IBM has contracted with UAE CERT Telematics, the “leading technology and research organization of the United Arab Emirates” (according to their site), to develop and deploy over 100,000 automobile-monitoring systems in the next four years. The devices, according to this article at GeekCoffee, “would be installed in cars to provide a voice warning if the driver exceeds the local speed limit for wherever he may be driving. If the voice warning is ignored, the system would use a GSM/GPRS link to beam the car’s speed, identity and location to the police so that a ticket could be issued.”

There is no announcement yet as to whether these devices will be mandatory, or who will be selected for having to install the devices in their vehicles.

I find this a very interesting example of the tension between privacy and safety. On the one hand, this measure certainly seems likely to reduce the likelihood of traffic accidents and reckless driving. On the other hand, there’s certainly some line that could be crossed in terms of what information is monitored by such devices. While speeding may not be unreasonable to track, monitoring exact location at all times could certainly be a violation of privacy for private citizens (companies may set different policies for their employees, such as truck drivers or delivery personnel).

Information Week has another article on this deal between IBM and CERT Telematics.

This entry was posted by Paul Otto (pnotto@ncsu.edu) on Sunday, April 17th, 2005 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Government Programs, Technologies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Note: Blog posts are the opinions of their authors and do not reflect the official opinion of the National Science Foundation or North Carolina State University.