this becomes law, as the House is considering a
version with slightly different language. (The House is widely expected
to pass the measure, however, once the minor discrepancies are
resolved.) Either way, it’s still pretty vague. The Senate bill insists
only that devices must “capture and store data related to motor vehicle
safety” and release this information to an “interoperable data access
port.”
Which data is related to safety? The bill doesn’t define that but
insists that this data, whatever it is, must be captured for a
“reasonable time period before, during, and after” any crash or event
that triggers the airbags. The Department of Transportation has already
developed a standard set of data
that includes 15 different measurements such as direction of
acceleration, throttle position, and the moment the airbags fired. (Many
manufacturers’ boxes capture additional information.) This structure is
likely to be the foundation of the mandated information to be recorded,
starting with the 2015 model year.
What the Senate bill does make clear is that the data is owned by the
car’s owner or lessee. But if the police or other agencies want to
retrieve it without the owner’s consent, they’ll need a court order.
First responders such as paramedics would also have access to the
data—without a court order, even—in cases where it will help them
respond to an emergency.
The sensitivity, of course, comes from the potential incrimination of
drivers by using the data. Stuff like intake-manifold pressure and fuel
mixture are of interest only to the hardest-core gearheads, but
information on raw speed and pedal application could be used against a
driver. While finding fault in a fatal accident—or, say, clearing an automaker of unintended-acceleration accusations—are
noble causes, what’s stopping agencies from seeking court-mandated
access to the box for simple speeding violations? A lot, as it turns
out. The requirements for getting a court order for access are likely to
be as stringent as they are for issuing a search warrant. Without a
warrant, many states’ laws might make it illegal to use black-box data
for issuing traffic tickets. In New York, for example, police are not
allowed to issue tickets using EZ Pass toll data to calculate a driver’s
average speed.
Demands for the data from investigators are not uncommon today, as
lawyers begin to look to the devices to help blame someone after a
crash. For instance, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2010
that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
subpoenaed a black box taken from the wreck of a Toyota Tundra that
killed its driver. There was alcohol reported to be found in the blood
of the driver, but the family thought that perhaps Toyota might be at
fault because of errant data found recorded by the box. There also is a
growing network of professional private investigators that specializes
in forensic reconstruction of accidents, and they frequently tap in to
the contents of the event data recorder.
Some are pushing Congress to do more than add
legal restrictions to data access. “It’s almost a done deal that they’re
going to mandate,” said Tom Kowalick, an engineer who helped draft the
IEEE standard for event data recorders. “The question is: What’s in it
for the consumer?” Kowalick would like Congress to let owners lock up
the data with a key that gives the owner physical control of access, and
he’s circulating a petition
to ask the Obama administration to add tighter electronic controls on
the data. The physical key would stop the highly unlikely cases of idle
snooping—the Jiffy Lube guy doesn’t care about your driving habits—but
it’s an incredibly symbolic gesture: Again, the courts would still be
able to demand the data with a subpoena.
Source;
http://blog.caranddriver.com/senate-passes-bill-mandating-vehicle-data-recorders-for-2015-house-expected-to-do-same/
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