Posted on March 31st, 2009 by Tim Danton

The Government wants to track our cars… but should we care?

I’m not generally the type of person to be worried by CCTV cameras and the concept of Big Brother watching my every move (my every move is very dull), but even I was a little perturbed to read an article in this morning’s Guardian suggesting that the UK Government “is backing a project to install a ‘communication box’ in new cars to track the whereabouts of drivers anywhere in Europe”. (Click here if you want to hear the author of the report discussing the story.)

Now it turns out this is a slightly over-dramatic first sentence to the Guardian article.

The prime motive behind the concept of every car including a little black box is to keep traffic running smoothly (drivers can be warned of hold-ups and accident blackspots due to black ice, for instance), and there are other benefits too – traffic lights could automatically change as you approached them, you could be warned if an ambulance was heading your way, a parking space could be reserved at your chosen destination as you approached.

The end result of all this should be traffic moving more smoothly and fewer accidents.

But the fact remains that the Government and police would be able to pinpoint not only where our cars are but also where they’ve been. Tie that in with mobile phone records, and it becomes not just the car that’s tracked but us, the British (and European, as this is a Europe-wide measure) population.

We’re all used to having our privacy invaded, but even with the benefits of reduced accidents (and deaths) and quicker journey times, surely this is a step too far? The current set of European governments may be quite benign, but you don’t have to look too far back in history to find totalitarian states and dictatorships in Italy, Germany and Russia.

If we put black boxes in every car, and match that with a network of masts and satellites to track our move, we’re giving a weapon of awesome power to those who want to mis-use it. Sure, it will probably never happen in our lifetimes, but the world is a very strange place.

We should put some protective measures in place to make sure it’s never easy to take control of our lives, and I for one don’t want my every move – however dull – to be tracked.

Tags: CVIS, data, privacy

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13 Responses to “ The Government wants to track our cars… but should we care? ”

Spooky McSpook Says:
March 31st, 2009 at 11:07 am
But they can already track us. The position of our mobile phone is constantly logged. ANPR cameras track our cars (and I’m told that, at a pinch, the TrafficMaster system can be used to follow a ’signature’, which can be tied to a particular car).

I can’t say I particularly want the little black box in my car, but on the other hand, I think we’ve already opened the gates to state invasion of privacy when it comes to our movements, and I’m not convinced that the black box is anything more than a small additional step.
james016 Says:
March 31st, 2009 at 11:08 am
Knowing this government they will phase the lights so it goes red when you approach while using the tracking to see if you went over the limit at any point so they can fine you.
Steve Cassidy Says:
March 31st, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Letting a government know where you are is not the problem. Letting a Civil Servant, and hundreds of thousands of his colleagues know – that’s a problem. Those who wonder why this might be a difficulty are invited to go and research the astonishing tale of Max Mosley’s slight problem over the last couple of years, and the role of an MI5 staff member in attempting to bring him down.

Abuse of power at a high level is actually very unlikely. It’s the low level, low paid, low skilled people who give cause for concern.
Buster Says:
March 31st, 2009 at 7:11 pm
No this will not reduce deaths on the roads. Speeding up the road traffic will encourage more people to drive at busy times, so their will be more traffic on our roads and a higher death toll.

“traffic lights could automatically change as you approached them”. It has been proven that traffic moves more effectively and safer with out any traffic lights. When a set of traffic lights are out of order, traffic carefully filters through junctions in far larger number per hour.
That’s why ‘Shared Space principles’ are so so effective.

“install a ‘communication box’ in new cars”, Are other Non-car traffic going to be exempt? Or will Bus’s / Taxi’s / Van’s / Lorry’s / motorbikes / emergency services be included? This article refers to ‘Cars’ five times and not ‘vehicles’. Maybe just sloppy journalism?

and but a tracking device would enable the police to find ‘hit & run’ v very easily.
Dick Hamilton Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 1:36 am
Buster,

“Bus’s / Taxi’s / Van’s / Lorry’s / motorbikes / ” ?

Why not motorbike’s?

Who didn’t teach you what an apostrophe is for, how to use one, and how to construct a plural? (so I can get them sacked).
Charles Marsh Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 3:02 am
Steve Cassidy said, “Letting a government know where you are is not the problem.”

What’s the Government made of? Ministers, who make the decisions, and civil servants, who provide the advice and carry out those decisions. The Government is fine, apart from all the people in it.

There’s a key sentence in the recent Database State report from the Rowntree Trust. “Experience teaches that a system can have security, or functionality, or scale, and with good design it may even have any two of these; but it is not feasible to achieve all three.” Being able to find out where any person’s vehicle has ever been is very functional. If government wants to create a central system that applies to all vehicles, that will make it large scale. Therefore, it won’t be secure. It’s not about the technology being unavailable today. It’s about basic human frailties.

(Spain is probably a better example than Russia. Spain transitioned from dictatorship to democracy in 1978. Russia isn’t in the EU and has never been a democracy as you or I would understand the word.)
Jeremy Hower Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 10:02 am
Tim, the idea of Big Brother is slowly coming to fruition in this country. Whether you think you are rather dull is irrelevant when seen in the context of the surveillance society. The important point is the disproportiontae and unjust use of mass surveillance and other powers and how this will create a situation whereby the subjects are in a much weaker position viz authorities than they have been in modern times.

What you may regard as dull could be something very interesting to those with vested interests and I’m not just talking about governments. These systems are bound to be used by people for other purposes for which they were intended (function creep). There are so many examples from congestion charging CCTV being used for crime to surveillance of school children to make sure they are in the right catchment area.

We are increasingly being asked to sacrifice what little privacy we have left in order to ‘make us safer’. If nothing else common sense will tell you that we are not a safer society for our reliance on Big Brother style policies. Having one of the greatest concentrations of CCTV in the western world does not make us safer than other European countries that have virtually no CCTV.

Spooky McSpook, Stating that tracking already happens is not a valid excuse. For a start, many of the databases we have could be illegal according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Your position is akin to saying that because you have suffered an injustice it doesn’t matter that the injustice keeps on happening because it is only a ‘little step’ foward. Why not tackle the fact that it is an injustice in the first place? Seems like an odd sentiment to me.

We need to debate seriously what effect the disproportionate and unjust use of mass surveillance is having on this country before things like biometric state profiles (ID cards), travel databases and unlimited data sharing become entrenched.
Steve Cassidy Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Hear hear Jeremy. The promises made on the money spent so far do not actually pan out: having millions of cameras does not provably inhibit a nuclear explosion, nor does it stop pickpocketing or drug dealing – all issues affecting the City of London and none fixed by technology. I believe some influential government bodies have begun to look at this sort of irrationality, in particular the National Audit Office. Delivering something as abstract as a “secure person-month” by instrumenting everything in sight is a very poor return on the scale of investment we are being invited to consider.
Charles Marsh Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Jeremy Hower said, “Having one of the greatest concentrations of CCTV in the western world does not make us safer than other European countries that have virtually no CCTV.”

It was quite bizarre seeing some of the media just prior to the start of the G20 summit. They were letting the authorities remind us just how much CCTV there is in London. A psychological deterrent, supposedly; propaganda, almost; menacing, certainly, in the same way those government car tax ads are. In one piece, this was balanced by hearing from a protester. He said that if stuff got smashed up, it would be out of ideology. Like cameras are going to stop ideology. If the police themselves thought CCTV made any difference, they wouldn’t have felt the need to be able to call on up to 40,000 officers, in case of trouble.
G Lewis Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:30 am
What worries most of the indigenous population of the UK is that, under the ridiculous Human Rights laws, no person can be denied a work position on the grounds of gender, age, race, religion, etc. As a result, it is a simple matter for anyone devious enough to conceal their true hatred of our way of life – and there are plenty of them now being trained abroad on how to kill us – to secure a job in charge of these new databases and to use the knowledge to further their stated aims.
Mike Chenery Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
And so George Orwell, although late in his timing for 1984, was right. They will be watching us in our living rooms next, with the Thought Police watching to see what we are eating and what time we go to bed, perhaps monitoring us whilst we sleep (just to make sure we are not contemplating a rebellion)
Dave J Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:25 pm
There are several variants on this which are more intelligent : I consider allowing the police to chase someone through a built up area untill the adrenalin drives the (minor or major offender) to drive shall we say “wrecklessly”, as the same as launching an unguided non-explosive ground hugging missile with no explosive charge attached . It should not be allowed. So why not have an “off switch” of sorts in each vehicle, with a remote control of course. Then why are vehicles built to go above the European speed limit? what is this for? The electronics exists to put this right also. Personally I do not consider speeding on open empty roads as an offence, an offence is against somebody, not a virtual rule resulting in a stealth tax. I like to spend 100% of my time looking around outside for things “in the way” so as to drive safely and efficiently, I consider looking down at the speedo to be an offence to any outside public. Finally the above functions can generally be achieved anonymously, there is no need for anyone to know which car is where, even then it does not show who is inside. The government and car industry are as corrupt as they can get away with. 2 legs good 4 wheels bad.
George Orwell Says:
April 6th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Our surveillance society is largely about collecting information that can be sold, I don’t see this as being any different, except tracking a persons movements would have myriad uses in terms of marketing. Imagine how useful an urban populations movements would be in determining where to place an out of town shopping and “leisure” park.

George Orwell was largely right, perhaps the current dictatorship is more benign, and he totally missed the influence of capitalism in our society. Anyway 1984 isn’t a warning it’s conditioning for our society, why else teach it in schools.