Personal Blogs

Spy Cars

[ 3 minute read ]

Yesterday, I read an article on Euronews, titled 'Wiretaps on wheels': Drivers warned their data privacy is not guaranteed in modern vehicles'. The article is actually dated 06 September 2023, so it appears that the knowledge that electric cars listening and recording our personal details is not new.

https://www.euronews.com/2023/09/06/wiretaps-on-wheels-drivers-warned-their-data-privacy-is-not-guaranteed-in-modern-vehicles

in fact, 'The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project; The Los Angles Times; Gess Engineering; Fortune; Forensic Resources and others all ran the same or similar article. Nearly all the manufacturers say they would readily share that information with governments, even without a formal directive; in response to a mere request for that information.

Electric cars, it seems, with their multiple microphones can record and extrapolate from that data all sorts of things, even sexual activity by the cars occupants. Although the manufacturers will not say how they can get that information, it is clear that drivers and passengers freely talk without check on their discourse. Obviously, no-one should be picking up their adulterous squeeze in their car. 'Let's take a bus, sweetheart.'

I am more than a little shocked that it is not only the child's teddy-bear that connects to the internet that is out to capture early information on individuals; infants, I mean. Anyone is susceptible to spying now. The kids in the car; your mum and dad you picked up from the airport; your personal assistant; the neighbour who can't get to the shops. Any creative writer or film-maker would be delighted to be able to collect information on millions of people and assemble profiles for characters, and the plots would write themselves; just transcribe what actually happens. 

I cannot fathom why people accept this as a norm. The long-standing claim that they have done nothing wrong so they have nothing to fear just doesn't carry the same weight today. I ask who will be the next prime-minister or president and who will determine where we shop and when?

       'Well, look. We know you only use your car for shopping on Fridays so you must sell it and join a car-share group. Global climate change, you know.'

       'We know you are having an affair. You must immediately move out of this county, province or state, and your partner will get full custody of the kids.'

I don't have the mental capacity to imagine what other drives any new Government may make in fifty or seventy years time that will affect my children and grandchildren.

       'Okay kids, we are going to get in the car, so you must not say a single word and you must carry this heavy weight on your lap so you seem bigger on the seat. Oh, and by the way, duck down or wear this mask in the car, because the cameras can use the images of you growing up to form an image of how you will look when you are an adult, so you will never be able to hide when everything goes wrong for the world.

Have electric car drivers not thought things through? Has anybody? I mean a lot of people use SmartPhones that can record conversations even when they are not in use.