Very interesting article on your cars blackbox data. Bills Would Restrict Access to Cars Black Box Data Michael Booth, New Jersey Law Journal New Jersey lawmakers may soon enact legislation that would limit access to information from event data recorders installed in automobiles that track speed, location, time of use and the number of people inside an automobile. Citing privacy concerns, three legislators are sponsoring bills that would make the information on an automobiles event data recorder—also known as a cars black box—the property of the vehicles owner and would restrict how that information may be obtained from third parties, such as law enforcement, insurance carriers and adversaries in civil matters. The Assembly Consumer Affairs Committee on Oct. 2 unanimously recommended passage of A3579, sponsored by Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, D-Gloucester. An identical bill, S2433, sponsored by state Sens. Fred Madden Jr., D-Gloucester, and James Beach, D-Camden, is pending before the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has made the installation of EDRs mandatory. Moriarty said it is necessary to have protections in place for automobile owners before EDRs become routine and the amount of information collected and stored increases. There are no rules or regulations stating who has ownership or access to information on an EDR, Moriarty said. This is important for security and privacy issues, and to have guidelines that spell out who these black boxes belong to and who has access. Under the proposed legislation, law enforcement would only be allowed access to the information after obtaining a warrant, and an adverse party in a civil matter would have to produce a discovery order. An automobile repair facility would be allowed to download information from an EDR with the owners consent. The legislation does, however, seek to prohibit an automobile owner from destroying an EDR or information from an EDR for two years following an accident that has caused injury or death. An owner who violates the statute could face a $5,000 civil penalty. The preservation of electronic data from any of these sources is becoming vital to the defense of litigation in accidents, Moriarty said in a statement. These recordings may be the most reliable and objective source of information about the events that occurred just prior to a crash. This legislation is necessary to preserve the integrity of the recordings and protect what may be used as evidence in court, Moriarty said in the statement. In New Jersey, EDRs gained notoriety in 2007 when a State Police vehicle carrying Gov. Jon Corzine crashed on the Garden State Parkway. Corzine was seriously injured in the accident and the vehicles EDR revealed that it had been traveling at 91 miles per hour on the 65 mph highway in the five seconds prior to the accident. No one testified in opposition to the bill when it was being considered by the Consumer Affairs Committee. The bill does, however, have the support of automobile manufacturers, AAA and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. We are approaching the issue of EDRs like any other data privacy question, Ari Rosmarin, the ACLUs director of public policy, said. All information belongs to you. EDRs and the information collected by and stored in them are a small picture of a bigger project in which the ACLU is urging lawmakers to take steps to increase the privacy rights of users of electronic devices, Rosmarin said. We own our data, Rosmarin said. Efforts to restrict access to EDRs also are being made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights group based in San Francisco. It is urging the NHTSA to adopt regulations that would require auto manufacturers to state in owners manuals that information on an EDR belongs to the owner; prohibit EDRs from collecting video, audio or location information; and limit retention of information to five seconds before an accident. Similar legislation also is being sponsored in Congress. U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., is sponsoring a measure, HR 2414, that would state that information on an EDR belongs to the owner and would require that an owner have the ability to disable an EDR. The bill has 19 co-sponsors, both Democratic and Republican, and is pending before the House Judiciary Committees Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations. This is a basic issue of privacy, Capuano said in a statement. Many cars already have event data recorders, yet protections for consumers over the use of the data collected have not been addressed in a comprehensive way.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:42:01 +0000