I was reading an article today about a new device for your car that will alert you when you are driving recklessly. It will even send emails and text alerts to accounts you designate. Sounds like a great product for parents of teenagers, right? I suppose if you do not think of the broader and more far reaching ramifications.
What exactly does the device measure? The article didn’t say. Add to that the growing push to start putting black boxes in our motor vehicles and the extremely invasive Big Brother device a.k.a. OnStar already equipped on thousands of GM vehicles and I am greatly concerned with the reach and invasion that these kinds of technologies allow.
GM’s OnStar device has always bothered me ever since I read the first book of Harry Harrison’s To the Stars Trilogy Home World. In that book every car is equipped with an OnStar like device that helps them drive themselves and will not relinquish control of the vehicle if the driver has had too much to drink. In the book the Government is a corrupt oppressive totalitarian state similar to George Orwell’s 1984. The Hero is trapped in his car by the government when he begins poking around and revealing secrets; the device stops his car and then locks him in it broadcasting his position to the “authorities.”
I don’t know if OnStar can lock you in your car or not but it can slow your vehicle down as well as track its location. GM tries to sell this as a good thing. Me I would never purchase a car with that kind of technology on it nor would I trust a company that builds cars with that ability. That is too much power over me and my property in someone else’s hands. You might be thinking, “But it can help you recover your car if it’s stolen.” Big whoop I’ve seen a few cars recovered after they are stolen they are generally not worth much more then scrap metal anyway. To be cont.
