Feds want new cars to broadcast our location, direction & speed
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, published last week an "advanced notice of proposed rulemaking" on "vehicle-to-vehicle communications."
What NHTSA is proposing could begin a transformation in the American transportation system that gives our government more power to spy on where we go, how fast and what route we took.
In announcing its proposed rulemaking, NHTSA is stressing its intention to protect the "privacy" of American drivers.
"This document initiates rulemaking that would propose to create a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard, FMVSS No. 150, to require vehicle-to-vehicle communication capability for light vehicles," says NHTSA's dryly-worded notice.
What do vehicle-to-vehicle communications entail?
NHTSA has crafted a nice phrase to describe the information cars would broadcast. It is the "Basic Safety Message."
"An integrated V2V system is connected to proprietary data busses and can provide highly accurate information using in-vehicle information to generate the Basic Safety Message," says NHTSA's technical report on "Readiness of V2V for Application."
"The integrated system both broadcasts and receives BSMs," says the report. "In addition, it can process the content of received messages to provide advisories and/or warnings to the driver of the vehicle in which it is installed."
The "Basic Safety Message" will be broadcast by the vehicle's dedicated short-range communications system. According to NHTSA, this system will need to transmit certain specific information.
"For example," says the technical report, "when a DSRC unit sends out a BSM, the BSM needs to: Contain the relevant elements and describe them accurately (e.g., vehicle speed; GPS position; vehicle heading; DSRC message ID, etc.)."
Safety is the underlying theme being sold to a gullible American public! You hear it over & over again, the Patriot Act, the NDAA Act, it was all done for your safety!
File the following under B.S.
In its technical report on V2V, published last week, NHTSA said: "At the outset, readers should understand some very important points about the V2V system as currently contemplated by NHTSA.
The system will not collect or store any data identifying individuals or individual vehicles, nor will it enable the government to do so."
"There is no data in the safety messages exchanged by vehicles or collected by the V2V system that could be used by law enforcement or private entities to personally identify a speeding or erratic driver," the report said. "The system — operated by private entities — will not enable tracking through space and time of vehicles linked to specific owners or drivers.
"Our research to date suggests that drivers may be concerned about the possibility that the government or a private entity could use V2V communications to track their daily activities and whereabouts," said the report. "However, as designed, NHTSA is confident that the V2V system both achieves the agency's safety goals and protects consumer privacy appropriately."
We know every vehicle is equipped with an event data recorder (black box) and GPS which can be used to spy on our driving habits.
We know EZ-Pass, red-light cameras, traffic cameras are used by DHS to spy on us, and now we're supposed to believe our govt. won't use this V2V data to spy on us?
A NH House lawmaker contends DHS is spying on us with traffic cameras.
DHS & police are spying on us using private surveillance cameras.
For more info. read my article "Big brother in your car, its worse than you imagined".
Come on America, wake up!
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/dot-proposes-mandating-cars-broadcast-location-direction-and-speed