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Outside View: On-Star online to U.S. gov.
By Bob Barr
A UPI Outside View commentary
Published 12/1/2003 8:26 AM
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WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Every time my wife urges me to look into getting OnStar, the digital, computerized communications device installed in many newer-model General Motors vehicles, I have resisted.

Yes, I know; I've heard the tear-jerk ads on the radio with the plaintive voices of supposedly real wives, mothers, and metro-sexual-sounding men fearing for their lives because they've locked themselves out of their cars and have called OnStar so someone can get them out of the jam into which they've put themselves. Still, I've not been convinced the loss of privacy is worth the remote possibility that I would find myself in a life-threatening situation from which the only possible salvation would be my ability to reach out and touch an OnStar employee.

Now, even my wife agrees that OnStar -- or similar tracking devices installed in non-GM vehicles -- would be a really bad idea. What changed her mind? In addition to the irrefutable eloquence of my arguments, it was a recent story, tucked away in an Internet news service, describing a recent federal court decision that confirms what my own conspiratorial-oriented mind always suspected was true. The FBI and other police agencies have been using these factory-installed tracking systems as a way to eavesdrop on passengers in vehicles, without the folks in the car even knowing the government was listening to their conversations! Unbelievable, you scoff? Nope, it's as real as the genetically engineered smells automobile manufacturers are now putting into their cars...