You might not think of your car as a treasure trove of personal data, but it frequently is -- performance data, phone contacts and location info may be sitting under the hood. And the American Civil Liberties Union wants to be sure police can't just...
Have you ever wondered what’s inside of a black box? You know, the boxes that are on airplanes and helicopters, that help investigators determine what happened in a crash? Well, father and son team Dan and Lincoln from the What’s Inside? channel cut open a black box flight recorder to find out. Yes, we know it’s red and not black – that’s to help make them easier to find.
To make things more interesting, they do so after dropping it from a helicopter. It only showed minor scuffs from that 500-foot fall drop. These things are tough, obviously. They have to be in order to survive crashes. That metal casing, along with some sort of industrial strength filler is amazingly thick, so it took a lot of cutting with a power saw to get through the exterior box.
Eventually they get through and find the heart of the operation – a circuit board with chips on it. This tiny circuit board stores tons of relevant data about the flight. Cool stuff.
Airlines have to stream the black box data because they have to ensure that none of it gets lost in case there is an accident. The possiblity of having this black box data live streamed has come up...
There is always some mystery associated with black boxes. They seem to hold all the unknown information that investigators require after a terrible accident or tragedy.
However, this black box is an exception. It is a Useless Box Kit that actually does nothing. It looks very important and profound but in ... Continue Reading on Walyou
Black boxes aren't just for airplanes anymore, it seems. Though car companies have been installing the devices at their discretion since the early aughts, a new bill, ominously entitled Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, has just passed Senate approval containing a provision that would mandate the inclusion of these Event Data Recorders in all automobiles produced from 2015 and on. Privacy fans may already be reaching for those protesting pitchforks, but keep in mind this legislation still needs to pass the House of Representatives on its way to becoming law. And given its other, more controversial elements (i.e. revoking passports for unpaid back taxes), it could still head back to the recycle bin. If it does pass Congressional muster, you'll still have ownership of any collected data, so long as the court doesn't require you to hand it over. Regardless of the outcome, we wouldn't breathe a sigh of relief just yet -- your car might be snooping on you as we speak. Just check your owner's manual.
You might not think of your car as a treasure trove of personal data, but it frequently is -- performance data, phone contacts and location info may be sitting under the hood. And the American Civil Liberties Union wants to be sure police can't just...
