Imagine you are driving on the freeway, when suddenly your cars engine stops. You frantically veer across several lanes of traffic, trying to pull off the road before your car slows to a complete halt in the middle of traffic. The cause is not a mechanical failure, but a penalty for falling behind on your auto loan: a creditor has disabled your car in an act of digital repossession. This scene is not the stuff of some fictitious dystopian future. Its reality for more and more Americans as the market for sub-prime auto loans grows, and the use of starter interrupt devices––also known as car kill switches––is becoming commonplace. Two million cars in the United States are outfitted with these devices, which allow creditors to use GPS to track and remotely disable vehicles when their owners dont pay up in time. This phenomenon is a new step toward a surveillance society in which, people are entangled in a web of systems that continuously keep track of and analyze their actions and have the power to grant or deny freedoms. And because the devices target borrowers whose low-income or bad credit scores have led them to accept sub-prime loans, car kill switches penalize the poor and widen the already humongous wealth gap in the United States. The use of car kill switch devices by creditors is a relatively new trend, one that regulators have yet to fully grapple with. Only a few states have laws addressing the issue, and only one––Wisconsin––has banned car kill switches. Now Democratic New York State Senator Timothy Kennedy has introduced a bill to prohibit creditors from using car kill switches in that state. If New York adopts the new law, it could set a precedent for other states to do the same. Join us in calling on New York State Senators to pass the Car Kill Switch Ban and push back against a surveillance state that places the interests of Wall Street financiers over those of working class Americans! PETITION TO NEW YORK STATE SENATORS: Pass Bill S7944-2013. act.watchdog.net/petitions/4874?n=80717369.9zqLG6
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 08:10:05 +0000
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