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ON THE ROAD TO NOSINESS? THE SAME GEAR THAT WOULD SMOOTH OUT TRAFFIC JAMS
- To: [email protected]
- Subject: ON THE ROAD TO NOSINESS? THE SAME GEAR THAT WOULD SMOOTH OUT TRAFFIC JAMS
- From: Stanton McCandlish <[email protected]>
- Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 13:10:41 -0400 (EDT)
Forwarded message:
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 16:44:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: Dan Gillmor <[email protected]
DETROIT FREE PRESS
DATE: MONDAY October 18, 1993
ED: METRO FINAL
PAGE: 10F SECTION: BIZ LENGTH: MEDIUM
ILLUST: Photo
BYLINE: DAN*GILLMOR*
DATELINE:
MEMO: BUSINESS MONDAY: TECHNOLOGY
ON THE ROAD TO NOSINESS?
THE SAME GEAR THAT WOULD SMOOTH OUT
TRAFFIC JAMS COULD BE USED TO SNOOP ON YOU
The next time you're stuck in stop-and-go traffic, steaming
because you're late, consider the promise of smarter cars and
highways. Then consider the possible impact on your privacy.
The idea behind intelligent vehicle highway systems
--IVHS, the in-crowd acronym for smart cars and highways -- is
alluring. By using computers and other electronic gear, we
could squeeze many more cars, trucks and buses onto existing
highways and help everyone get where he or she is going more
quickly and reliably.
IVHS is just one of the advances in communications and
information technology that are transforming our lives. But it
also could let government and private snoops peer into our
lives in new and scary ways.
"There is a lot of good that can come from IVHS if it's
done right, but there's also a need to assure that privacy and
individual rights are maintained," says U.S. Rep. Bob Carr, D-
Mich., a strong advocate of IVHS.
IVHS isn't a single technology. It's an expanding grab-bag
of gadgets, computers and brains. Among them:
* An experiment now under way in Oakland County. Cameras keep
track of traffic on major streets. They relay information to a
computer that tells the traffic lights when to turn green,
yellow and red. The result, according to road officials, is
smoother-flowing traffic.
* Projects in Europe and Japan. One is Prometheus, a European
system designed to help cars avoid collisions, plus in-car
computers that give information on how to steer around
congestion.
* Pathfinder, a California-based car-to-computer communication
system that includes dashboard displays about upcoming traffic
jams.
* Proposals for electronic tolls -- which economists and
traffic planners generally agree would be an efficient way to
reduce congestion and pay for upkeep. The reasoning, which
makes sense, is that you should pay more to use the highway at
rush hour than at 2 a.m. How would that be done? Highway and
vehicle sensors, which wouldn't slow traffic like old-fashioned
toll booths, would know when you use the road and bill you
accordingly.
Those and other emerging IVHS technologies hold out the
long-range promise of fully automatic highways and cars: You'd
get into your car, tell it where you're going, and the car and
the roads would do the rest.
Backers of IVHS include the Big Three automakers,
Michigan's state government and its major universities. They
see a potential mother lode -- much of it likely to be mined
from taxpayer's pocketbooks -- as well as public benefits.
Let's think about this.
Assume for the moment that IVHS actually will work and be
affordable.
What worries me, and ought to worry you, is how IVHS could
be used to pry into your life. A rule of thumb: The smarter the
system, the more Big-Brotherish it could be.
Specifically, the smarter the system, the more easily it'll
be able to track your every move.
Oakland County's relatively primitive traffic-control
system uses cameras, but officials with the county road
commission say the cameras only sense motion. They don't
monitor license plate numbers or take pictures of drivers.
Spy on motorists? "We're opposed to it and have no
intention of getting into it," insists Brent Bair, managing
director of the Road Commission for Oakland County. "We can't
afford to get involved in stuff like that."
I believe him. But questions I'm raising aren't about
what's here today, but what's coming tomorrow.
Bair thinks I'm being alarmist. I hope he's right. But
suppose some future road officials decide to install new
cameras and higher-capacity transmission lines, allowing the
system to scan locations, license-plate numbers and drivers'
faces into the computer.
And what about other IVHS systems that include
communications devices in vehicles that talk with a central
computer and get instructions on the best route. Will the
computer keep records of where the car has been, and when?
These concerns apply to electronic tolls and just about all
other IVHS technologies. Will the information be used solely
for traffic control and billing? If not, who should have access
to it, and for what purposes? We need to answer all of these
questions now, not after the fact.
"Most people are honest and wouldn't misuse the
information, but we do need protections, just in case," says
Dale Rubin, professor of law at Willamette College of Law in
Salem, Ore., and the author of several papers on IVHS issues.
I'm no Luddite who fears anything new; IVHS undoubtedly can
make our lives better. Still, before we spend a few bazillion
dollars on this brave new world of transportation, we should
consider just how much liberty we're willing to trade for
mobility and convenience.
******
Dan Gillmor Internet: [email protected]
Detroit Free Press CompuServe: 73240,334
306 S. Washington 313-691-2400 Voice
Royal Oak, MI 48067 313-691-2420 Fax
(Standard disclaimer: Neither the Free Press nor I speaks for the other.)
--
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Stanton McCandlish Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist & SysOp
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