Ask Slashdot: Will Cars Eventually Need a Do-Not-Track Option? 170
Nerval's Lobster writes "Earlier this month, a very public argument erupted between Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and New York Times reporter John Broder, who claimed in a Feb. 8 column that his electric-powered Model S sedan had ground to a halt on a lonely stretch of Connecticut highway, starved for power. Musk retaliated by publishing the data from Broder's test drive, which suggested the reporter had driven the vehicle at faster speeds than he had claimed in the article (which would have drained the battery at a quicker rate) and failed to fully charge the car at available stations. Musk seems to have let the whole thing drop, but the whole brouhaha raises a point that perhaps deserves further exploration: the rising use of sensors in cars, and whether an automobile company—or any other entity, for that matter—has the right to take data from those sensors and use it for their own ends without the owner's permission. (For his part, Musk has claimed that Tesla only turns on data logging with 'explicit written permission from customers.') What do you think, Slashdot? Do we need the equivalent of a 'Do-Not-Track' option for cars?"
weird analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:weird analogy (Score:4, Funny)
By admitting the need for an opt-in requirement, you are implicitly agreeing with the need for an opt-out mechanism. You're arguing semantics.
Re:weird analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because an opt-out mechanism starts with the assumption they have the right to track your information, and you need to turn it off.
An opt-in mechanism acknowledges that you need to give them permission first.
Now ponder what opt-out for spam would function like, and ask yourself if you really think opt-out vs opt-in is a matter of semantics.
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It has been my impression that the car in question is not a "production model", but a test vehicle, or demo vehicle, which is routinely loaned out for testing by reporters, among other people. I would expect that such a vehicle has the tools to log problems, performance, state of charge, etc. The purpose of this specific vehicle seems to be to generate publicity, and to gather useful data.
A separate question would be, should production vehicles, destined for consumer use, be capable of tracking the driver
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As a reader of Slashdot, you should probably learn that the difference between opt-in and opt-out is more than just semantics.
They are not simply opposites of each other.
The difference in meaning between any two words (or phrases, sentences, symbols etc.) is a matter of semantics. What else could it be?
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Con - Pro
Congress
Progress
Yep, opposites
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Consumers would do well to pressure the manufacturers to adopt a similar practice.
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Didn't Obama recently sign into law making it mandatory for car manufacturers to insert black boxes into all their vehicles sold? (Most do already, but there are a few that don't).
Now, granted, the law also states
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Insurance companies currently have this as an "op-in choice", while evaluating the technology and statistically determining if it is a usable predictor of accidents. If it is successful for that task, I fully believe an active electronic vehicle monitor will become mandatory in order to get (affordable) insurance in the not too distant future.
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This is more like a browser history file on a borrowed computer.
ALPR and cell tower tracking are more analogous to web tracking services. And then there are the insurance company "black boxes" which are analogous to Sony's CD rootkit.
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There should already be a default inability to track your car based on the same logic that I'm not allowed to place a bug on your car and track you now. Companies should have to be given explicit permission to be able to do so. Opt-in rather than opt-out.
Tell that to On-Star: http://www.hummerforums.com/forum/general-hummer-talk-6/onstar-changes-tos-tracks-you-even-when-its-turned-off-25474/page2/ [hummerforums.com]
Re:weird analogy (Score:5, Informative)
There should already be a default inability to track your car based on the same logic that I'm not allowed to place a bug on your car and track you now
Exactly. However, this was Tesla's car all along, so they were perfectly free to track it. The NYT did not own the car.
Article is pointless clickbait. No one is arguing that they should be able to track your car, only their car.
How many IP addresses (Score:2)
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Sure there's an off switch. Just forget to put it in a place in the car that the monitor can read, and you'll find out. (Currently the camera snaps a photo of your license, and you get a bill in the mail where I live.)
Because they are passive, and not embedded into the car, they are easy to place where they can't be read. In the glove compartment, under the drivers seat...lots of places that are convenient to reach for when you want to make them visible (to not need to pay that bill in the mail...which i
Bad analogy (Score:5, Informative)
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Let's track everyone! Make a site where you can upload your dashcam recordings, and it grinds through all the GPS log and footage to generate a big database of every license plate encountered. Then you can overlay some markers over cars of convicted sex offenders. Or politicians who have had their cars sighted at certain dens of sin and iniquity. It all depends on how you word it whether it will be banned or mandated.
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Just a question : do videos uploaded to youtube keep their gps information? It would seem that this already facilitates the process. With facebook even more correlations can be done.
For the convicted sex offenders there is already a database for that. We are not far from your scenario already.
Re:Bad analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
You mistakenly believe that force of law is effective in privacy rights. http://www.dhs.gov/ [dhs.gov]
If you want your car to be invisible to electronic monitoring, you must drive a car with no electronic capability. I suggest one of these http://www.legendaryfind.com/ [legendaryfind.com]
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If you want your car to be invisible to electronic monitoring, you must drive a car with no electronic capability.
Even my car uses electronics, and it is powered by a mechanically regulated diesel and if the electrical system asplode it keeps running until you shut it off because the fuel cut is vacuum-based. However, it cannot be tracked, because it does not have communications capability. Well actually, I lied, it does but it only has bluetooth and it's not discoverable except for the moments when I want it to be.
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Hah! The infrared will get ya... Oh, and turn off your phone.
I have home screen toggles for wifi, phone, phone data, and bluetooth, as well as an airplane mode toggle. And my phone is hacked up seven ways from sunday so I have a reasonable expectation that they will work...
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You mistakenly believe that force of law is effective in privacy rights. http://www.dhs.gov/ [dhs.gov]
If you want your car to be invisible to electronic monitoring, you must drive a car with no electronic capability. I suggest one of these http://www.legendaryfind.com/ [legendaryfind.com]
Does your car have a license plate? ANPR will track that just fine.
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Aside from the many cheap and goofy devices that obscure the license plate to electronic cameras, you just logically made all other forms of electronic tracking and gps based systems superfluous.
Oh wait, our government, in an rare fit of common sense, realizes that a ubiquitous network of cameras nationwide would be prohibitively expensive.
Re:Bad analogy (Score:4, Informative)
Hey now, if the FBI can track you [wired.com] legally without a warrant, why should the car companies not have that power? (Yes, I know that SCOTUS took a similar case, but all they had to say about it was that the FBI couldn't trespass onto your property to install the device. If you, say, park your car on the street, it's fair game.)
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You have a DO NOT TRACK option, called DO NOT BUY (Score:5, Informative)
You have a DO NOT TRACK option, called DO NOT BUY.
If you buy into the car with sensors, recording, logging, and reporting - then you've really put the gun to your own head and pulled the trigger, eh?
However, in the United States, driving is a privileged, not a right. Your car's position on public roadways is not private information. When your car wrecks in a suspected criminal manner - even if it is a 1957 Chevy, law enforcement gets to look at it, and record the speedometer reading if it was broken and held in place.
The more sensors, the more information.
Get informed, and make an informed decision.
Re:You have a DO NOT TRACK option, called DO NOT B (Score:5, Insightful)
Highly unlikely given the likelihood of GPS-for-road-tax coming not too far down the line.
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Highly unlikely given the likelihood of GPS-for-road-tax coming not too far down the line.
This. +2 mod. GPS based road taxes are not an "if" proposition, they are a "when". And electric vehicles will be the final nail in the coffin, since they pay no road taxes based on gasoline usage. The governments will not let that go forever. They're already whining because government-mandated fuel efficiencies are reducing the amount of gas tax revenue, when gas usage drops to zero for a lot of cars they'll have to react.
In Oregon, they've already done studies and tests. I know one of the engineers invol
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The free market doesn't have two constitutional clauses to cover it's back. The postal and interstate commerce clauses both specifically assign this job to the federal government.
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Yeah, they're called usage charges and tolls -- you pay either way, and in the long term the companies will probably gouge you more.
But some view it as better to pay a private company instead of the government.
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Surely the free-market will find some private enterprise replacement for publicly funded highways without raising a new tax!
First of all, this isn't a new tax. It's a new method of calculating who pays what for an old tax.
Second, even if you drive exclusively on private roads, your car will need to be tracked so the government can figure out how much road tax you need to pay.
The issue is not which roads you drive on, it's that you must be tracked for any time/location based road use taxes to be applied. And it isn't a question of if they will be applied, only how.
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And gave it eminent domain?
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This remains the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard. Here's why:
- Most road wear is caused by heavy trucks.
- Thos heavy trucks aren't being driven for fun; they're bringing goods to market that we all collectively buy.
- Thus we all cause the majority of road wear through ordinary consumption, and how much each of us drives is nearly irrelevent,
The whole "gas tax" system is a sham: the government wants every possible tax that people will tolerate paying, and because people don't understand the above they
Re:You have a DO NOT TRACK option, called DO NOT B (Score:5, Informative)
And as long as we continue to distort the market for freight transport by heavily subsidizing the trucking industry [jsonline.com], those trucks will continue to tear up our roads (literally) and contribute to traffic congestion when much of their cargo should instead go by rail which causes much less of a problem.
I should also add that trains are three times as fuel-efficient as trucks, which means they create one-third as much air pollution. Air pollution costs us up to $1,600 per person annually. [foxnews.com]
We would all save a lot of money if the trucking industry pulled its own weight, so to speak.
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mod parent up, please. Though in either case (truck or rail) the government's power of eminent domain is required to connect the dots.
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My grocey store isn't on a rail line. Neither is the local mall, nor any other place I shop, really, nor my apartment when I order online.
Every geek should know that it's the "last mile" that's the hard part.
That being said, the government should of course stop subsidizing everything, everywhere, immediately, but that takes us a bit off topic.
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Sure sure, but the parent wasn't arguing for the elimination of trucking, but rather using rail when possible instead. Walk and chew bubble gum...you can be against urban cowboys driving F-250's that have never had their box filled or been outside of Dallas, but know that plenty of farmers and businesses actually need them....
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.you can be against urban cowboys driving F-250's that have never had their box filled or been outside of Dallas
But why should anyone be against freedom of expression? Tolerance of the strange expressions of foreign cultures is a good thing these days, yes? I find reality TV amazingly bizarre and unappealing, but if people want to show that sort of thing, well, freedom of expression.
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Driving a gas guzzler by choice, not necessity, is a form of expression? Well, I guess Pete Hoekestra [wordpress.com] type analogies are indeed a protected form of expression.
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The primary reson most people in America drive the particular car they do is as an expression of who they are, or who they want to be seen as. It is the most powerful expression of character most Americans make. Driving a gas guzzler follows the "necessity" of expressing that you're the kind of person who drives that kind of truck! Any hauling of cargo is a distant second motivation.
I drive my low-MPG huge-V8 sports sedan as much to piss off whiney hipsters as any other reason.
Re:You have a DO NOT TRACK option, called DO NOT B (Score:4, Interesting)
If it's old enough, it USED to be on a rail line. (Well, probably. Horse drawn delivery happened, but it was slow and expensive.)
The rail lines used to be a LOT more extensive. In some places they even shared the rails with passenger trolleys. (Need to use the same gauge rails, and need a lot more spur lines, of course. Still, cheaper than roads.)
Note: Long distance trains never shared the rails with local trolleys. The appropriate guages for the two systems are too different. For fast trains you need a wide gague, but for slow trains narrow gague is good enough, you just can't take curves as fast.
Then there were the horse cars. These were local cars, usually passenger, that ran on rails but were pulled by a horse rather than a steam engine. Not really reasonable anymore, as engines have gotten a LOT more efficient. But, again, it was a rail transport that reached into a LOT of local areas.
These things have all been paved over now, and in most places their very memory has been erased. But they used to be common. If roads weren't subsidized, they still would be.
As for the "last mile problem", its cheaper to emplace and maintain a rail system than an asphalt road system. But rails are a lot less convenient when everyone is driving their own vehicle, and wants to be able to pass whenever they feel like it. It's not really a last mile problem, it's a grandfather problem combined with impatient idiots who can't wait a block to pass. (Spur lines aren't that expensive or difficult, but they do add to the expense, and they lead to a rougher ride, so you want to limit the number of places that they can occur.)
All that said, if you are going to have efficient rail travel, then you are going to have long trains with a need for constant speed which take a long time to stop. Perhaps a way around this could be found with electric motors in the wheels and automated switching, but nobody has been bothering, because of the grandfather problem: Even if you find a solution, it's nearly twice as expensive for rails and road to share the same space (ok, I exaggerate the price) and you to combine most of the inconveniences of each system. For some reason this isn't popular, and General Motors paid lots of money to ensure that rail would be junked. (This probably wasn't necessary, because impatient idiots are so common that roads would probably have won anyway, but it would have taken longer.)
P.S.: Some of what I said doesn't apply to older road systems, and has only become possible with electronically controlled switches. Which is another reason that roads originally won. Now, though, the reason is the network effect (also the grandfather effect...that which is already there is favored of something different, so a new competitor needs to be a LOT better).
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GPS-based taxes are a stupid solution to a simple problem. Tax cars based on the number of miles driven. Yes, some of your miles will be spent outside your state, but other vehicles from other states will spend some of their miles in your state, so on the whole, it should roughly balance out, so long as everyone adopts the same standard. And to the extent that there is an actual imbalance caused by more people visiting a state (e.g. Florida) than leaving to visit other states, you can always make up tha
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Tax cars based on the number of miles driven. Yes, some of your miles will be spent outside your state,
Or on private roads/farms. Some vehicles almost never leave a farm, but they rack up miles of use anyway.
How do you determine miles driven? Mandatory vehicle inspections? Sure.
then if another state near you does GPS, in the best case, you'll get extra cash when their drivers cross the line,
Where do you come up with this whopper from? You expect other states to collect road taxes on your state's behalf? They get to spend the money doing the collection just to hand money over to your state? Sure. Just like sales taxes someone pays in another state are tallied up and sent to the state of residence... not.
And if the vehicle is a hybrid, you could allow drivers to submit gas station receipts from other states to buy down the miles based on the fact that they already paid a gas tax in another state.
Thus creating
Logging the odomoter is so hard! (Score:2)
We already have mandatory vehicle inspections in many, if not all, states. They're called emissions tests, and things like the odometer and vehicle ID are already logged or easily could be. It's not difficult to imagine that vehicle license registration requires an odometer tax, and do away with the fuel tax. In fact, it would be easy.
The hard part is dealing with the people who complain that they shouldn't have to pay public road taxes for vehicles which only operate on private property, but of course, the
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but of course, they're already paying those taxes when they buy fuel for the vehicles. Big whoop.
No, they're not. They may pay at the pump, but they get it back.
Re:You have a DO NOT TRACK option, called DO NOT B (Score:4, Interesting)
Easily solved. Have a separate license plate with a much lower per-mile fee for farm vehicles that get only incidental on-road use.
For states that already have them, sure. For other states, it would be a simple line item on your tax return, and a simple reporting requirement when the vehicle is transferred. Sure, you could lie about it for a while, but eventually you'll have to sell the car or take it to the junkyard, at which point you'll get hit with a colossal tax bill.
First, most people don't regularly drive their cars outside the state and buy gasoline outside the state. So it's a small amount of effort for 99.999% of the driving public (commercial trucking excepted). They just save their gas receipts for the (statistically) one trip that they take during the summer.
Second, it's a temporary increase in paperwork. Hybrids are not the way of the future. They're a stopgap until we can come up with a better means of storing and delivering power. My solution creates a temporary and small amount of paperwork to avoid a large and permanent loss of privacy.
Yes. I think a system whereby owners are required to periodically report mileage on a piece of paper is simpler than a piece of technology that could make significant errors, resulting in very costly tax bills and lawsuits.
I also think a system in which you are charged a flat fee by the mile, regardless of where you drove, and in which tax revenue is distributed to states and localities based on their population is much, much simpler than any computer-based system, precisely because a computer-based system will invariably lead to a slippery slope in which each community demands greater and greater detail in the data, until eventually it is trying to compute how many times you drove down a particular block of a particular road so that the people who live on that road can get their fair share of the highway dollars.
This is not an advantage. Getting people to use non-main routes just results in a lot of high-speed traffic on minor roads and an increase in pedestrian accidents. If the roads can't handle peak travel, then you either need wider roads or more major roads, period.
Besides, you're never going to convince people to drive at off-peak times through something like this. There's no instantaneous feedback. You find out how much you were billed at the end of the month or the end of the year or whatever. It's not like a toll that you have to actively pay, which actually makes you think as you're driving, "Maybe I should travel at a cheaper time in the future". Psychologically speaking, it isn't likely to have any real impact at all other than making people mad about what they will view as a tax on having a 9-to-5 job.
The only real way to make roads more green is to reduce the number of stops, the amount of time spent idling, and the number of turns/curves. That process really has
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First, most people don't regularly drive their cars outside the state and buy gasoline outside the state.
New York City? Don't a lot of people live out of state?
My only thought is why even bother with hybreds? If you remove the gas tax, you just tax per mile. I must admit I don't like the idea, but it is better than GPS.
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Washington D.C. has the same problem. However, I believe I covered that two levels up:
Granted, in those two particularly unusual edge cases, true visitors have a bigger burden because the commuters aren't actually paying the tax, but that's already
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Why not just use the odometer?
Sure you might drive out of state, but other people will drive in your state as well so it should come out in the wash.
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Why not just use the odometer?
Driver A drives mostly to and from work, using major roads during rush hours, helping stress the road system and create a demand for increased capacity.
Driver B drives mostly around the farm, but goes into town to pick up things from time to time. He uses mostly private roads, or small country roads that are lightly used at most.
They both drive the same number of miles, but one of them puts much more of a demand upon the road system and costs more to support. How will this difference "come out in the was
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Open-source project needed (Score:2)
A box that has a GPS unit and a database of state boundaries. It is attached to your car, and it logs how far your car moves within each state. It does no long-term path logging - its only purpose is so you can bring it to your state DMV once a year, get its totals read for your state, and get a bill for highway maintenance.
This thing must be open-source, so we can all trust that it's not a Big Brother tracking box.
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Won't and can't work. My car is 24 years old. I know what every single part is, and you can probably find my fingerprints on all of them. There is no way to attach a device like this that I can't disable or remove it.
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Won't and can't work. My car is 24 years old. I know what every single part is, and you can probably find my fingerprints on all of them. There is no way to attach a device like this that I can't disable or remove it.
Not the point.
Once this is government mandated, you will have to carry this with you - just like having plates, registration and proof of insurance. If they stop you, and you don't have it, they will fine/impound you.
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Once this is government mandated, you will have to carry this with you - just like having plates, registration and proof of insurance. If they stop you, and you don't have it, they will fine/impound you.
What's more likely is a dual-tax system until the old cars die and are replaced by cars with mandatory GPS tracking units. When you go to the pump, if your car doesn't have a GPS unit, you pay the normal road use taxes in the fuel charges. If you have a GPS, your data is uploaded and your tax is computed and added to a tax-less fuel price. That's what the Oregon DOT was floating as the means of changeover.
In fact, I can even imagine that the tax for non-GPS users goes up to the point that the price of fue
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Unfortunately "do not buy" my not be practical. When production cars are all equipped with GPS monitoring (as is likely) how do I "not buy" if I want to drive. Sure you can not drive, not use a cell phone, not travel by air, not use a credit card, not use the internet etc, but the impact on your standard of living is very large if you wan't to avoid being tracked.
Just wanted to point out (Score:5, Informative)
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I believe it ought to be opt-in. If you're a reviewer, opt-in for corroboration is a good idea-- but up to the honesty and revealed perspective of the reviewer, ultimately.
My personal choice is: no data is recorded unless I chose it, knowingly and willingly and without repudiation. Otherwise, I don't believe their coders, and I want to see source before you accuse me of anything. Then, under tested third party conditions, that code has to be corroborated through empirical testing. Otherwise, your code can l
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The car was on loan for testing and a reviewer should not assume they have privacy rights...
Particularly since apparently they're informed of this in advance.
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According to Musk, Broder signed a loan agreement when he picked up the car and there was a clause in the agreement that stated that the vehicle had telemetry installed. Broder should have read the stuff he was signing, as he gave written permission for the vehicle to be monitored.
Nobody is suggesting this level of monitoring should be applied to all vehicles. However, all car manufacturers put this sort of telemetry in their development vehicles these days. Car rental companies are already collecting a
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Can we mod this parent up to 6 and all the other people missing this very point down to "off-topic"?
Seriously, apples and oranges. Tesla's cars were being "tracked" because they were in a car being reviewed... AND the reviewer knew about it prior to even getting in the car.
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Absolutely. In this case the data was collected with the owner's permission, since the car's owner was, and still is, Tesla Motors.
Betteridge's law once again. (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
This was a test drive in a specially prepared loaner car from the manufacturer, which the reporter got to drive for free. The reporter knew the deal he (or his employer) would have signed a stack of releases in order to drive it.
Even with an eye to the future where such logging is widespread, we don't need any kind of "do-not-track"; we do need courts to recognize that information stored on our devices is equivalent to the "papers and effects" in our homes, and thus cannot be searched or seized without due process.
Re:Betteridge's law once again. (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
This was a test drive in a specially prepared loaner car from the manufacturer, which the reporter got to drive for free. The reporter knew the deal he (or his employer) would have signed a stack of releases in order to drive it.
Even with an eye to the future where such logging is widespread, we don't need any kind of "do-not-track"; we do need courts to recognize that information stored on our devices is equivalent to the "papers and effects" in our homes, and thus cannot be searched or seized without due process.
If the new sensors and tracking spawn any kind of legislation, I'd rather that the legislation be geared toward ensuing open access -- make the manufacturers publish API's and data formats for the data that the car tracks so I can use the data as I want. Let me read the "black box" if I want to, don't tell me "Oh, you need this $20,000 diagnostic computer to read it, then you have to send the data to us for analysis".
In fine Slashdot tradition (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not a Slashdot tradition, but a rule about news reporting in any medium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines [wikipedia.org]
Equivalent of a 'Do-Not-Track'? (Score:2)
You mean the Do-Not-Track that is almost universally ignored [slashdot.org]? Yeah, lets do that. It's sure to work this time.
Obama has already mandated [huffingtonpost.com] black-boxes for all new vehical by 2014. Both the EPA and the IRS are going to paw that eventually.
Game over, sheeple.
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Come up with a better euphemism, "burner cars" just might not work out so well.
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Come up with a better euphemism, "burner cars" just might not work out so well.
I understand Ford had a line of these.
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Both the EPA and the IRS
Not to mention the crash investigators, insurance companies and the plaintiffs at your civil trial.
And then the black helicopters will whick you away to an undisclosed location, where you will undergo extraordinary rendition.
As much as a black box might just condemn you, it might exonerate you also. And what is worse, we probably already have one, sitting in our vehicles, collecting data on speed, braking, safety belt usage, accelerator position, steering position and force of impact.
The boxes are called EDR's, or Event Data Recorders.
tracking and logging are different (Score:2)
onstar has an actual cell phone in the car that tracks your car and can be used in emergencies. its different than having a map on an internal computer and logging the GPS data of your driving habits.
there is a very good reason for tracking GPS and driving data of a car and uploading an annonymized version to the manufacturers systems for post-sale support when you take your car in for service
Nissan's approach (Score:5, Informative)
My Nissan LEAF also tracks all your driving. Nissan's solution to the question of privacy is to pop a dialog on the in-dash touchscreen every time the car is started, asking you if you want to send your data to them. Unless you press "Yes", that drive is not tracked.
People actually exploit this to game the driving efficiency rankings. Hop in, hit "No", drive to the top of a hill, then turn the car off and on, hit "Yes" and coast to the bottom of the hill. Do that a little and you can look like you regularly achieve 20+ miles per kWh.
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My Nissan LEAF also tracks all your driving. Nissan's solution to the question of privacy is to pop a dialog on the in-dash touchscreen every time the car is started, asking you if you want to send your data to them. Unless you press "Yes", that drive is not tracked.
Correction: Your Nissan LEAF also tracks all your driving.
Too late, all cars do this. (Score:2)
Every car since 1990 logs dozens of internal variables that you can access via this [wikipedia.org] protocol. No different that what tesla does. They didn't track the guy via GPS, they only published charge/discharge patterns from the battery.
They might... (Score:4, Insightful)
... but you wont get one.
The insurance industry lobby and DHS will see to that.
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Making tracking mandatory is unnecessary. The insurance companies already offer a "discount" if you agree to install a tracker. Of course what they really mean is that if you refuse to have one you pay a penalty fine on your premium. In the UK the police have already installed automatic number plate recognition cameras everywhere (or just added it to existing traffic cameras). Areas not covered are usually covered by normal CCTV so they can fill in any gaps that way.
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Making tracking mandatory is unnecessary.
So is the DHS, but I don't see the government passing up a power grab when the opportunity shows itself.
The correct answer is ... maybe (Score:2)
Wouldn't the best answer for an individual be based on their driving habits and history?
If you tended to stay at the speed limit (or reasonably above according to traffic), were a defensive driver and were reasonably confident that you wouldn't cause an accident, wouldn't you want tracking on to show that it's the other guys fault?
Depending on your hubris level, the next step is a dashboard camera because clearly you are never going to cause an accident - right?
myke
Obscure+ignorant, public+informed. Pick. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think tracking should be mandatory, and that it should be accessible to all people. You should be able to know where I am at all times, and I should be able to know where you are at all times, and people who take steps to create obscurity around themselves should be treated as untrustworthy.
Which is nice, because what I think should happen is going to happen regardless of how much a few vocal people bitch about it. This and previous generations of man have taken their own ignorance for granted and see no loss in accepting ignorance in exchange for the competitive advantage secrecy grants them. The up and coming generation of man has the internet at their finger tips, they feel entitled to be informed, and they prefer celebrity to privacy.
Those people will think currently popular views on privacy are primitive, naive and outdated. Just like I do.
Re:Obscure+ignorant, public+informed. Pick. (Score:4)
You should be able to know where I am at all times, and I should be able to know where you are at all times, and people who take steps to create obscurity around themselves should be treated as untrustworthy.
Yeah, not going to happen. The people with power will be able to game the system - they will figure out (or more likely hire) people to create false trails. Thinking that a panopticon society could ever be a level playing field is to ignore basically all of recorded history.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe you're just trying to troll with this comment (especially on a site like Slashdot, where it's clear the majority holds an opposing view)?
But I'll respond anyway, because I have no doubt SOME people out there feel this way about privacy.
1. Why would you advocate mandatory tracking of people? This in no way equates to enforcing a right people traditionally had anywhere on the planet. Regardless of your opinion on the legality of having the ABILITY to do such a thing, a demand that it become a REQUIREMEN
Welcome (Score:5, Funny)
Active Anti-Tracking Would Be Very Complicated (Score:2)
Trusting others to not track our vehicles is idealistic and naive. Active anti-tracking would be required. So, what are the ways in which your vehicle might be tracked? Well, one has to contend with radar, satellite, mobile phone towers, drones, and human vision, amongst others. Assuming you don't mind not receiving any external signals while driving, the geek solution would be to envelop your vehicle in a Faraday Cage [wikipedia.org], then cover that external structure with some low visibility camouflage, low reflectivity
Re: (Score:2)
Would probably end up looking something like this [theatlantic.com]
Or on the other hand... (Score:2)
Perhaps there should be a "Do-Not-Lie-Through-Your-Teeth" option for journalists.
It would have solved the same problem that Tesla's black box did.
Wrong ?: US Govt Wants the Data (Score:3)
Tyrannical nature of large governments is to "tax" miles driven (San Francisco) & grow, thus requiring built-in monitoring as a means of tracking you any time they want. Then they "fine" you if you disable the monitoring or help others do it.
Our founders were aware of governments to become self-growing, cancer like entities.
Re: (Score:2)
Is there a better way to figure out who should pay for the upkeep and extensions of the roads, that by usage? If you drive 200 miles a day on the roads and your neighbour drives 200 miles a year, should he pay as much as you (a non-zero amount of course)? Isn't that [boogie man voice]socialism[/boogie man voice]?
Unless we either switch entirely to toll roads for everything or let the current infrastructure decay completely, the government needs to get funding for those upkeeps and extensions.
Or were you und
Wire cutters are my "do not track" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ahhhh. I see we have a subversive element here in the tech. world. Just meet him at his work, it is easy to get that off the Internet, and then we arrest him for disabling our Government Obligatory Odometer Design (GOOD), level a big fine and slap him with 30 days in the clink to silence the rest of his trolls around him.
Re: (Score:2)
Do not track? (Score:2)
Any opportunity to play with a new gadget and opportunity of tracking will be tried and used.
It's only for your own good...
This is wrong (Score:2)
How is this ANY different than virtually every other car that's been sold in the past 5 years? Cars have the equivalent of airplane "black boxes" that recor
SPEAKING TO YOU FROM THE DISTANT PAST (Score:2)
Here in the 20th century, we have the ability to track your car from a distance without your knowledge.
I understand that in the 21st century you monkeymen no longer have satellites, planes, surveillance drones, or cameras, though. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
"Track" versus "log" (Score:2)
Do the Slashdot editors know the difference? (Probably, but they use track as it's more emotive, although in the Tesla case.)
Track means something/someone is monitoring where you go and what you do. The Model S just had a log, and after a purposely inaccurate and disparaging review, Telsa looked at the log and found that Broader's facts were completely wrong and slanted to make the vehicle look much worse than reality.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And the New York times reporter needs to sell papers to get advertisers, and has been known for his connections with the oil industry.
I think the answer you are looking for is: None of the above.