GPS News: GPS and Privacy issues

Most of us don't have to worry about cruising around in our cars or walking around the woods with a GPS and whether or not that's going to cause any privacy issues. How about when you grab a rental car with a nice GPS navigator in it for your use? It's there for your convenience, right? Ever stop to think about it being used against you? You may recall a case in Connecticut where a a rental car company used the onboard GPS tracking system to fine the renter for going over the speed limit.

"The Connecticut Supreme Court recently dealt with that GPS case. A car rental company, with GPS devices in its vehicles, monitored the speeds of leased cars. Any time the driver exceeded 79 mph for two minutes or more, the driver was charged an added fee of $150. The fee would automatically be added to the driver's credit or debit card. Some drivers were unaware they were charged a fee until they returned the vehicle.

The court ruled that the rental company could only apply the charge if: (1) a customer had been clearly informed that GPS would be used to monitor speed, and (2) the fee was reasonably related to the added wear and tear on the vehicle. In this case, the court determined that the $150 fee was unreasonably high.

Buried in the fine print of the rental contracts was a clause stating that "Vehicles driven in excess of the posted speed limit will be charged $150 per occurrence. All our vehicles are GPS equipped." (The rental car company, Acme, eventually replaced the words "posted speed limit" with "79 miles per hour.")

In support of its holding, it noted these striking findings: An administrative hearing officer had determined, based on the testimony of various expert witnesses, that the actual cost of excess wear and tear associated with driving one of the rental car company's cars at 80 miles per hour for two continuous minutes was closer to 37 cents, than $150.

Based on these calculations, Justice David Borden pointed out that "[t]he $150 collected by [American Rental] was more than 400 times the potential damage incurred." Justice Borden also noted that "a customer would have to travel more than 1,070 miles at high speeds, without decelerating below 80 miles per hour, to [actually] cause $150 of excess wear on the vehicle."

In the contract, no explanation of what GPS is, or of how the customer would be charged, was given. Nor was "occurrence" defined to make clear that just two minutes of speeding would count - or that drivers could be charged for an apparently limitless number of such two-minute periods, even within a single trip.

Recognizing the privacy issues raised by GPS devices, several states have adopted laws restricting their use. For example, car rental companies cannot use GPS data to levy charges on drivers in California and New York."

Now the idea of having a GPS tied to a wireless transmitter can be a good thing. Think of all the trucking firms that use the systems to keep track of where their fleet is, and if the fleet drivers are obeying the rules instituted to prevent accidents.

The issue starts to get a bit dicey when you start to consider that an insurance company may want you to use a GPS receiver to track your vehicle if it were stolen. Cool, great! Then all of a sudden does this bleed into your insurance company watching how fast you drive? "Hey it's a safety issue right?" How far you drive? If you are actually in some high crime neighborhoods, or what hotels you use, or what grocery stores you visit, and so on. It's a slippery slope and all of a sudden the GPS and trasmitter system starts to look more like a profiling tool for monitoring your whole life and less like an aide to helping locate a stolen auto. Where does it stop?

September 3, 2005

GPS News: GPS and Privacy issues