<p>New York area airports.</p>
<p>I agree in theory that it is unsettling to think of the degree to which privacy has been compromised in the name of convenience. EZPass records are only available if they are subpoenaed. -in this way, they are no different than computer records. You’d have to throw the computer in the trash, long before the EZPass, if you were really that worried about privacy, and I don’t see many people doing that. I personally am much more concerned about the ease at which anyone can find anyone online these days with a touch of a button.</p>
<p>In several states, including my own, these records are only able to be obtained in the event of a criminal, not a civil case. For people in EZPass states this is not really news, as there have been cases like this publicized before. There was a woman who was convicted of the murder and subsequent dumping of the body of her H off a bridge partly on the basis of EZ Pass records. It’s the notion that many people are unaware that in some states these can be used against you in a civil case that has made it newsworthy. I wonder if EZPass will see a reduction in use in the coming months! </p>
<p>I hadn’t heard about these being used to nab speeders, though. THAT’S when people would get rid of them!</p>
<p>My NY EZ pass works on tolls all up and down the East Coast. I wouldn’t be without it.</p>
<p>“The databases for services such as On-Star and other GPS systems must be teaming with information deemed useful to any number of agencies, possibly motivated by agendas both benign and malignant.”</p>
<p>Just to be clear: GPS systems that people buy for their cars (Magellen, Garmin, etc. are receive-only devices. They do not send your location to anyplace or anyone. I have seen some that are capable of keeping an internal database in the unit itself, but that is an option turned on by the owner of the unit and he/she owns that data. </p>
<p>On-Star is a different animal, but my guess is that the only time that location information is transmitted is when the user prompts for it to be done, or in the event of some stimulus such as airbag deployment. To keep a database of all car movement information would be prohibitively expensive with no commercial payoff.</p>