Court to FBI: No spying on in-car computers

Declan McCullagh
CNet
October 22, 2009

[efoods]The FBI and other police agencies may not eavesdrop on conversations inside automobiles equipped with OnStar or similar dashboard computing systems, a federal appeals court ruled.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday that the FBI is not legally entitled to remotely activate the system and secretly use it to snoop on passengers, because doing so would render it inoperable during an emergency.

In a split 2-1 ruling the majority wrote that “the company could not assist the FBI without disabling the system in the monitored car” and said a district judge was wrong to have granted the FBI its request for surreptitious monitoring.

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