but privacy, as you note, is pretty close to the bottom since your car location is most certainly other people's business as soon as you take it on a public road.
This is absolutely false. People can look at your car, yes, but that doesn't mean everything that happens in and outside your car isn't private. I'd rather have freedom and privacy than safety, and you'd think everyone in a country that's supposed to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave" would agree with me. I don't want the government having control over my vehicle, and all software on the vehicle should be 100% open source, and all hardware should be open as well. No black boxes, and no proprietary garbage. There's just too much room for abuse, and in a free country, that's all it should take to oppose it.
First, it's pretty obvious that jeffmeden was talking about privacy in terms of the car's location, not "everything that happens in and outside your car". Your comment doesn't show that his point is "absolutely false" unless you completely misread what he said.
Second, everything you do involves a tradeoff of privacy, safety, freedom and a dozen other things. If you go outside you lose some privacy; if you get in a car and drive in public you lose some privacy and some safety. The idea that you can be some sort of privacy and freedom absolutist who never trades either of them for anything is just nonsense.
He's obviously just trolling. People (red blooded Americans, no less) are gobbling up cars with OnStar and similar systems that have clearly advertised features of vehicle tracking AND remote control, with no clear precedent that government meddling isn't taking place, and yet the world continues to spin on its axis and bald eagles even continue to soar above the trees. If the only meaningful way someone can think to express freedom is having an untrackable car, then I take pity on them.
