In 1949, George Orwell wrote about … nope, not going there. No 1984 here.
Remember when the most sophisticated technology in your car was an analogue radio? When you were lucky if your cassette player worked all the time (and did not chew your tapes up, requiring that pencil and a steady hand to fix) reliably, and the height of automotive intelligence was turning the tape over to listen to the other side? Those were simpler times, when your car knew nothing about you except perhaps the name you might have given it, or how heavy your right foot was and whether you preferred Radio 1 or Radio 5 Live.
Fast forward to today, and the car, a simple machine has become something quite entirely different, the integrated circuit has been an incredible technology enabler and changed everything. What began with “smart” cars promising convenience, safety, and efficiency, has done this, but there has a far more insidious creep as it has quietly evolved into something far more intrusive. A car is not just a car anymore, it is rolling compute, telemetry, data gathering black box. Whilst it is not the same across the board for all automotive manufactures, automotive and third-party equipment, software and the “things” suppliers, there is a now a very real possibility that every journey, every destination, every passenger, every conversation is meta you. The car that through choice we bring into our lives to make things easier has become the almost intimate spy (let’s not touch on smart phones, social media and IOT things, at least for now) we’ve ever voluntarily invited into our daily routines.
When you stop and think about it the real kicker here is that we have paid handsomely for this privilege, then wondered why our insurance premiums went up. (2019, £235 fully comp, £200 excess, 20+ years NCD, 2024 £850, no claims, same vehicle, same me)
The Behavioural Panopticon
No tinfoil hats were harmed in writing this. Your car, your phone, your home electronics [1] [2] [3] why does my washing machine need internet access?, what is ALL of that traffic going from my “smart TV”, my fridge wants activating for warranty purposes?, yep, I feel watched, do you?. Not just where you go, but how you behave when you think nobody’s looking. Advanced driver monitoring systems track your eye movements, analyse your facial expressions, and monitor your physiological responses. From a road safety perspective, brilliant! Medical crisis, fatigue, risk of falling asleep at the wheel? Technology applied to a problem giving a solution, beautiful.
Now if only that stayed on localhost, the vehicle, not surprisingly in some cases it does not and instead doesn’t drift off into the digital ether, but phones home instead. They’re building psychological profiles [4] that reveal when you’re stressed, tired, distracted, or, rather conveniently for insurance companies, when you might be impaired or to someone who might want to buy that data … for reasons [5].
Some vehicles now monitor your voice patterns for stress indicators. Others track your heart rate through the steering wheel. One company heralds how their latest systems can detect your emotional state and adjust the cabin environment accordingly, that’s nice, I wonder what it would make of my in car karaoke, or only allowed in the car Opera sing along. To read the Terms and Conditions, or more specifically, the behemoth that is the End User Licence Agreement to try and find out the why, who and when with all of this biometric data, the purpose? you guessed it, frustratingly vague but also most likely you didn’t read it either.
Social Network Mapping Through Your Movements
Your car doesn’t just know where you go, it knows who you’re probably seeing. By tracking movement patterns, modern vehicles can map your social networks with frightening accuracy. Two cars regularly appearing at the same locations? The algorithms deduce a relationship. Regular stops at specific addresses? They’re building profiles of your family, friends, and associates.
This social mapping, the social graph becomes even more powerful when you combined with data from not only other vehicles, smartphones, and roadside technologies. The result is a comprehensive network analysis that can reveal your personal relationships, professional associations, and social connections, all derived from where you choose to drive.
Economic Surveillance Through Mobility
Your driving patterns reveal your financial status with remarkable precision. Regular trips to affluent neighbourhoods, frequent stops at premium retailers, or patterns of vehicle maintenance all contribute to assessments of your economic situation [6] [7] [8]
The insurance industry has already made good use of all of this new and available data. We have telematics policies that promise lower premiums in exchange for monitoring often result in detailed financial profiling that extends far beyond driving behaviour [8] and I would be amiss to miss the law of unintended [9] consequences. There is growing evidence of insurance groups correlating driving patterns with economic indicators to assess not just your driving risk, but your overall financial reliability. It doesn’t stop there, it’s not just insurers. Data brokers are selling automotive profiles to just about anyone else willing to pay for insights into your economic behaviour and social status.
Now this was intended to be a blog of around 800-1200 words so, if you want to read more on the great surveillance estate, you can do so here.
Real-World Consequences: When Surveillance Goes Wrong
The abstract concerns about the collection, use, resale, disclosure, leak of automotive surveillance become much more troubling when we look to real world examples of harm.
Overreach
Several high-profile cases have demonstrated how vehicle manufacturers have pushed surveillance boundaries. Tesla [10] [11] faced significant criticism when reports emerged that employees were sharing private videos captured by vehicle cameras, turning customer journeys into entertainment for staff.
General Motors found itself in hot water for sharing detailed driver data [12] with insurance companies without explicit customer consent. Customers discovered their insurance premiums had increased based on driving behaviour monitored through supposedly optional connected car services they’d agreed to for convenience features [13].
More recently, investigations revealed that some luxury manufacturers have been recording and storing interior conversations for “voice recognition improvement” purposes [14] creating vast databases of private conversations between family members, business associates, and passengers [15].
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of how and what automotive is collected and used is how quickly we’ve accepted it as normal. Features that would have been considered outrageous invasions of privacy just a few years ago are now marketed as helpful conveniences.
The Convenience Trap
What were useful features with actual benefits, real time route guidance for example is an opportunity for reciprocal data sharing, you can follow my journey and in doing so, I provide where I am speed, route etc. you can aggregate that information and understand what’s happening on the road and give me feedback and other people feedback. Everyone benefits. But seemingly the question of what else can we do with this, how much is it worth, how can it be monetised … and it all went sideways.
This framing makes it nearly impossible for us, the user, the consumer, to reject involuntary / unwitting surveillance without also rejecting genuinely useful features. The way in which technology, connectivity, markets for monetisation have grown in conjunction with the gradual introduction of conveniences has also contributed to their normalisation. Drip Drip Drip. Had such convenient features been introduced all at once, that would not have been acceptable, would it? So how have we ended up finding this acceptable when implemented over time?
Earlier I said about cars becoming more compute platform, “carputer” if you will. Guess what, you can install apps too! Have a look at what you are sharing [16]
Legal Frameworks: Struggling to Keep Up
It seems that current legal frameworks are inadequate in addressing the scope and implications of automotive data (surveillance). Well intended and generally suited for the time privacy legislation considered more traditional data collection and so now often prove insufficient for the continuous, comprehensive monitoring of today.
The GDPR Challenge
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides some protections, but its effectiveness in the automotive context remains unclear. The complexity of modern vehicles and their data collection practices makes it difficult for regulators to understand, let alone effectively govern, automotive surveillance.
Traditional concepts of consent become problematic when surveillance is embedded in essential transportation. Unlike social media platforms or entertainment services, vehicles are necessary for many people’s daily lives, making meaningful consent challenging to achieve, impossible if you were to be fully informed of what exactly you were agreeing to in a 600 page EULA.
Current and emerging technologies are likely to make automotive data consumption even more comprehensive and sophisticated. Add in some Artificial intelligence and machine learning to the mix and you will have even more detailed analysis of behaviour patterns and more accurate prediction of future actions.
Some of the UK’s forthcoming data protection [17] reforms have the potential to provide stronger protections against surveillance, but the effectiveness of this has a hard dependency on implementation and enforcement.
Conclusion: The Choice We Still Have
The transformation from cars to smart cars to surveillance cars, much like smart+noun thing represent one of the most significant privacy challenges of our generation. What started as convenience and safety is creating a transportation system where privacy has become nearly impossible to maintain.
I would like to say we are at a crossroads and not looking back in the mirror behind us. The surveillance infrastructure uncontrolled growth is not in check, but it’s not too late to demand better, to want better, to be more informed. We, collectively, should want transparency about data collection practices. We should want to require meaningful privacy protections and user control. We should demand that (automotive) technology serve public interests rather than surveillance objectives.
We started with the roads we drive as public spaces, funded by public investment and intended for public benefit. As these spaces become digitised, we must ensure they serve democratic values and individual rights, not just corporate profits and surveillance. Our vehicles should enhance our freedom, not diminish it. Our mobility should serve our interests, not someone else’s revenue generation. And our transportation system should reflect our values as a democratic society, not the data appetites of others.
Our final destination depends entirely on the route we choose to take. The question is whether we will navigate towards freedom or surveillance, and whether we’ll retain the agency to choose our own direction.
**Next in the series: “Who Really Benefits? Challenging the Narrative of Autonomous Vehicles as Public Good” will examine whether the promised benefits of connected and autonomous vehicles truly serve public interests or primarily advances private benefit.**
Additional reading
When Governments join the Surveillance Party
References
Orwell, G. (1949). *Nineteen Eighty-Four*. Secker & Warburg.
Zuboff, S. (2019). *The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power*. Profile Books.
Electronic Frontier Foundation. (2022). “Data Broker Helps Police See Everywhere You’ve Been with the Click of a Mouse.” EFF Investigation, September 1, 2022.
Brennan Center for Justice. (2023). “Closing the Data Broker Loophole.” Available at: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/closing-data-broker-loophole
Privacy International. (2021). “Cars and Privacy: What Data Are Modern Cars Collecting About You?” Privacy International Report.
House of Commons Transport Committee. (2019). “Connected and autonomous vehicles: the future?” HC 370, House of Commons.
Information Commissioner’s Office. (2020). “Data sharing: a code of practice.” ICO Guidance.
Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles. (2022). “Connected and Automated Mobility 2025: Realising the benefits of self-driving vehicles in the UK.” Department for Transport.
Federal Trade Commission. (2021). “Connected Cars: Privacy and Security Issues.” FTC Staff Report.
Transport Research Laboratory. (2019). “Privacy and ethical considerations for connected and autonomous vehicles.” TRL Report PPR905.
Competition and Markets Authority. (2020). “Online platforms and digital advertising market study: Final report.” CMA.
Stilgoe, J. (2018). “Machine learning, social learning and the governance of self-driving cars.” *Social Studies of Science*, 48(1), 25-56.
[1] https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/nov/smart-tv-tracking-raises-privacy-concerns
[3] https://www.sciencealert.com/the-internet-of-things-is-probably-violating-your-privacy-here-s-how
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/technology/general-motors-spying-driver-data-consent.html
[6] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5025836
[9] https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/65078/insurers-defend-black-boxes-after-teen-driver-deaths
[14] https://www.forrester.com/blogs/your-car-is-listening-to-you-and-so-are-hackers/
[16] https://www.pcmag.com/news/sick-of-data-collection-try-these-apps-instead
