“Oh-oh…Lindsay’s behind the wheel again…”
Ford’s Global VP/Marketing and Sales, Jim Farley, was waxing on about data privacy as a participant in a panel discussion at an electronics trade show in Las Vegas. He was making a point regrading how much data Ford has on its customers, and its possible uses, and stunned audience members when he said, “We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing. By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone.” Ford knows when drivers of its automobiles break the law? That raises all kinds of concerns, and obviously Ford’s PR folks and lawyers didn’t care to deal with them. The next day, after a lot of publicity, Farley “clarified” his statements, saying, “I absolutely left the wrong impression about how Ford operates. We do not track our customers in their cars without their approval or their consent. The statement I made in my eyes was hypothetical and I want to clear this up.”
Well, you know how much I like hypotheticals. Besides, how will we be sure that Ford, if it can monitor our driving, won’t monitor our driving, or at least someone’s driving? Constitutional law specialist and blogger Eugene Volokh has an interesting post about the legal and liability implication’s of Ford’s peculiar spying ability. Introducing his analysis, he writes,
“Yet the point remains that Ford could technically gather this information, and could use it to prevent injuries. For instance, if GPS data shows that someone is speeding — or the car’s internal data shows that the driver is speeding, or driving in a way suggestive of drunk driving or extreme sleepiness, and the data can then be communicated to some central location — then Ford could notify the police, so the dangerous driver can be stopped. And the possibility of such reports could deter the dangerous driving in the first place. Ford, then, is putting extremely dangerous devices on the road. It’s clearly foreseeable that those devices will be misused (since they often are misused). Car accidents cause tens of thousands of deaths and many more injuries each year. And Ford has a means of making those dangerous devices that it distributes less dangerous; yet it’s not using them. Sounds like a lawsuit, no? Manufacturer liability for designs that unreasonably facilitate foreseeable misuse is well-established. And the fact that the misuse may stem from negligence (or even intentional wrongdoing) on the user’s part doesn’t necessarily block liability, so long as the user misconduct is foreseeable…”
Fascinating…but let’s stick to ethics. Let’s say a Ford engineer is, for demonstration purposes or just for fun, surreptitiously monitoring the current journey of, say, a well-known driver of less that sterling reliability, like Lindsay Lohan or Billy Joel, and the car’s GPS shows that it is traveling too fast, and not only that, but is traveling erratically as well. Lives are in danger. Would the engineer have an ethical obligation to use that information he had no right to have to alert police, and have them stop the car before someone was killed? Would he have this obligation even though it would open up a whole series of legal questions and privacy complaints?
Of course he would.
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Pointer: Volokh Conspiracy
Graphic: gadget chip
Ethics Alarms 
Not only could Ford collect all of this data on drivers, they could give it to the police, and unless there is some clause in a contract the owner of the car signs there is fuck all you could do about it.
I will not be buying a Ford, I can tell you that much.
Obviously the monitoring argument is interesting, but in terms of Ford being able to increase safety, surely then all cars should be fitted with governors. With modern electronics, these could easily be set to allow momentary high speeds (for overtaking etc), but not allowing consistent speeds (>2 minutes?) of greater than 80mph (or whatever).
In terms of conflicts where does corporate responsibility end and personal responsibility start? And futhermore when does it become a case of social mores impinging on personal ethics and responsibility?
Also, come to think of it, at what point is “jumping to conclusions” (perhaps I’m following a drunk driver, or avoiding a plague of squirrels), an unethical choice.
In terms of speeding there is also the salami problem. The cops won’t stop anyone going under than 80 (10 mph above the speed limit here in FL). So at what point do you make the call? 75 (Illegal, but nobody cares), 80 (Most cars in the fast lane, rarely stopped unless driving erratically (not able to be detected by current GPS sensitivity)), 85 (often seen, often not stopped), 90 (plenty of people get away with it – which pops up in your rationalisations post and a false argument, BUT is probably important in terms of phoning the cops).
Plus how long does the car need to be travelling at speed before the monitor calls it in?
Even if there is a theoretical solution to these sort of ethical dilemmas (something I’m not convinced of), I think that if the monitor is human (rather than a programmed computer) then the practical consideration would dictate that the likely inconsistency would give a further ethical headache.
In the cases of Lindsay and Billie, an argument could be made that just the fact that they were behind the wheel would be enough to justify legitimate alarm.
Like the probable cause for a marijuana search of Willie Nelson’s tour bus, is the fact that it”s Willie Nelson’s tour bus?
Would he also have the obligation to call the police in such circumstances if he further believed that calling the police to help someone like that often gets them killed? Google William Grigg to see how someone can come to that position.
Sure. Classic ethics dilemma—do the right thing, have bad things happen as a result. Being a good citizen sometimes gets you killed, just like being a law-abiding employee sometimes gets you fired. It is what it is. (Irony)
The GPS data also shows when people have entered areas known for drug dealing, stopped for a few minutes, and moved on.
If the GPS data get stored, some divorce attorneys are going to subpoena it.
This reminds me of an interesting example of unexpected use of normal data. Banks obviously must keep track of who uses ATMs when, and where the ATMs are. This means that banks have a record, as part of their normal legitimate business, of who’s made large withdrawals at night in the red light district.
Which is why I make those withdrawals at least several blocks from the red light district…
Hypothetically…
Ridiculous — Lindsay Lohan would NEVER drive a Ford.
You sure? I mean, why not?
She’s got to have, like, no money left…
And aren’t we all a paranoid bunch. Except for the fact that it’s not paranoia if you really are being watched. God could always see all, now almost anyone with a computer can. And anyone with a computer is much less worthy of our trust.
Nor is the possibility entirely new. Follow the links from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onstar#Use_as_surveillance_device
I love OnStar and it’s saved me a lot of grief over the years, but it is a trade off. Especially when privacy through cyber security is a happy little story we tell ourselves.
Any citizen/driver can see if another driver is grossly speeding or driving erratically. Any such responsible citizen could, and should, call it in. So what can be the objection to the police knowing all of what anyone can know of others behaviour atom by atom, as it were?
Any paparazzo or private detective can misbehave in following a starlet’s misbehaviour. But that press practice is limited by laws on harassment, intrusion, corruption or blackmail. So why ban the collection of data to which unauthorised access and of which misuse are, potentially, detectable and definable?
A cops databased ‘panopticon’ could be tuned to detect only illegal activity from ‘Ford’ or other data. Data interpretation of legal activity for ‘profiling’ and probability surfing could, potentially, be as controlled as a telephone wire tap. Data trawling of that kind seems at least as benign as other police methods (use of informers, eye witnesses etc.).
Perhaps the statute book should contain only laws that warrant 100% personal private visibility? Argument otherwise, in the post and comments, seems to be arguing for a right to break the law undetected. Which seems strange to me.
Unless the ‘privacy’ advocates would be ok with data assembled at ‘precinct; level but not integrated statewide or federally? In which case the fear is of government not cops? Which would make more sense to me.
“Quantity has a quality all its own”.
A world where the police know everything is a different kind of place from a world in which they know only what’s worth investing a stakeout team to find out.
A right to privacy has the _side effect_ of sometimes allowing people to break the law undetected but is more than worth that cost. Privacy is a shield against overbearing neighbors as well as against the police.
Yup.
So if you cut access to the data to rare, local, monitored and limited, there is no objection to creating the Ford data base. Or does the quantity of data that could be searched still disturb you?
Yes, because as long as it’s there the authorities will push for reasons to look at it, and because it’s subject to data security risks at all times.
Imagine a domestic abuser who has a buddy at Ford, who gets help finding out where his ex has fled.
There’s a chemical engineering adage about toxic chemicals, which is “If you don’t store it it can’t leak”.
I agree with your “if-then” logic but don’t believe the predicate can be met reliably. There’s already been mission creep in systems like electronic toll data.
Thanks for the clarification. I won’t contest the matter any further. In the UK there has been similar mission creep. Excesses don’t bother me as long as they are detected. But I guess I’m desensitised by the sheer volume of CCTV monitoring of everyone, everywhere we enjoy/endure/ignore.
On the privacy front I have huge problems with this, unauthorized and surreptitious data collection (or the capacity to do so, which is close enough to the same thing) makes me extremely uncomfortable. That being said, yes, I agree the hypothetical employee would have that duty. It’s the same principle as you wrote about here (if I remember right), about the burglar who found child porn and reported it.