FOXNews.com - Views - CATO - Car Black Boxes: Safety or Spy Feature?

FOXNews.com - Views - CATO - Car Black Boxes: Safety or Spy Feature?

A few months back, I posted another article on this Black Box issue for cars. This time we are hearing more of the direction that the Insurance industry and state and federal government is heading.

I don't think this is a case of being a Chicken-Little worried about the sky falling. These devices are indeed surveillance equipment, used to either tax or track violations. Legislation for a milage tax is in the works, and once a state gets their hands in that cookie jar, watch out. As reported in the article a rental car company is already using this to charge ($150) for speeding while driving their car.

This is being hidden under the assumption that it will make us safer, but the abuses of this technology are huge. How fast do you drive, how many miles, where do you drive, how many people in the car (using total weight). All tied into a GPS system, like OnStar, and you have a reporting system of everything about your driving and your car. Or I can envision and hand held unit, that a Meter-Maid would carry and just walk up and down the streets and any vehicle that records excessive speed a citation would be sent to the owner. Easy money.

We need car companies to list cars currently being sold that have this box on them, and let the buyers decide if they want this feature. I'm sure the ambulance chasing lawyers are foaming at the mouth to get this data. Can you imagine the law suits using this data? And, it's already being used.

Perhaps we need someone to start working on some electronic countermeasures for this technology. A chip or program that would make the box record a speed of 20 mph no matter how fast you drive? Then I'm sure they would create a law against tampering with these boxes. Or maybe it needs infected with a computer virus? Maybe I see an opportunity there...