The National Transportation Safety Board recent recommendation to put data collecting "black boxes" into new cars raises questions about who would have access to this information and whether consumers should be notified about this device, the Dow Jones Newswires reported.

Many cars already have devices that gather some crash information and General Motors is installing sophisticated electronic systems to track data such as car speed and seat-belt usage in crashes where the air bag has been deployed.

The concern is that law enforcement or lawyers could try to use this information during, respectively, investigations or civil lawsuits, the DJN said, citing Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit consumer-information program based in San Diego.

"It may take a while for the privacy implications to become evident, but the main thing that individuals should be concerned about is the secondary use of that data," Givens said.