Mandatory ‘Big Brother’ Black Boxes In All New Cars From 2015

A bill already passed by the Senate and set to be rubber stamped by the House would make it mandatory for all new cars in the United States to be fitted with black box data recorders from 2015 onwards. Section 31406 of Senate Bill 1813 (known as MAP-21), calls for “Mandatory Event Data Recorders” to be installed in all new automobiles and legislates for civil penalties to be imposed against individuals for failing to do so. “Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall revise part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, to require, beginning with model year 2015, that new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States be equipped with an event data recorder that meets the requirements under that part,” states the bill.

Slowly but surely. I know I flip flop on encroaching big brother things. Yes, you can all dig through my post history and call me a hypocrite. I am sometimes. This is what bothers me;

Given the innumerable examples of both government and industry illegally using supposedly privacy-protected information to spy on individuals, this represents the slippery slope to total Big Brother surveillance of every American’s transport habits and location data.

I remember thinking my cell phone was private. Not really. Not the calls I make, the sites I visit or the locations it's been. Now tracking is mandatory in our cars. 'Nothing to hide' arguments are bunk. I don't have anything to hide, I'm boring. Not just my posts, but life too. Does that mean that anything I do should be subjected to scrutiny? I think not. I get that this starts out as a way to find out who was at fault in an accident. One black box records a person going 120, the other at a stop... Where does it go from there?

Next step? Nikes with GPS.

I know, I know. I hate Infowars. This is Infowars.

Looks like I'm going to be driving a used car for the rest of my life. Either that or going to be taking the bus. Of course, it's only a matter of time before you have to have black boxes in your body.

Govtrak Link of the Bill

Hate to tell you this but all electronic igintion vehicle since the 90 have
a memory chip that record this already just not sure off how far back it goes
sec. or min.
this new box may have GPS a year off data

I'd just like to swap black boxes with someone.

Say, Janet Napolitano!

Betcha there'll be an industry in disabling them.

Watch for laws concerning that, next.

Eh, no big deal. So a device records the actions of a driver. Maybe if I find out who the manufacturer of this device will be, I will invest in their company. Lots of profit potential.

If you can't beat them, join them.

The end of the World is just around the corner. 2015 you say ? Pfffft..........

reply to post by beezzer

I agree beezzer.

Then the next logical step would be RFID from TPTB ,seems like the answer for all their problems and the way we are headed.

(Just a side note google RFID in tyres) there are many ways to track us already,but all for seemingly good reason.

Trucks have had these things for years.

Cops can pull you over and plug their laptop into it and find out all sorts. Whether you stopped for your break, what the top speed of the vehicle has been and the maximum revs the engine has been too.

A company I worked for a few years back fired a driver for doing 141km/h after his truck went in for a service.

ETA: So if you buy one of these new cars, do not speed. EVER!

Originally posted by ProtectedWitness
Eh, no big deal. So a device records the actions of a driver. Maybe if I find out who the manufacturer of this device will be, I will invest in their company. Lots of profit potential.

If you can't beat them, join them.

Sarcasm? Hard to tell.

It will be a big deal someday. Won't it be neat when you can get speeding tickets retroactively? Cops just download your data and play it back to see you were going 40 in that school zone yesterday. Then you were driving 80 in a 65. You rolled through that stop sign BTW, gonna have to pay for that. What were you doing driving at 2am after your car was parked at that bar for 6 hours?

Oh, and just wait until the divorce lawyers can get their hands on this data. They will looking for this to prove the spouse actually was outside the house of their new bf/gf.

Or, what if your car happens to be parked near the scene of a crime. They can't find the criminals but you get stopped for some reason, they download your black box, and you are now on trial for a crime because your car was parked near-by the scene while you were grabbing a subway sandwich down the block. That's cool.

Then your insurance company wants to get a copy of the data so they can determine if your insurance rate is accurate. Perhaps all those violations you made (mentioned above) mean you need to pay double for insurance. You did run that stop sign after all.

Finally, there are the hackers. Who knows what they will do. Can these things be read from a distance? Is there an exposed interface? Can its data be faked?

Looks like I will be buying that old Dodge Dart after all.

It would help the discussion a bit of people actually bothered to the read the proposed legislation before complaining about things it doesnt even say.

The link that infowars gives to it is HERE.
The part you want is about 60 percent of the way down the page,
SEC. 31406. VEHICLE EVENT DATA RECORDERS.

(1) shall require event data recorders to capture and store data related to motor vehicle safety covering a reasonable time period before, during, and after a motor vehicle crash or airbag deployment, including a rollover;

...which as some people have rightly said, is only what all modern cars have built into them nowdays anyway.


But also interesting, and worthy of applause IMHO, are two others...
SEC. 31405. PUSHBUTTON IGNITION SYSTEMS STANDARD.
SEC. 31407. PROHIBITION ON ELECTRONIC VISUAL ENTERTAINMENT IN DRIVER’S VIEW.

In some cases the black box may save you from criminal charges or civil suit.

if you have good driving habits and don't speed and the other driver was speeding you could even win a case that you were at fault.

reply to post by alfa1
The issue isn't so much what they are intended for, but how the devices can be abused.

Because, if there is a way to abuse/misuse these devices. . . . they will.

My humble opninion, of course.

Don't worry about big government taking your rights; big business is way ahead of them.

Is it progressive insurance that has a thing you willingly plug into your dash, and then they calculate your rate based on your "safe driving habits?"

Originally posted by tovenar

Don't worry about big government taking your rights; big business is way ahead of them.

Is it progressive insurance that has a thing you willingly plug into your dash, and then they calculate your rate based on your "safe driving habits?"

Progressive insurance?

You don't say. . . . .

After bouncing around the net for a bit, it looks like the OP is legit.

I can't say I want this or understand why we need it. It seems to be just more wasted money we don't have on yet another way to track people.

Do not want.

It's all fun and games until I get a ticket during an oil change. Not like the data lies. You hit a certain speed in your state and BOOM. Ticket. Easy cash for bankrupt govt. If it were also enforced that these things could only record say 10 seconds of data at a time, I can see it. Barely. Only record the last 10 seconds after air bags deploy. I think it is like that now. But watch it creep up. Only records for 24 hours. Only records for a week. Only records GPS location within 7 yards. No big deal, just sends all info to a database. Yeah it's small fries now, but we sure love to supersize.

The worst part is, this is a tax (tickets) that doesn't produce anything for the economy. It merely redistributes the wealth.

Another burden that doesn't nothing be feed the parasites in government. Government will eventually grow so big that it kills the host (society), and then they both are dead.

Originally posted by Trillium
Hate to tell you this but all electronic igintion vehicle since the 90 have
a memory chip that record this already just not sure off how far back it goes
sec. or min.

this new box may have GPS a year off data

I know Avis was using them to determine liability with rental cars in 2001. The device had a thirty second loop and came standard on every Ford, GM, and Hyundai in their fleet. They were factory installed in all cars by those same manufacturers. So, if you own a post 2000 vehicle, chances are you already have one of this. How many of you have had a traffic cop hook up a laptop?

If you drive a GM it has GPS in it and a combo transmitter/reciever. You know just in case you want to get OnStar later. The GPS is where it gets scary. There have been reports of Ford's system on the GT not allowing cars to be started (or being shut down) because it misidentified the car as stolen.

Originally posted by Bakatono


Sarcasm? Hard to tell.

It will be a big deal someday. Won't it be neat when you can get speeding tickets retroactively? Cops just download your data and play it back to see you were going 40 in that school zone yesterday. Then you were driving 80 in a 65. You rolled through that stop sign BTW, gonna have to pay for that. What were you doing driving at 2am after your car was parked at that bar for 6 hours?

Oh, and just wait until the divorce lawyers can get their hands on this data. They will looking for this to prove the spouse actually was outside the house of their new bf/gf.

Or, what if your car happens to be parked near the scene of a crime. They can't find the criminals but you get stopped for some reason, they download your black box, and you are now on trial for a crime because your car was parked near-by the scene while you were grabbing a subway sandwich down the block. That's cool.

Then your insurance company wants to get a copy of the data so they can determine if your insurance rate is accurate. Perhaps all those violations you made (mentioned above) mean you need to pay double for insurance. You did run that stop sign after all.

Finally, there are the hackers. Who knows what they will do. Can these things be read from a distance? Is there an exposed interface? Can its data be faked?

Looks like I will be buying that old Dodge Dart after all.

As long as you don't break the law, you shouldn't have to worry. If you are speeding in a school zone, and it is found out later, guess what... you still broke the law.

This black box isn't a breathalyzer, so you can't receive a retroactive DUI. Please use some common sense on that point.

Divorce lawyers obtaining this data? Couldn't you make the same argument about cell phones with GPS? Sounds like you are sensationalizing that point as well.

Car parked near the scene of a crime? I can see how they might question you as a possible witness, but everyday there are murders in a home with hundreds of cars parked near by. I don't hear about every single one of those car owners being falsely accused. More sensationalism.

Car insurance raising rates because of violations? Maybe you shouldn't be violating the law. Ever think about that?

As for hackers, you have nothing to worry about as long as the recorder isn't connected to a cell tower or wi-fi. Again, I see no difference between the point you made with a car black box and a cell phone that people carry today.

And besides, the black box will be a necessary thing in the future. Within a decade, we will have self driving cars out on the road. Just search for the Google Automated Car if you don't know about this. The black box may just happen to be your saving grace if your car's computer malfunctions and causes an accident. The black box may prove that it was a defect from the auto manufacturer, allowing you a reprieve, or some sort of compensation if injury were to occur.

Not everything is a conspiracy to spy on you. Maybe, just maybe, these things are there to help protect you, and gather statistical data to help make the roads a safer place.

reply to post by beezzer


lol... I have made that joke before. I had progressive insurance and I got a notice from them that they were going to raise my rates, not because I was a bad driver but because they had other bad drivers insured and they were costing them too much money. I said, yep, that is progressive.

lol.. anyhow, needless to say I dropped them pretty quickly. They are the worst.