I just found the cost for the device and a year subscription!!! $899 US!!!!! Waaaaayyyyy too expensive. http://ecommerce.drivecam.com/IW_Products.m4p.pvx?;ITEM?ItemCode=7000-DFFMS-1YR&Company=DRV and BestBuy knows you have the device .... yet another witting party.

I went through the AmFam TeenDriver http://www.teensafedriver.com/ website on this and found myself actually more than fleetingly interested in the capability (I have a 13yr old son who, being in the US, will be eligible to drive in 3 years). AmFam did a good job in posting a number of videos that hit the emotional part of a parent - wanting to protect while educating their children.

Then I followed the link to DriveCam.com. Now is when concern start rising. Yes - I did see an Insurance company monitoring a teenage driver and maintaining extremely personal data forever and may have been okay with that. But now the data goes to yet another service provider. In looking there, it is not clear to me that the videos or data does not go to any other company.

So my interest in helping educate and protect my son is obliterated with so many others having access to this information. I question their inability to do geo-location - it is merely one more chip and a few more bits of data to be passed! Add the name, vehicle info, date/time, location and events (yes - there will be many "events" as someone learns to drive) with audio & video.... sorry The Minority Report comes immediately to mind!!

A far more appealing device would be one that does the recording but retains the data longer. I would buy a device that informs me of "events" as they happen. Give me some information such as sudden swerving, acceleration, braking or jostling of the vehicle. Let me, the responsible parent, be able to choose if I should or should not contact my child and make a parental decision. I would love to be able to review the events at home afterwards. I am not willing to wirelessly transmit this stuff anywhere. Yes, it is after the fact and bad stuff can happen. But it is far better than not being informed like today and would give me the chance to sit down with my child and review his (her) actions as an upcoming adult.

Succinctly - I don't want 3rd parties involved. I'd pay a reasonable amount of money for the device (upto $150 or so) for us to use.

Check out IronKey (http://ironkey.com). A hardware encrypted USB stick may help you - especially with the netbook. The newer S200 models with 256-bit AES encryption gives the security you imply and they have (or will have) models with what I'd consider more than ample storage for "traveling around" (I see this as trips away from where you are staying). When looking at encryption, seriously think about the plausible deniability feature - providing a password that opens the volume to enable innocuous data that you would want an adversary to see and not the volume with your protected data. Also think about making the USB device a bootable device (Ubuntu being my preferred) so you can leave little to no trace of your data on the netbook. The USB stick is far easier to carry (and lose!) than the netbook... and the IronKey can even go into the shower with you!!