Cops Now Need Court Order in California to Get at Black Box Data

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 21:05:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall () SIMS Berkeley EDU>
Subject: Cops Now Need Court Order in California to Get at Black Box Data
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>, Dave Farber <dave () farber net>



As a graduate student, I know that poverty and/or old car fetishes
work just as good. --jlh


---
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/politics/23CRAS.html

Privacy Law in California Shields Drivers

September 23, 2003
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 California today adopted the nation's first law
meant to protect the privacy of drivers whose cars are equipped with
"black boxes," or data recorders that can be used to gather vital
information on how a vehicle is being driven in the last seconds
before a crash.

Gov. Gray Davis signed the law, which takes effect on July 1,
requiring carmakers to disclose the existence of such devices and
forbidding access to the data without either a court order or the
owner's permission, unless it is for a safety study in which the
information cannot be traced back to the car.

More than 25 million cars and trucks have the boxes that measure
speed, air-bag deployment and the use of brakes, seat belts and turn
signals. But California's privacy law is the first of its kind, says
Thomas M. Kowalick, co-chairman of a committee convened by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to set standards for
the boxes. Most of the recorders are on General Motors vehicles, but
Ford and others have deployed some. Other manufacturers have plans to
do the same.

[...]

The California bill was introduced by Tim Leslie, a Republican
assemblyman, who contended that the devices were installed without the
owner's knowledge or consent and that the information they gathered
should be subject to the same legal protections as provided by the
Fourth Amendment for other kinds of private information. He compared
it to the process for getting permission to tap a telephone.

[...]

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.)


-----------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Graduate Student                        http://pobox.com/~joehall

EFF petition against RIAA mass litigation: http://tinyurl.com/nlib

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