Vehicle tracking and citizenship
Vehicle tracking is an effective way of monitoring vehicles, but some people have concerns about whether this data invades people's privacy.
Read about how vehicle tracking works and also the case studies of how different people find the technology useful. Discuss the issues involved in vehicle tracking. Do you think it invades the privacy of drivers? Should a company be able to track where its vehicles and employees are? Think about how much privacy people have at work in an office or factory, for example. What counts as privacy?
An insurance company in the UK has been trialing a system of vehicle tracking, which would affect the amount drivers pay for their insurance. If the "black box" data shows that the vehicles are not used much, the owner might pay less insurance than someone who used their car more. If the data showed that the car was breaking the speed limit when it had an accident, the insurers might not agree to pay out.
Read these articles about "black box" recording in cars (this could be done as a "jigsaw" exercise, with different groups reading different articles and presenting the information to the whole class):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1831181.stm
A report on the insurance scheme trial.
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/001027.php
A discussion about "black boxes" in taxis.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2002/Sep-15-Sun-2002/news/19629405.html
A different example of data being collected from a car, without the driver being aware.
What do you think of this? Could it cut insurance costs and prevent accidents or crime? What would happen to all the data the "black box" collected? Would this infringe the driver's privacy? How would they know the information would be protected? What other techniques are already used to monitor vehicles?
Could a system like this become compulsory in all cars, instead of voluntary? Would that be a good thing? Could it make the roads safer, cut car crime and insurance costs fairer? Who would own the information and decide how it was used?
GPS technology has been rapidly getting smaller and cheaper, allowing it to be used in many new ways. In the future it might be technically possible to collect anyone's GPS location data via a receiver in a compulsory identity card. Make a case for and against this proposal. How would it affect crime prevention, for example? What would the implications for civil liberties be? In what other ways is information collected about us at present?
Other privacy related links:
http://www.privacyinternational.org
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk