Airbags v. privacy

Big Brother, moving like Sandburg's fog, comes a step closer, the Toronto Globe & Mail informs us.

Montreal, March 10 - The airbag in Eric Gauthier's car was designed to save his life. But it could put the 26-year-old behind bars.

Unbeknownst to Mr. Gauthier, the airbag in his Chevrolet Sunfire had a data recorder that proved he was driving at three times the 50-kilometre speed limit [that is, he was going about 95 mph] on a Montreal street when he hit another car, killing the driver. ...

Known in the industry as EDRs - event data recorders - the black boxes have grown increasingly sophisticated and common. General Motors, for example, has put them in its new models since 1999 and Ford since 2000.

And, of course, the information contained in them, typically a five-second loop that locks in the data for the period before an airbag inflates, is increasingly being used as a tool by prosecutors both in Canada and the US. If you think having some electronic gadget you may not have even known about keeping constant track of your car's speed, engine rpms, brake and accelerator pedal positions, and whether or not your seatbelt is fastened is an invasion of your privacy, think again.

Mr. Gauthier's defence argued that using the data in the recorder was a violation of his privacy. Quebec Court Judge Louise Bourdeau ruled that any infringement was minimal....

And if you think you'll just avoid certain cars, here at home

the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is considering making EDRs mandatory in all new vehicles.

And what do you want to bet that if you object you'll be told it's for your own good?

And by the way, why is every new invasion of our lives described as a "minimal intrusion?" Does the death of 1,000 cuts ring any bells?

Privacy is an area where left and right, libertarian and socialist, combine and diverge in odd combinations. I normally wouldn't have thought I'd have cause to favorably cite William Safire and a senior editor of "Reason" magazine, but believe it or not, here I go.

Safire first, from the New York Times for March 10:

[A]fter 9/11, the passion went out of advocacy of privacy. The right to be let alone had to be balanced against the right to stay alive.

Accordingly, we readily submit to preboarding searches, right down to our shoes. We tolerate foreigner-fingerprinting at our borders. We live with hidden security cameras near national monuments or bridges.

Benumbed by the fear of appearing insufficiently vigilant, we accept "cookies" on our computers that track our habits and electronic location devices in our cars that guide our way but never let us wander about unobserved. We don't know whether our nosy neighbor is taking his cellphone call or taking our picture. We let our most confidential e-mail be shared among our spies, our cops and our military. To keep our national defense up, we have let our personal defenses down.

Terror's threat is real. But as we grudgingly grant government more leeway to guard our lives, we must demand that our protectors be especially careful to safeguard our rights. Officials all too often fail to see both sides of their jobs.

Safire goes on to describe DOJ's contention in its attempts to get medical information on abortion patients that they "no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential" as "abhorrent" and criticizes a pilot program where hospitals in Pennsylvania and West Virginia are expected to notify an FBI unit of any "suspicious event."

For his part, Brian Doherty of Reason magazine wrote in the Los Angeles Times on March 9 about the case now before the Supreme Court of Larry Hiibel, who was arrested in Humboldt County, Nevada, in May 2000 for refusing to give his name to a police officer.

Under current precedent, being ordered to give your name to a police officer, if you are stopped under reasonable suspicion of being involved in a crime, is generally considered a reasonable and minimal intrusion on your privacy and dignity. ...

[But police] now potentially have at their disposal such databases as the National Criminal Information Center (which the Justice Department exempted from requirements that data in it be "timely, relevant, complete and accurate") and the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (which the American Civil Liberties Union thinks contains some of the data-mining aspects of the controversial and supposedly scuttled Total Information Awareness program). ...

Not only the guilty have reason to fear. As the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote in its amicus brief in Hiibel's case, "a name is no longer a simple identifier: It is the key to a vast, cross-referenced system of public and private databases, which lay bare the most intimate features of an individual's life. If any person can be coerced by the state to hand over this key to the police, then the protections of the 4th and 5th Amendments have been rendered illusory."

There is one important difference between what is slowly enveloping us and Sandburg's fog: It won't "move on."