Serious Legal Question - Vehicle Tracking/Logging
Discussion
Hi - just popped in from the wedge forum.
I'm an industrial engineer, I work for a large company with a fleet of 2700 vehicles on the road in the UK.
We are currently looking at putting a GPS based vehicle tracking/logging system in place and it has raised an interesting legal question.
Once installed, we would have a permanent record (via GPS) of every journey our staff take in their company vehicles. This record will include a complete, very accurate log of their speed and location at all times throughout the trip - inevitably it will show people exeeding the speed limit at various times, locations and to varying degrees.
The questions are:
a) Can this information be used as evidence in a prosection - if so where does the company stand in legal terms, bearing in mind that it would be aware that it's employees had been speeding.
b) Could this information be used for some kind of "mass" prosection, if the police were to come in and ask to be provided with the logs.
We will of course be seeking official advice but I am interested in view or experiences with this, and any suggestions on where to go to get a "formal" answer.
Please only answer if you have specific experience or knowledge in this area, I am particularly interested in police officers or legal eagles opinions thanks for any replies
Cheers
I'm an industrial engineer, I work for a large company with a fleet of 2700 vehicles on the road in the UK.
We are currently looking at putting a GPS based vehicle tracking/logging system in place and it has raised an interesting legal question.
Once installed, we would have a permanent record (via GPS) of every journey our staff take in their company vehicles. This record will include a complete, very accurate log of their speed and location at all times throughout the trip - inevitably it will show people exeeding the speed limit at various times, locations and to varying degrees.
The questions are:
a) Can this information be used as evidence in a prosection - if so where does the company stand in legal terms, bearing in mind that it would be aware that it's employees had been speeding.
b) Could this information be used for some kind of "mass" prosection, if the police were to come in and ask to be provided with the logs.
We will of course be seeking official advice but I am interested in view or experiences with this, and any suggestions on where to go to get a "formal" answer.
Please only answer if you have specific experience or knowledge in this area, I am particularly interested in police officers or legal eagles opinions thanks for any replies
Cheers
Writing as an expert (witness) in information risk management (including data protection issues), I would firstly say that these data are covered by the DPA (although they relate to a vehicle, they become personal data because you can link them to an individual through other data in your possession). Thus you need to look at your DPA Register entries to make sure you have covered it.
Now, having obtained the data, you will need to consider how long to retain it. Is there a legal requirement (perhaps because of legislation governing your business or contracts relating to the goods/materials you carry) to keep these data for a specific time and/or for specific purposes (eg. the prevention/detection of crime)?
If indeed you are required to retain the data for the prevention/detection of crime (a specific exclusion for disclosures under the DPA1998) then you could easily be 'stuffed' (technical term, sorry).
However, I doubt that at present the courts would be minded to accept these data as accurate without considerable expert witness testimony (which, IMHO is likely to go against the defendant). However, the Magistrates Court would likely feel that any case would be appealed and so could easily hand down a guilty verdict secure in that belief. Any conviction would be appealed throughout the system (to ECHR) and would therefore take a long time ... and be very expensive (for you the employer as well as the defendant).
The easiest thing all round would be to erase those data that related to distance travelled in specific time as soon as they had been anonymised (eg. aggregated) or rendered into some other form whereby a specific speeding offence could not be identified.
Happy to speak off-line if you drop me an e-mail.
Streaky
>> Edited by streaky on Friday 12th December 15:07
Now, having obtained the data, you will need to consider how long to retain it. Is there a legal requirement (perhaps because of legislation governing your business or contracts relating to the goods/materials you carry) to keep these data for a specific time and/or for specific purposes (eg. the prevention/detection of crime)?
If indeed you are required to retain the data for the prevention/detection of crime (a specific exclusion for disclosures under the DPA1998) then you could easily be 'stuffed' (technical term, sorry).
However, I doubt that at present the courts would be minded to accept these data as accurate without considerable expert witness testimony (which, IMHO is likely to go against the defendant). However, the Magistrates Court would likely feel that any case would be appealed and so could easily hand down a guilty verdict secure in that belief. Any conviction would be appealed throughout the system (to ECHR) and would therefore take a long time ... and be very expensive (for you the employer as well as the defendant).
The easiest thing all round would be to erase those data that related to distance travelled in specific time as soon as they had been anonymised (eg. aggregated) or rendered into some other form whereby a specific speeding offence could not be identified.
Happy to speak off-line if you drop me an e-mail.
Streaky
>> Edited by streaky on Friday 12th December 15:07
Thanks for replies so far - I will contact you offline streaky.
In terms of the proof of it being accurate. Part of my job is to ensure that it is - there are many tracking systems available that are not accurate, and would not stand up to scrutiny in court - but we are considering one that would. It would take me a long time to techinically explain why it is accurate and does not need calibrating - but I wont go into all that here. Obviously I do not want to end up as an expert witness against one of our own employees explaining why the system is accurate and that vehicle was indeed without doubt doing that speed along that road at that time.
In terms of the DPA - I had not considered that and now have some more people on my list to phone (thanks)
In terms of the proof of it being accurate. Part of my job is to ensure that it is - there are many tracking systems available that are not accurate, and would not stand up to scrutiny in court - but we are considering one that would. It would take me a long time to techinically explain why it is accurate and does not need calibrating - but I wont go into all that here. Obviously I do not want to end up as an expert witness against one of our own employees explaining why the system is accurate and that vehicle was indeed without doubt doing that speed along that road at that time.
In terms of the DPA - I had not considered that and now have some more people on my list to phone (thanks)
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Well, of course the effort input would be somewhat proportional to the severity of the offence. Consequently that effort might well also be aimed at recovering 'deleted' data. We all know that erasing a file does not automatically wipe it from the hard disk (and in a corporate it is highly likely to be backed-up somewhere). You might not appreciate that forensic science can retrieve data that has been supposedly securely wiped from the disk by overwriting (typically in commercial products by repeated overwriting with random patterns of 0s and 1s), because even a faint magnetic image can remain - Streaky[/quote]
If it were me, I should take a look at the employees' positions under the Data Protection Act etc. What happens when you fire a driver for using his van on a Saturday to nip to B&Q and you did not get his consent to use the GPS stuff ? It is going to cost you a packet. This is the kind of stuff the Trade Unions get in a huff about (for no good reason) so you would probably need to get their agreement and that of any affected personnel that were notmembers of that union.
- yes this is an issue that we are having to address - it has caused some arguments already at sites undergoing a trial - but I believe this will be resolved to all parties satisfaction.
>> Edited by skyrocketship on Friday 12th December 16:44
If it were me, I should take a look at the employees' positions under the Data Protection Act etc. What happens when you fire a driver for using his van on a Saturday to nip to B&Q and you did not get his consent to use the GPS stuff ? It is going to cost you a packet. This is the kind of stuff the Trade Unions get in a huff about (for no good reason) so you would probably need to get their agreement and that of any affected personnel that were notmembers of that union.
- yes this is an issue that we are having to address - it has caused some arguments already at sites undergoing a trial - but I believe this will be resolved to all parties satisfaction.
>> Edited by skyrocketship on Friday 12th December 16:44
I actually work for a supplier of GPS tracking (and mobile data solutions). You are right to raise the issue of data protection and Trade Unions.
We always sit down with our customers and discuss how the system is to be used, get buy-in from staff and trade unions and even help to advise of company policy.
If you work for a local authority or similar, I can send you some policies that have already been agreed.
Let me know if you would like any more information.
Cheers,
Dave
We always sit down with our customers and discuss how the system is to be used, get buy-in from staff and trade unions and even help to advise of company policy.
If you work for a local authority or similar, I can send you some policies that have already been agreed.
Let me know if you would like any more information.
Cheers,
Dave
skyrocketship said:
The questions are:
a) Can this information be used as evidence in a prosection - if so where does the company stand in legal terms, bearing in mind that it would be aware that it's employees had been speeding.
NO. GPS is not an approved device for measuring speed. Same fears were expected with Tachographs, but they are consistantly reliable enough. It might be usable in non-speeding cases e.g. if constantly showing 80 mph could help suggest careless driving, or depending on vehicles type, be used by the traffic commissioner in revoking your Operator Licence for failing to act on the evidence produced.
Remember standard of proof is lower in civil court, so if driver has accident and you face a compensation claim, PI lawyer might well want to trawl through the records.
b) Could this information be used for some kind of "mass" prosection, if the police were to come in and ask to be provided with the logs.
Again not mass prosecution of employees, but possibly employer.
I have spent many years in the telematics industry on the marketing side and my view is that a serious risk that the implementation of a GPS product on that sort of scale is going to give your company a payback in a an acceptable time period. It's just too large to manage effectively without software having EXCELLENT exception reporting facilities - and believe me there is exception reporting and EXCEPTION REPORTING. Don't believe salesman's bullshit on this front.
GPS systems are still expensive and the payback is generally only there on heavier commercial vehicles doing in excess of 50,000 miles a year and less than 12 mpg. You should forget issues of "speeding", it's too emotive and would create huge IR problems with little or no benefit to improving your company's bottom line and giving you a payback on this huge expense. If you use the Big Brother approach you're going to get tampering and sabotage problems and then the finanacial and operational benefits will go out of the window.
If you're committed to going down this route then you must be seriously committed to putting in the people resources to manage the vast amount of incoming data otherwise it will just fall apart and eventually will fall out of use.
Start small - only commit with the supplier to one depot/location at a time. Don't get tied into a contract to fit the whole fleet - there is one large supplier who is particularly adept at tying their customers down contractually and they will make sure they get their money whether the system delivers or not!!
Visit at least two reference sites with a similar size operation to your own running the system being considered. See what effort they put into it to get the return.
Make sure you do a good search of suppliers, get presentations from at least three. WORK OUT THE TOTAL LIFE COSTS OF THE PRODUCT including communications costs and do comparisons.
GPS systems are still expensive and the payback is generally only there on heavier commercial vehicles doing in excess of 50,000 miles a year and less than 12 mpg. You should forget issues of "speeding", it's too emotive and would create huge IR problems with little or no benefit to improving your company's bottom line and giving you a payback on this huge expense. If you use the Big Brother approach you're going to get tampering and sabotage problems and then the finanacial and operational benefits will go out of the window.
If you're committed to going down this route then you must be seriously committed to putting in the people resources to manage the vast amount of incoming data otherwise it will just fall apart and eventually will fall out of use.
Start small - only commit with the supplier to one depot/location at a time. Don't get tied into a contract to fit the whole fleet - there is one large supplier who is particularly adept at tying their customers down contractually and they will make sure they get their money whether the system delivers or not!!
Visit at least two reference sites with a similar size operation to your own running the system being considered. See what effort they put into it to get the return.
Make sure you do a good search of suppliers, get presentations from at least three. WORK OUT THE TOTAL LIFE COSTS OF THE PRODUCT including communications costs and do comparisons.
streaky said:
Well, of course the effort input would be somewhat proportional to the severity of the offence. Consequently that effort might well also be aimed at recovering 'deleted' data. We all know that erasing a file does not automatically wipe it from the hard disk (and in a corporate it is highly likely to be backed-up somewhere). You might not appreciate that forensic science can retrieve data that has been supposedly securely wiped from the disk by overwriting (typically in commercial products by repeated overwriting with random patterns of 0s and 1s), because even a faint magnetic image can remain - Streaky
Not wishing to take this thread too far off it's original couse, but, unless you've got VAST sized amount of money (a budget well in excess of six figures) to throw at recovery of deleted data that's been over written using secure deletion software (ie multiple overwrites with randon characters etc) you're not getting anything back.
(I pay the mortgage by investigating computers and proving that people have been doing things that they shouldn't - aka computer forensics)
For a person to be prosecuted for the offence of speeding then BY LAW there has to be corroboration.
On a follow by patrol car then (1) The officer forms an opinion that the vehicle was travelling at a fast speed (2) Confirms by speedo of patrol car (Corroboration). Vascar/ Handheld very much the same - opinion then confirmation through equipment.
Speed cameras electronic activation and confirmation from lines on the road.
So where is the corroboration of speed from GPS?
I would say none.
DVD
On a follow by patrol car then (1) The officer forms an opinion that the vehicle was travelling at a fast speed (2) Confirms by speedo of patrol car (Corroboration). Vascar/ Handheld very much the same - opinion then confirmation through equipment.
Speed cameras electronic activation and confirmation from lines on the road.
So where is the corroboration of speed from GPS?
I would say none.
DVD
porsche944 said:It might be that data could be recovered by a commerical company (using something like iBas's Patan), but I was talking (because of the scenario given) about The Forensic Science Service - whose income for the FY ended 31 March 2003 was around £141 million.
Well, of course the effort input would be somewhat proportional to the severity of the offence. Consequently that effort might well also be aimed at recovering 'deleted' data. We all know that erasing a file does not automatically wipe it from the hard disk (and in a corporate it is highly likely to be backed-up somewhere). You might not appreciate that forensic science can retrieve data that has been supposedly securely wiped from the disk by overwriting (typically in commercial products by repeated overwriting with random patterns of 0s and 1s), because even a faint magnetic image can remain - Streaky
Not wishing to take this thread too far off it's original couse, but, unless you've got VAST sized amount of money (a budget well in excess of six figures) to throw at recovery of deleted data that's been over written using secure deletion software (ie multiple overwrites with randon characters etc) you're not getting anything back.
(I pay the mortgage by investigating computers and proving that people have been doing things that they shouldn't - aka computer forensics)
bobthebench said:
The questions are:
a) Can this information be used as evidence in a prosection - if so where does the company stand in legal terms, bearing in mind that it would be aware that it's employees had been speeding.
NO. GPS is not an approved device for measuring speed. Same fears were expected with Tachographs, but they are consistantly reliable enough. It might be usable in non-speeding cases e.g. if constantly showing 80 mph could help suggest careless driving, or depending on vehicles type, be used by the traffic commissioner in revoking your Operator Licence for failing to act on the evidence produced.
Remember standard of proof is lower in civil court, so if driver has accident and you face a compensation claim, PI lawyer might well want to trawl through the records.
b) Could this information be used for some kind of "mass" prosection, if the police were to come in and ask to be provided with the logs.
Again not mass prosecution of employees, but possibly employer.
Thanks for that Bob.
cheers all!Gassing Station | Speed, Plod & the Law | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff