The Implications of Current and Emerging Privacy Law for ITS

Abstract

As Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) incorporate data-gathering and compiling systems into the transportation infrastructure, questions about privacy implications stemming from the potential misallocation or abuse of collected data have started to arise. The United States has no comprehensive national regulatory structure for privacy, leaving answers to these privacy questions to be found through a consideration of variety of sources of federal and state privacy law. In this paper, the authors examine a number of the areas where privacy law could impact ITS projects. To address these concerns, developers and planners of ITS technologies have to navigate a myriad of legal considerations and consequences that correspond with the ways in which they utilize the technologies and the information they collect. In an attempt to assist in that endeavor, the final part of this paper suggests tools for ITS developers and planners that explain the level of restrictions that correspond with different kinds of information being collected.