Archive | May, 2012

News Clipping

In California, the state is close to approving allowing the automated cars on the road. (And in Spain, a convoy of them recently took to the highway.) But some people in California are raising privacy concerns. Google, of course, is known for tracking where its users go on the web and using that information to make money.

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A privacy group wants to put the brakes on Google’s driverless cars, demanding that they shouldn’t be allowed on the road until privacy legislation has been put into place. Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group, is demanding that the technology is incorporated into a bill, SB 1289, which would see proper legislation around this technology, put into place to protect people.

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The legislation should be amended to provide adequate privacy protection for users of the technology, said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog. “Without appropriate regulations, Google’s vehicles will be able to gather unprecedented amounts of information about the use of those vehicles. How will it be used? Just as Google tracks us around the Information Superhighway, it will now be looking over our shoulders on every highway and byway,” Court said in a letter to Assembly Speaker John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles).

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A privacy group is calling on the California Assembly to keep Google’s self-driving cars off the road. Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit privacy group, sent an open letter to the Assembly today urging members to defeat a bill, SB 1289, that would allow Google’s self-driving cars on California’s roads unless the bill is amended to provide “adequate” privacy protection for the cars’ users.

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California Senate Bill 1298 is now up for grabs in the State House after unanimous passage in the state Senate. The bill permits “autonomous vehicles” on California roadways. In a protest letter to the California House Speaker, the group Consumer Watchdog seeks to kill portions of the bill. The group leaders write that the company lost its trustworthiness with the so-called “Wi-Spy scandal, the largest wiretapping effort ever, in which Google’s Street View cars sucked up emails, passwords and other data from private Wi-Fi networks in 30 countries around the world.” Click here to read a report from the group.

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