by Long Island Attorney Paul A. Lauto, Esq.
In our current age with Big Tech controlling and monitoring our almost every move, we seem to be truly living in an Orwellian society. Perhaps the only difference is that George Orwell's dystopian account of a future totalitarian state in his book 1984, was approximately 35 years premature. Monitoring our activities has become commonplace with in home virtual assistant AI technology, video doorbells, clickstream data collection, facial recognition software and GPS tracking, just to name a few. So it comes as no surprise that insurance companies are now aggressively pursuing placing tracking/monitoring devices inside our motor vehicles.
Today, several major insurance companies have television advertising campaigns aimed at convincing people to allow them to place a tracking device inside their vehicles. These tracking devices can monitor speed, braking habits, time of travel, distance traveled, phone use while driving and even how quickly or sharply turns are made. In exchange for this alarming invasion of privacy, insureds may qualify for a few meager dollars refunded on an already exorbitant premium.
In years past, an insured was always able to prove their safe driving ability with a clean record, free of accidents and tickets. These were the people deemed by the insurance companies to be "safe drivers," thereby justifying in part lower rates. But in today's world which is substantively stripped of privacy rights, the only way to allegedly maximize your car insurance savings is to let "Big Brother" into your vehicle right by your side.
If the sound of this raises any red flags, it is because we are well on our way down a very precarious slippery slope. As Americans we are losing our rights, constitutional and otherwise, at an alarming rate and must not yield and forfeit such rights for any monetary amount. Instead of exclaiming, "Don't mess with my discount," we should all be shouting, "Don't mess with my privacy!" Today it's monitoring devices in our cars, and tomorrow it will potentially be monitoring devices inside our homes or even inside our bodies by virtue of a microchip. Technology is a double edged sword and should be recognized as such, before we trade away our constitutional rights and Democracy as we know it.
Long Island Lawyer
Paul A. Lauto, Esq.
www.liattorney.com
In our current age with Big Tech controlling and monitoring our almost every move, we seem to be truly living in an Orwellian society. Perhaps the only difference is that George Orwell's dystopian account of a future totalitarian state in his book 1984, was approximately 35 years premature. Monitoring our activities has become commonplace with in home virtual assistant AI technology, video doorbells, clickstream data collection, facial recognition software and GPS tracking, just to name a few. So it comes as no surprise that insurance companies are now aggressively pursuing placing tracking/monitoring devices inside our motor vehicles.
Today, several major insurance companies have television advertising campaigns aimed at convincing people to allow them to place a tracking device inside their vehicles. These tracking devices can monitor speed, braking habits, time of travel, distance traveled, phone use while driving and even how quickly or sharply turns are made. In exchange for this alarming invasion of privacy, insureds may qualify for a few meager dollars refunded on an already exorbitant premium.
In years past, an insured was always able to prove their safe driving ability with a clean record, free of accidents and tickets. These were the people deemed by the insurance companies to be "safe drivers," thereby justifying in part lower rates. But in today's world which is substantively stripped of privacy rights, the only way to allegedly maximize your car insurance savings is to let "Big Brother" into your vehicle right by your side.
If the sound of this raises any red flags, it is because we are well on our way down a very precarious slippery slope. As Americans we are losing our rights, constitutional and otherwise, at an alarming rate and must not yield and forfeit such rights for any monetary amount. Instead of exclaiming, "Don't mess with my discount," we should all be shouting, "Don't mess with my privacy!" Today it's monitoring devices in our cars, and tomorrow it will potentially be monitoring devices inside our homes or even inside our bodies by virtue of a microchip. Technology is a double edged sword and should be recognized as such, before we trade away our constitutional rights and Democracy as we know it.
Long Island Lawyer
Paul A. Lauto, Esq.
www.liattorney.com
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