Michael Zimmer.org

Recently, the EFF released a report named “On Locational Privacy, and How to Avoid Losing it Forever“, introducing some of the basic threats to locational privacy:
Over the next decade, systems which create and store digital records of people’s movements through public space will be woven inextricably into the fabric of everyday life. We are already starting to see such systems now, and there will be many more in the near future.
Here are some examples you might already have used or read about:

Monthly transit swipe-cards
Electronic tolling devices (FastTrak, EZpass, congestion pricing)
Cellphones
Services …

I few years ago I presented a paper at the “Countours of Privacy: Social, Psychological and Normative Perspectives” conference in Ottawa, sponsored by Members of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada research group and their “On the Identity Trail: Understanding the Importance and Impact of Anonymity and Authentication in a Networked Society” research project.

I’m thrilled to announce that, after a peer review process and the hard work of David Matheson, a collection of papers from this conference has been published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in an edited volume, “Contours of Privacy”.

Popular Mechanics‘ “buzzword” this week is Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications technologies, touting its safety benefits, open DSRC communication protocol, low cost to implement, and commitment by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to integrate similar technologies into roadway infrastructure (allowing Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Communication).
The brief article notes “There will probably also be privacy concerns.” Yep, and you can read my article on how the design and implementation of Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Safety Communication technologies threaten the contextual integrity of personal information flows as we drive along the highways.
(FWIW, Popular Science covered VSC …

Two years ago I blogged about a very chilling precedent from an upstate New York federal judge who ruled that police can secretly attach Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to a suspect’s vehicle without a warrant, stating that suspects had “no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts of his vehicle on a public roadway.” Seems another federal judge agrees, expanding this dangerous precedent.
The 7th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled against a defendant who claimed that the surreptitious placement of a GPS tracking device amounted to an …

As a follow-up to this long ago posting, the National Highway Traffic Safety Asministration has passed a resolution requiring car manufacturers to inform buyers if their cars are equipped with event data recorders (EDRs). Car manufacturers must comply with the new regulation beginning in the 2011 model year; currently, about 64 percent of model year 2005 cars are equipped with black boxes, and some car makers do note their presence in the owner’s manual (that nobody reads).
Still to be done: Federal legislation on the type of information that can be …

We’ve seem to have recently turned a corner where advanced surveillance & data mining technologies are now increasingly marketed to everyday people. Wired News reports on a new vehicle license plate scanning and tracking that is being pitched to more than just law enforcement needs:
Bucholz, who designed some of the first mobile license plate reading, or LPR, equipment, gave a presentation at the 2006 National Institute of Justice conference here last week laying out a vision of the future in which LPR does everything from helping insurance companies find missing …

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution features a nice article that pieces together many of the privacy concerns with new transportation technologies – a central focus of much of my research. The article notes the desire to use GPS to track vehicle movements to facilitate assessing mileage taxes, vehicle-to-vehicle communication technologies to improve safety and the already ubiquitous use of RFID technology for automated tolling.
The piece introduces new research – “the adaptation of defense technology” – to automatically count the number of people in a vehicle so road authorities can charge variable tolls …

I am pleased to announce that I have been awarded a Science & Society Dissertation Improvement Grant from the Division of Social and Economic Sciences of the National Science Foundation.
This grant will support my dissertation research of the value implications of two emerging technologies of everyday life: networked vehicle systems and web search engines. Networked vehicle systems (GPS-based navigational tools, automated toll collection, automobile black boxes, and vehicle safety communication systems) rely on the transmission, collection and aggregation of a particular vehicle’s location and telemetry data. The drive towards the …

The geospatial technology magazine, Directions Magazine, has an interesting article noting the growing privacy concerns facing the spatial technology industry, and the lack of legal guidance as to how the industry should protect a person’s personally identifiable spatial (PIS) data. Their conclusion:
Although there is little direct guidance as to how spatial companies should deal with PIS data, there is a great deal of precedent with other types of personal data. As a result, spatial companies that collect, process or distribute PIS data should consider keeping current on federal and state …

For those readers interested in the intersections between privacy in public, locational privacy, contextual integrity, and vehicle technologies, my article “Surveillance, Privacy and the Ethics of Vehicle Safety Communication Technologies” has been published in the journal Ethics and Information Technology (you likely will need institutional access to view the article). Here is the abstract:
Recent advances in wireless technologies have led to the development of intelligent, in-vehicle safety applications designed to share information about the actions of nearby vehicles, potential road hazards, and ultimately predict dangerous scenarios or imminent collisions. These …

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a story about a new bill in the Pennsylvania legislature (Senate Bill 1050) that would require car dealers to tell buyers about the existence of automible black boxes and give the car owner greater control over release of the data on the recorder in case of an accident:
It has two main provisions: A car buyer would have to be notified by the dealer, at the time of purchase, that there is an EDR in the vehicle. Also, the owner’s manual for the new vehicle would have …

Maryland is continuing its march towards wholesale surveillance of its citizens on the roads by announcing plans to use license plate recognition systems to scan and identify the plates of any vehicle a specially-equipped car happens to drive past.
Marc Rotenberg comments on the privacy implications of such a plan in the article, and I’ve blogged about similar concerns often (see links below).
One concern not noted in the article is whether the police department is keeping a database of the time and place particular plates are scanned, rather than just …

The NY Times writes about Oregon’s experiments with a per-mile fee system that could replace general gas taxes. By installing GPS location tracking devices in every car, mileage could be tracked and users would have taxes levied on how much they use the roads, not on how much gas they purchase.
The Times article does note the privacy concerns of amassing a large database of drivers’ locations and driving habits. One of the easiest ways to avoid these concerns is to delete the data after the necessary tax calcuations are made …

The collaborators at the important “On the Identity Trail” project in Canada were kind enough to ask me to write an essay for their blog. Here is an excerpt:
Surveillance in Spheres of Mobility: Privacy, Technical Design and the Flow of Personal Information on the Transportation and Information Superhighways
A recent Nassau County Supreme Court ruling held that data retrieved from a vehicle’s black box – a computer module that records a vehicle’s speed and telemetry data in the last five seconds before airbags deploy in a collision – could be admitted …

The New York Times reports that the State of Indiana is considering selling their major toll road to a private company (a Spanish-Australian partnership) that would operate the toll road for a profit for the next 75 years. The privatization of public highways is a growing trend as states look for upfront cash infusions and relief from the ongoing maintenance of these large public infrastructures. Along with privatization comes increased usage of road pricing schemes, most commonly electronic tolls.
An important question, then, is what happens to the personal data collected …