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RICHMOND — As technology advances and Virginia scrambles to keep pace, health-care professionals at AD Williams Memorial Clinic here are worried lawmakers will get tangled in family medical decisions.
Virginia lawmakers want to make it illegal to track people without their consent. The move aims to stop unauthorized tracking using personal data collected by cellphone navigation or other GPS systems.
House Bill 805, sponsored by Delegate Joe May, (R-33rd), would exempt people with Alzheimer’s disease. Caretakers could attach monitoring bracelets to track a patient who may be prone to wandering or getting lost because of the disease without getting the Alzheimer’s patient’s permission.
CT technologist Leishia Parker, 50, of Prince George County, said lawmakers should stop trying to craft policy related to family issues. Since 1982, Parker has worked with incapacitated adults, including Alzheimer’s patients.
“I don’t think that all Alzheimer’s patients need a monitoring device,” she said. “That’s a family issue.”
Nurse Jim McCumiskey, 34, of Henrico County, agreed.
“I think it’s a family decision,” he said Thursday. “If you feel your family member needs more independence, (a tracking bracelet) might give them the freedom to do that.”
The family could bring up the issue to a doctor, he said, and together decide what works best in each situation.
Lawmakers could debate those issues as early as Friday. The bill sailed through a House Technology Committee in a 20-2 vote Wednesday.
“It’s important to make sure you are respecting personal freedoms,” said Del. Vivian Watts (D-39th), one of the 20 lawmakers who endorsed the bill.
She said she believes May slowly crafted the bill to make careful exemptions for Alzheimer’s patients, parents tracking their kids, telecommunications companies like OnStar and cellphone providers.
But Democrats and advocates of personal freedom worry the bill will have overreaching or unintended effects on personal freedoms.
Del. Scott Surovell, (D-44th), and House Minority Leader David Toscano, (D-57th), voted against the bill.
“Criminalizing GPS tracking is OK,” Surovell said, “but there’s a difference between tracking a person and tracking your property.”
Surovell said the au pair who cares for his four children sometimes drives his personal car. He wants to be able to put a tracking device on it, because he feels “entitled to know what someone is doing with my car or my kids.”
The bill would allow Surovell to track his nanny when she is driving his children in his car, but Surovell said a lawyer could interpret the exemption differently.
“The government has no right to tell me that I can’t put a tracking device on my car,” Surovell said Thursday.
Watts said lawmakers “tried to focus on the family and those things that are important to Virginia.”
The Alzheimer’s exception is necessary for the families of the “dear, sweet people” afflicted by the disease, she said.
Virginia families may want to keep their aging grandparents at home, Watts said, rather than in a nursing home, but they still need to keep track of their whereabouts.
She said she does not know anyone with Alzheimer’s, but nursing homes and senior citizens comprise a large part of her Northern Virginia constituency.
Delegates could debate the bill on the House floor as early as Friday.
we are probably not far from parents embedding gps trackers under childrens skin, or employers asking employees to have gps’s embedded—-the next 20 years should be interesting. We will have big brother! I bet we could start businesses where people just watch other people from their computers and report anyone who “goes off the grid”. Pretty scary stuff
Red light cameras are rare in VA, they were unconstitutional until last year. Cannot recall the change that made them legal.
Anyway there are quite a number of reasons to pass this bill, what is the argument against the privacy protections? The bill allows for consensual tracking like people with medical problems.
at fedupdude, why use the company paid cell phone or car? Currently the cell phones, cable companies and internet provider tracks all kind of information about you/me/us. We have cameras to catch speeder and people driving through red lights.
Most of these bills are only show. Ok, they get passed but who will really audit the companies? the police? And if the company is out of state? then what?
This bill, and others like it, are way overdue. I hope to see more like it.
just saying
For instance right now if you work for a company that pays your cell phone bill or for your car they could use the GPS in either to monitor your personal life via tracking where you go. That is just not right.
Fedupdude, what’s considered an abuse? Do you really think our politicians in Va are smart enough to even know how to write a bill to track down the companies that gather all this data and consider it to be an abuse? This bill is only for GPS/Cell phone types, but what about computers?
This bill is a waste of taxpayers money. Even if passed, do you really think the tracking will stop? It’s one of those pat yourself on the back, ego boost for the politicians. And who will audit these companies that they’re not tracking? Like VA has enough money to hire a few people to audit/track this information down. Just more bullsh!t coming out of Richmond…
@enuf - What we are talking about here is protecting data that is currently a gray area. Your car, computer, and phone all come with tracking capabilities in them you have no choice, a bill like this could help prevent abuses. Privacy is the world of tech needs to be more of an issue.
Companies should not default to track people it should require express permission.
@ FedUpDude….
“She said she believes May slowly crafted the bill to make careful exemptions for Alzheimer’s patients, parents tracking their kids, telecommunications companies like OnStar and cellphone providers.”
Not sure if this is everything, but here is a bit of what’s exempted. I don’t know…guess I never considered this an important issue for me. And by the way, there are other medical conditions that would make it wise to track someone, not just Alzheimer’s.
All these folks with their smart phones already broadcast where they are and where they have been—-so they obviously don’t care about this.
And if you don’t want your insurance company tracking you, don’t sign up for Progressive’s program with the little doohicky you plug into your car (they spin it as a way to decrease your premium).
Since my employer owns the cellphone, can they track me after hours? Can the police ask my employer for the data without consulting me or getting a warrant?
Cell phone companies with their bloatware and the apps you download already have permissions to know your browsing history, when a call is active and who to, all text sent and recieved, plus your fine point location. Why ask Big Brother? Nobody else does!
Watts said lawmakers “tried to focus on the family and those things that are important to Virginia.”
And what exactly did the law makers decide is important for Virginia?
This article does not mention what is authorized and what isn’t. I like the idea of protections against my insurance from tracking me and seeing if I speed for example.
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