2MuchRiceMakesMeSick

I have also seen it on this fourm. One guy claimed that its in the console of his camaro. I dont know how true this is.

OnStar just plain sucks. You are where your car goes, so they will know where your at all times. I guess thats what a cell phone does too.

NovaTime

You can be tracked by cell phone towers, but they can't give a GPS coordinate...yet. In the Scott Peterson case, they were tracking him by cellular telephone. If you are worried about being tracked, there is nothing you can do about it when your phone is on, especially with a GSM phone as all the new technology is being made for GSM (global system for mobil telephones). On the flip side, if something happens to you, that is damn good news.

Concerning the truck, it isn't like my cell phone that I can turn off, and this pisses me off. Does anyone know where it is so that I can remove it?

jimmyblue

iTrader: (11)

Supposedly the BCM will record some stuff when the
airbags deploy, like speed and throttle and whether you
said "hold my beer and watch this!".

I'd be up for a BCM delete if I could get info on the guts
and what to replace with a rack of plain ole relays.

Hidden cameras are everywhere. Welcome to 1984+20.

ssjunkie

iTrader: (3)

A little different situation, But all New Mercury Marine(Smartcraft) engines perminately record a few data streams. Example is throttle position, RPM, time running and fuel burned among others. They mainly use the data for warranty purposes. You can take a mercury scanner and download the data and it will actually break the data down into a table the shows how much time your motor has spent at a certain RPM or a table that shows how much fuel is bering burned vs. RPM. For a Gallons per hour kind of rating. The data can be very helpful and also very invading. A friend of mine was selling the motors out of his performance boat so he had the motors scanned for the adove tables so he could prove to potential buyers exactly how the motors had been treated.

Point is if they can do it for boats I dont see why they couldn't do it for cars.

'00 Buck

Talk about paranoid. Those black boxes store the last seconds before impact and can be downloaded by an officer (if they have the equipment). It monitors engine, throttle, brakes and related stuff to show what was going on just before impact. No more, no less. It isn't transmitting to the Govt. so they can monitor your every move. It doesn't store location of your vehicle (non-OnStar vehicles). The only way ANYONE can see that info is if it's downloaded at the source. Once again, it's only the last 5 to 30 seconds before impact that's stored, not the lifetime of the vehicle. You also have the option when purchasing the vehicle new to have the dealer remove it, but since it's usually integrated with airbags and such it may not be such a good idea. If you don't constantly break traffic laws then you don't have much to worry about, especially if you never get in a wreck, that's the only time anyone will see it. Explain how driving on public roads, when your driving affects everyone around you, private? Also, how if you are involved in a wreck with property damage, an invasion of privacy? Wouldn't you want to know if the person that hit you was flooring the gas pedal when they did, or never hit the brakes, especially if the insurance company is claiming it was your fault? Do you also think the Govt has minions monitoring millions of vehicles every day just to see what you're doing, where your going? Are you that important to require such monitoring?

I just threw all of that out there to change the direction of the phobic rants that popped up here, not to be a killjoy or anything. If you think you're that special to have a corporate or Govt entity monitoring your every move then so be it. You should feel proud!

As a side note, when I worked for SBC I unplugged the GPS tracking device in my work van for one full month. Guess what? No one said a word becuase they weren't watching me! I only did it because the POS system was draining the battery overnight and eventually killed it. My supervisor, who had access to the GPS info, had no clue. No one else in the company had a clue either. Nor did the company that provided the GPS info. No one looked at it, anywhere at any time, at least in my situation. One full month of no data, you'd think that should send a warning sign to someone, but it didn't. Before those systems were installed a lot of guys cried foul, had fits and paranoia about being watched. Turns out only some of the ones the company suspected were doing things and going places that were against policy got caught (no one got fired over it while I was there).

Relax, it ain't that bad.

TigerFan187

iTrader: (1)

On a side note I remember last season on The Sopranos when the guy that sold Tony his Escalade asked him how he was liking it and he said it was great except that God Damn OnStar and that he had it removed as soon as he bought it. I thought that was funny! The Govt watches every move every person makes. Each on of us has a govt agent that is in charge for watching us! You didnt know that they can see us through our TV's!
There are things that you can but that monitor your driving habits and can see where you were and so one! Ive seen one that is pretty cheap it just plugs in your OBDII port and then you can look at in with some softare that comes with it! Ive also seen one that is more like a "tracking device" that limo and body guard companies use. I actually saw one on CS1:Miami the other day!

NovaTime

I do security related things for a living, and i do not want anything else on my truck that can be used against me!

marc_w

That's exactly what I thought it was too.

I found a black box under the passenger seat of my '00 Blazer. I was told it was the computer that stored this data.

The OnStar thing... you can always just unscrew the antenna and remove the fuse...

Lilbro665

You only have to be paranoid if your doing something wrong!

NovaTime

It's like a sandwitch guys, the take a little piece at a time and you will say "not a big deal" until one day you look down and see that these people have eaten your entire sandwitch. Doing something wrong or not isn't the point. The point is that you paid for this truck and it shouldn't be monitoring any part of your driving habits if you don't want it to. You would not want some covert device installed in your house to watch how many hours you sat on the couch, because it is YOUR house.

I feel the same way about my truck. Whether I do something wrong or not is irrelevant, but what is relevant is that I am being monitored without my consent. The technology is here to monitor every minute aspect of your life, whether you realize it or not. I think privacy is worth fighting for