Ok, this is from Fox
Privacy Experts Shun Black Boxes, but it's still an example of the ever creeping loss of privacy in our country, not to mention the utter disrespect that the so-called conservatives have for individual privacy.
WASHINGTON -- Some safety and privacy experts are reacting with apprehension, others with all out condemnation over a recent ruling by the National Transportation Safety Board (search) to require electronic data recorders or "black boxes" in all new cars manufactured in the United States.
"I take offense that this personal property of individuals is now being designed by the federal government," said Jim Harper, privacy attorney and editor of Privacilla.org.
More below the fold.
The NTSB recommended in early August that black boxes be mandated, but critics say dealers are not now required to alert car owners that their car has the ability to collect the information. Currently only California has a law requiring car dealers to notify buyers when their cars are outfitted with an EDR.
snip
While privacy experts say jokes like "'big brother' is riding shotgun" aren't funny, the technology already is being used to monitor certain drivers.
Global positioning systems are being used by car rental companies to track where renters are going and how fast they are driving. GPS also allows rental car companies to shut off the engine of a car and lock a renter out of it. It's the same technology used by OnStar, which promises to be a guardian angel for car owners who are locked out or report a vehicle stolen.
Parents of teenagers have also begun to use black boxes marketed by Road Safety International (search) in Thousand Oaks, Calif. This item, which can be placed under the hood, is able to track the driver's use of a seatbelt, excessive speed, hard cornering, braking and even unsafe backing, and can store hours of information for review later.
Privacy experts warn that once cars are outfitted for the most limited data recording, the government will find a way to argue it's for drivers' "own good" to collect more. They point to a push in recent years to install GPS in all cars so that emergency officials can easily find incapacitated accident victims.
"When you are telling someone it is for their own good, then it should be their own choice, they should be able to say `no,'" said professor Yale Kamisar of the University of Michigan Law School. "None of these things work out the way they are supposed to. Why should we believe all of these assurances when they haven't been honored in the past?"
So lets see; Bush wants to monitor our driving, get into our bedrooms, apparently wants to make people undergo mental illness testing (see here), tap phones and email without out knowledge, not let people fly, wanted people to rat on their neighbors via a TIPS program, wants to monitor people's library habits, etc...
What country are we living in? Soviet Russia? East Germany?
Oh crap, what's that knock on the door?
Some Choice quotes from Orwell's 1984
"Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema."
"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible"
"We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull."
"Who controls the past', ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past"
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows"
"It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything - anything - but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you"
"the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty"
"For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself"