Big Brother IS watching

Sanjøy · Post by **Sanjøy** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 3:22 am

Mrs & I both use friend finder on iPhones. Mainly me to find out when she is en route home so I am where I am supposed to be. I used to drive the a68 weekly to the Toon, coming back late at night after work. She would check on my progress / plan dinner.

Gareth · Post by **Gareth** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 8:19 am

Sanjoy wrote:Mrs & I both use friend finder on iPhones. Mainly me to find out when she is en route home so I am where I am supposed to be. I used to drive the a68 weekly to the Toon, coming back late at night after work. She would check on my progress / plan dinner.

You boys are bonkers! Friend finder to track your movement?
What happens if you tell the Wife you're coming home on the A68 with all good intentions. Then the hot receptionist who you would never cross the line with asks for a lift home and you have to divert a little. Mrs Sanj looks up the iphone friend finder and you have to explain why you deviated from planned route and why you're home 17mins later than planned.....?

As a family man I won't be fitting trackers to my Wife's car.
Will you be upgrading to one that records revs and brake pressures?

Anyway, I'm only messin but this is one of the most bizarre topics I've read on SE.

scott_e · Post by **scott_e** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 8:49 am

Sanjoy wrote: She would check on my progress / plan dinner.

Yip that is another handy application. I get an alert when the wife exits school, enters nursery, exits nursery then know I have 5 mins before they are home to get dinner on the table .... or kick the girlfriend out if you want to look at it that way Gareth

flyingscot68 · Post by **flyingscot68** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 9:06 am

I never worry about road accidents etc. - what's the point?? Spend all your life worrying about something you have no control over? Waste of time if you ask me.

If my partner wanted a black box put in my vehicles so they could keep an eye on me I'd be well pissed off, no matter the reasoning behind it.

When I bought the Evora last year a couple of the companies that quoted us for insurance wanted to fit a box in the car - no chance.
A life under scrutiny isn't a life.

Sanjøy · Post by **Sanjøy** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 9:28 am

Gareth wrote:
Sanjoy wrote:Mrs & I both use friend finder on iPhones. Mainly me to find out when she is en route home so I am where I am supposed to be. I used to drive the a68 weekly to the Toon, coming back late at night after work. She would check on my progress / plan dinner.
You boys are bonkers! Friend finder to track your movement?
What happens if you tell the Wife you're coming home on the A68 with all good intentions. Then the hot receptionist who you would never cross the line with asks for a lift home and you have to divert a little. Mrs Sanj looks up the iphone friend finder and you have to explain why you deviated from planned route and why you're home 17mins later than planned.....?

As a family man I won't be fitting trackers to my Wife's car.
Will you be upgrading to one that records revs and brake pressures?

Anyway, I'm only messin but this is one of the most bizarre topics I've read on SE.

Ah the pole dancing receptionist. Always a treat of the Toon. Sadly missed.

Friend finder is remarkably useful for meeting mates at the rugby etc when the masts are having a shocker.

j2 lot · Post by **j2 lot** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 11:05 am

Sounds like all you worriers need the i-petrolhead app.

Im with Flyinscot though - why worry about something you have little or no control over, lifes too short to be constantly consumed with worry

Ever thought of a career as a stalker

H8OAG · Post by **H8OAG** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 11:08 am

Bet your wife spells the word "HELP" on her dinner plate with her garden peas............

We have sold "O2 Drive" tracking systems into many of the corporate fleets.

The data is used mainly to promote sustainable driving..............but has been used to challenge people on their alleged whereabouts !!

One of the better uses I have seen is to finacially reward drivers for smooth and fuel efficient driving by running a monthly company league table.
The diffence in good/bad mpg figures in like for like vehicles is astounding in some cases

Post by **Shug** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 11:17 am

Apologies, don't know the ages of the people who seem to think it's perfectly cool to have electronic eyes on you (for whatever noble reason) 24/7, but perhaps it's a generational thing? Perhaps those who grew up in the 90s/00s just don't get the issue with Big Brother monitoring? After all, we've been CCTV GB for decades now.

It's a basic breach of personal freedom to have to be monitored 24/7, it's not something I will ever allow to happen in my vehicles and would actually go to court to prevent it. It doesn't matter an iota what the reasoning is, whether it does make the insurance industry's job easier, or whatever. From my POV, it's not on - 1984 was a warning, not a template on how to run a country!

Something I feel relatively strongly about, you might say.

BiggestNizzy · Post by **BiggestNizzy** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 11:21 am

tut · Post by **tut** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 3:48 pm

100% with Shug, it will not affect me, and in the near future it will not affect anybody else if they chose not to let it. I also agree that I think it may be a generation thing, he is one later than my own but thinks the same way.

Electronics and automation will steadily replace human intervention, the driverless car is well under development, but in the meantime we have a choice, don't buy a car that has started fitting them unless that is your idea of progress, and you feel the need to track your family 24 hours a day, or even worse, let others do the same thing.

tut

mattg · Post by **mattg** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 4:39 pm

Surely the solution here is to refuse to buy a new car that has a monitoring box in it?
And be sure to tell the sales guy that's the reason you're walking away.

scott_e · Post by **scott_e** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 4:40 pm

Shug wrote: but perhaps it's a generational thing?

Could be , we certainly don't think twice about it. If it was a problem for any of the parties involved then it wouldn't be done no problem. Everyone simply finds the technology is a useful tool. I can understand the opposite side of the argument too , if you don't want to be tracked then fair enough.

sendmyusername · Post by **sendmyusername** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 5:24 pm

Chevvy had them in for years.
How many people were aware of that ?
So general public may not know about it until after an incident...
If chevvy promoted buying their car in the uk made you more like to be prosecuted by information in your own car, do you thinkthey would still have many sales ?

flyingscot68 · Post by **flyingscot68** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 5:45 pm

sendmyusername wrote:Chevvy had them in for years.

I heard rumours of a system called 'snap shot' being fitted in many of the prestige marques like Porsche etc. without the public knowing about it.
Apparently it was part of the ECU and the last fifteen minutes of driving could be uploaded from the ECU if required.

No idea if it was actually true or not but the Chevy thing sounds like the same sort of thing.
Anybody heard of snap shot??

As for the generational idea, could well be. I find a lot of people a fair bit younger than myself are far more accepting of the loss of privacy that comes along with some of todays technology, and also more likely to leave themselves open to potential abuse and problems caused by putting too much of their life on social networks etc. Guess this is just another extention of that - sort of

bertieduff · Post by **bertieduff** » Wed Feb 20, 2013 9:40 pm

scott_e wrote: If it was a problem for any of the parties involved then it wouldn't be done no problem. Everyone simply finds the technology is a useful tool. I can understand the opposite side of the argument too , if you don't want to be tracked then fair enough.

It's all 'mission creep' though. It's not hard to envisage a point where you won't have that choice: once a significant number of people start to accept all these harmless little tecchy carrots it'll be hugely tempting for any body with a vested interest to push for them to become mandatory, or at least incentivise to make it hard for anyone to refuse.

Still, I'm sure that every government/religous/commercial organisation that eventually knows where I am, what I'm doing, what I've done, what I buy, who I know, what i say etc etc etc will only have my best interests at heart, bless 'em.

We need more men like Bill Hicks. He made this stuff sound funny, dammit

Scottish Elises