I was up in Sacramento today to call on the Department of Motor Vehicles to ensure that the regulations that they are developing to govern the use of autonomous vehicles – popularly known as driverless cars -will protect the operators’ privacy.

The company that will be most directly affected by the new autonomous vehicle regulations is Google, which is pioneering development of the robot-driven cars. The Internet giant was the driving force behind SB 1298, which charged the DMV with the task of developing the regulations and also rebuffed attempts to require privacy protections in the law.

However, it is not too late to implement privacy safeguards in this rulemaking and Consumer Watchdog called on the DMV to do so. Failure to act will mean substantial privacy risks from the manufacturers’ driverless car technology if there are not protections from what Google is best known for: the collection and use of voluminous personal information about us and our movements.

The DMV regulations must give the user control over what data is gathered and how the information will be used.  Merely stating what data is gathered with no explanation of its use is woefully inadequate. The DMV’s autonomous vehicle regulations must provide that driverless cars gather only the data necessary to operate the vehicle and retain that data only as long as necessary for the vehicle’s operation.  The regulations should provide that the data must not be used for any additional purpose such as marketing or advertising without the consumer’s explicit opt-in consent.

Without appropriate regulations, autonomous vehicles will be able to gather unprecedented amounts of information about the use of those vehicles.  How will it be used?  Just as we are now tracked around the Internet, will Google and other purveyors of driverless car technology now be looking over our shoulders on every highway and byway? Will the data be provided to insurance companies for underwriting purposes or to third parties that develop some kind of a driving score related to where and when individuals travel?  Will it be used to serve in-car advertisements or advertisements through other venues in the Google suite of products? Will it be used to track our movements and those of surrounding cars and mobile devices so that Google’s advertisers can better locate us?

Google is the aforementioned leader in driverless car research and is attempting to steer regulatory efforts in various states, especially California.  That’s why our concerns are so focused on the company. So I ask:  Why won’t Google endorse simple privacy safeguards for its self-driving cars?  I think there are two reasons.

First, Google’s entire business model is based on building digital dossiers about our personal behavior and using them to sell the most personal advertising to us.  You’re not Google’s customer; you are its product – the one it sells to corporations willing to pay any price to reach you.  Will the driverless technology be just about getting us from point to point or more about tracking how we got there and what we did along the way?

Second, computer engineers, who believe that more data is always better, are in charge at Google.  They may not know what they would use data for today, but they think they may someday find a use for it and don’t want any restrictions on them now.

Google is first and foremost an advertising company; 98 percent of its $38 billion in revenue comes from advertising, and the more personalized the marketing the better.  Indeed, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has said, “We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

We all remember the last time Google deployed high tech vehicles around the world.  The result was Wi-Spy, the biggest wire-tapping scandal in history when the company’s Street View cars sucked up data from tens of millions of private Wi-Fi networks, including emails, health information, banking information, passwords and other data.  The company paid $7 million to settle the case brought by the state Attorneys General.  A class action suit is pending in federal district court.

Citing its “Don’t Be Evil” motto, Google claims it can be trusted with our information.  Facts show otherwise. The FCC released documents showing the Wi-Spy scandal was not a mistake or the work of one rogue engineer, as the company had claimed; but was part of the Street View design. The Commission fined Google $25,000 for obstructing its investigation.

The Federal Trade Commission imposed a $22.5 million penalty on Google for violating a consent agreement and hacking around privacy settings on Apple’s Safari browser, which is used on iPads and iPhones. Simply put, there is no reason to believe Google when it claims to be concerned about privacy.

Consumers enthusiastically adopted the new technology of the Internet.  What we were not told was that our use of the Information Superhighway would be monitored and tracked in order to personalize corporate marketing and make a fortune for companies like Google.  Consumer Watchdog supports driverless car technology and predicts it will be commonplace sooner than many of us expect.  However, it must not be allowed to become yet another way to track us in our daily lives.

Internet technology was implemented with little regard to protecting users’ privacy.  We are playing catch-up for our failure to consider the societal impact of a new technology.  The time to ensure that this new driverless car technology has the necessary privacy protections is while it is being designed and developed.   This is a concept known as “Privacy by Design.” It means privacy issues are considered from the very beginning and solutions are “baked in.” Trying to catch up after a new technology is developed and broadly implemented simply will not work.  The DMV should act to require that consumers must give opt-in consent before any data gathered through driverless car technology is used for any purpose other than driving the vehicle.

While we don’t propose to limit the ability of the cars to function by communicating as necessary with satellites and other devices, the collection and retention of data for marketing and other purposes should be banned. Unless strong protections are enacted in the new regulations, once again society will be forced to play catch-up in dealing with the impact of the privacy invading aspects of a new technology.

Posted by John M. Simpson, Director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project.  

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

California Republicans finally, finally submitted what they claim is a plan to attack the budget deficits, detailing specifics of the cuts they are demanding.  The plan they submitted only cuts the deficit in half, thereby admitting (but not admitting) the urgent need to raise taxes to cover the other half of the deficit.

The Republican plan guts public schools, community colleges, Medi-Cal, transit, mental health and many other programs.  And yet it still leaves half of the deficit in place.  So it isn’t really a “plan” at all.  It is just one more extremist demand that we gut public schools.

A phrase like “guts schools and programs” becomes abstract when it is heard often enough.  So what does this mean to the average Californian?  What kind of education will children receive as we push to 40 or more students per classroom?  Will they be safe if the district cannot afford crossing guards or buses?  Will any of us be safe after police and firefighters are cut back?  Do we go another decade without improving mass transit or even repairing roads and bridges?  Will epidemics spread as health care is cut back?  What about three-hour lines at the DMV?  And what happens to people’s ability to train for jobs when community colleges are cut way back?  

The Republicans demand that we sacrifice the education of an entire generation of school-aged Californians, so that a few wealthy people and corporations can become even wealthier!  Their benefactors are covered — with their kids are in $20,000-a-year private academies.  But what will this do to the economic future of the rest of this generation, and to the future of California?  They don’t care.

This process as it has unfolded over so many years has shown us that California is ungovernable until we remove the current 2/3-requirement system that allows a small group of extremists to hold the state hostage.

Click through to Speak Out California.

By Dave Johnson for Speak Out California

Two previous posts explored the outline of the California state budget, and the process by which the budget is developed and passed into law.  But these overviews don’t directly touch most Californians in their daily lives.  To begin to connect the budget and the budget process with the concerns of regular Californians let’s look at one department that almost every adult in California encounters regularly: the dreaded Department of Motor Vehicles, commonly known as the DMV.

According to the DMV website, the department:

…registers vehicles in California and licenses their drivers. This amounts to about 33 million vehicles registered and approximately 23 million licensed drivers.

Other major DMV functions include:

• Recording ownership (certificate of title) of the vehicles DMV registers
• Maintaining driving records (accidents and convictions) of licensed drivers
• Issuing identification cards for individuals
• Registering and recording ownership of vessels
• Licensing and regulating driving and traffic violator schools and their instructors
• Licensing and regulating vehicle manufacturers, transporters, dealers, distributors, vehicle salespeople, and dismantlers
• Administering the Financial Responsibility Law
• Investigating consumer complaints
• Maintaining records in accordance with the law
• Collects approximately $6.5 billion in revenues annually

That’s a lot.  To accomplish this for the state’s population of 36,457,549 (2006 census bureau estimate), with 23,270,087 licensed drivers and 4,248,807 ID cardholders (2006)  The total budget is $903 MILLION (proposed, 2007-2008) with 8,280 employees.

While this sounds like a lot of money and people, this amounts to only approx. $33 and only .0003 employees per license/ ID card.  How much service can you expect from three ten-thousandths of an employee?

The DMV is a symbol of state government to most people — and not often a positive one.  Few people have good things to say about the DMV, and by and large this boils down to the need to show up at the office and stand in a line, fill out forms, and regularly pay fees.

Few people understand that one of the reasons for the lines is that the DMV just doesn’t have enough people working there – just three ten-thousandths of a person for each license or ID cardholder.  When 27.5 million people are demanding services from 8,280 employees, lines can indeed get long.  

But even under these constraints, they find ways to manage as well as they have.  In fact, according to the Governor’s Budget Document, “Over the past two years, the DMV has reduced field office wait times in the largest offices from nearly one hour to 20 minutes and reduced customer telephone wait times by more than 50 percent.”  These lines were decreased because the Governor committed to additional funding (demonstrating the direct relationship between funding and good service to the public.)  

We frequently hear that government spending must be cut, but few places bring home the impact of government spending cuts as directly as the experience of a visit to the DMV.  In our example the DMV is a symbol of the state government, and the experience of the DMV is the experience of underfunded schools, roads that need maintenance and services that are approaching a breaking point.  Spending can only be cut so far.

Click to continue.