{"id":3963,"date":"2014-01-09T14:21:54","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T21:21:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=3963"},"modified":"2014-01-09T14:21:54","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T21:21:54","slug":"ford-vp-we-have-gps-in-your-car-so-we-know-what-youre-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=3963","title":{"rendered":"Ford VP: ‘We have GPS in your car, so we know what you\u2019re doing’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ford Group Vice President Marketing and Communications Jim Farley.<\/span><\/h1>\n

(Reuters \/ John Gress)<\/span><\/h1>\n
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Modern automobiles are logging tremendous amounts of information every single second they\u2019re being put to use, and a senior executive at the Ford Motor Company says car manufacturers have access to every last piece of it.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

At the CES electronic trade show in Las Vegas this week, the global vice president for Ford\u2019s marketing and sales division opened up about just exactly how much data is being collected by his company\u2019s latest line of smart cars.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Ford\u2019s Jim Farley told a Vegas crowd on Wednesday, according toBusiness Insider<\/a>\u00a0reporter Jim Edwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone,”<\/em>\u00a0Farley assured attendees.<\/p>\n

But just as how National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden revealed how the United States government compels telecommunication companies for metadata pertaining to the phone habits of millions of Americans on a regular basis, the sheer face alone that this automotive data is being collected and stored means it could someday be used by others.<\/p>\n

Edwards described Farley\u2019s remark as being\u00a0\u201cboth sinister and obvious.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the GPS units installed in Ford vehicles, Ford knows when its drivers are speeding, and where they are while they’re doing it,<\/em>\u201d Edwards wrote. Should the company choose to share that information with law enforcement, though, then it could create an environment where surveillance extends off the computer and onto the road.<\/p>\n

As many as\u00a096 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the cars mass-produced in 2013 included event data recorders, RT reported last year, similar to the black boxes that log information inside airplanes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese cars are equipped with computers that collect massive amounts of data<\/em>,\u201d Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told the New York Times then. \u201cWithout protections, it can lead to all kinds of abuse<\/em>,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

According to Business Insider, Farley said this information is being recorded in cars by Ford so that data aggregators and analysts may someday later be able to use it in real time to help solve problems, such as traffic congestion.<\/p>\n

As RT\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0earlier this week, however, automobile owners don\u2019t have a choice for now as to whether or not they want their activities being etched into the computers of car makers. The Government Accountability Office released a report days before Farley\u2019s remarks detailing the results of an investigation into data storage protocol among auto makers Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan and said that, across the board, if companies retained data then\u00a0\u201cthey did not allow consumers to request that their data is deleted.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The GAO says it would be a\u00a0\u201crecommended practice\u201d<\/em>\u00a0for auto makers to adopt a policy that lets drivers be sure their personal driving data is destroyed upon request.<\/p>\n

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) initially asked for the report to be conducted, and upon its completion this week he issued a statement saying more needs to be done to safeguard privacy in the information age.<\/p>\n

\u201cModern technology now allows drivers to get turn-by-turn directions in a matter of seconds, but our privacy laws haven\u2019t kept pace with these enormous advances<\/em>,\u201d Franken said. \u201cCompanies providing in-car location services are taking their customers\u2019 privacy seriously \u2013 but this report shows that Minnesotans and people across the country need much more information about how data are being collected, what they\u2019re being used for, and how they\u2019re being shared with third partie<\/em>s.\u201d<\/p>\n

RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ford Group Vice President Marketing and Communications Jim Farley. (Reuters \/ John Gress) Modern automobiles are logging tremendous amounts of information every single second they\u2019re being put to use, and a senior executive at the Ford Motor Company says car manufacturers have access to every last piece of it. At the CES electronic trade show […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[97,104],"tags":[190,186,179,745,746,1221,747],"class_list":["post-3963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-democracy","category-featured","tag-information-technology","tag-intelligence","tag-internet","tag-roads","tag-transport","tag-usa","tag-vehicles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/3.si_.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2SfUR-11V","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3965,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963\/revisions\/3965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}