An Original Rambling: You can drive, but you can’t hide
Originally posted on Oct 17, 2000 on my old goofiness.com website:
So our friends in the automotive industry are going to start putting black-box type data recorders in cars, are they? Guess they ain't looking for customers anymore.
Under the guise of "collecting data for air-bag effectiveness" research, automakers will soon be installing data recorders similar to those found in airplanes. If a car gets into an accident, data will be collected about how fast the car traveled, when were the brakes pressed and did the driver have his hands on the steering wheel, or in the lap of his girlfriend?
Before you succumb to my initial reaction ("Gee, that's a good idea"), remember that the puppeteer guiding these strings is Big Auto Manufacturers and Insurance Companies. This can only mean that the information will be used for ill. At least, our ill. They wouldn't be doing it if it didn't benefit them. Remember how hard it was to convince automakers to install airbags? It took a couple of decades and a few Acts of Congress. Now, out of the kindness of their hearts, they'll happily charge us to install black boxes so that they can further skewer us when we try to sue them because the airbag didn't work. Sorry buster, you weren't going fast enough and didn't crash at the correct angle for the bag to inflate.
On that same Screw Our Customers To-Do List is that OnStar system that Cadillac is pushing -- the one with an internal global positioning satellite receiver. So you lock your keys in your car on a snowy mountain pass at midnight. Don't fret, just call the Onstar Information Center, formerly known as Norad, and they'll magically unlock it for you via satellite, just like the thankful woman in their commercial. The magic is the part about how they know where you are and which car is yours. And don't question how they can unlock it from a satellite, because that would expose the fact that a Stanley Garage Door Opener or Norelco Razor will unlock it, too.
Hey, if you're dumb enough to be outside your car on a snowy mountain pass at midnight, you deserve what fate awaits. Don't mess with God, He led you out there to die, don't you get it?
If you got out to take a leak and locked your car behind you, you probably didn't remember to take your cell phone with you in the first place and thus couldn't call Norad anyway. If you were smart enough to remember the phone, perhaps you'd be better served to take your keys with you instead?
Of course the real reason that they want this stuff isn't for your convenience, it's for tracking your movements throughout the country. The Government has so much money left over from over-collecting our taxes that it's trying to burn some of to figure out what we do all day. Government with Spare Money = Bad. In the itty-bitty print that comes along with your AT&T digital cable subscription is detailed information about how AT&T logs everything you watch and what on-screen menus you look at. For what reason do they need to save this information? Can I call them to find out what movie that was I watched last night at 1am? No, right in their fine print they tell us that they save it so anyone with a subpoena can access the information and find out what you watch and if you do searches for television shows that may not be so family oriented. Do you like to watch shows about aliens, witches, lesbians or how the FBI knows what toothpaste you use? Well, have fun explaining that to a couple of thugs in darks suits in the basement of some nondescript building on the edge of town.
You see, the Government wants to find out what you do so when you balk at paying more taxes next year, they can log into the database and pull up your where-abouts that time when you drove your company's Caddy to Las Vegas and spent the night alternately losing at the blackjack table and leering at Nude Cowgirl Linedancing. Before presenting this information to your boss and to your wife, they'll give you the option of changing your mind about those taxes you need to overpay.
And when the Government has your extra taxes and then gives the information to your boss and wife anyway and you end it all by driving the Caddy off a cliff, they can use the Norad System to locate the car in order to recover the black box so that they may determine why the airbag didn't inflate.
