A powerful network of policing agencies, regulators, and industrialists is deciding on the ethics and regulatory framework by which authorities can use the data gathered from motor vehicles. German intelligence agencies in particular are demanding that Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen insert the required interfaces to enable the surveillance.
According to German press reports, meetings between car manufacturers and law enforcement have been ongoing since spring. Intelligence agencies are demanding real-time data on a car’s location, driver history, and even the number of people sitting in the vehicle at any one time.
The surveillance of data generated by cars is a legal grey area, despite a EU ruling in January 2023 to standardise data collection processes, enabling judges and prosecutors to access information on demand, by mandating that companies have ten days to respond to official requests.
EU attempts to grant police access to car data have previously been criticised as being excessive and lacking in the necessary safeguards. Digital rights groups warn that the “new law would treat large parts of the population as criminals before proven otherwise.” Other critics fear that existing European data protection regulations will be violated.
Already notorious for its state-sanctioned harassment of populists Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is clamouring for new powers to surveil car data. More broadly, the issue of how and when policing agencies can snoop on drivers is to be decided by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, which already demarcates similar rules for the use of phone data.
The prospect of a pan-European database for driver identity documents has triggered a negative response from academics. University of Northumbria law professor Carole McCartney lamented that EU citizens could soon be treated as “suspects” even without committing a crime.
The dispute about how to manage data gathered through the automobile industry comes amid a wider EU-wide discussion about AI and facial recognition. Pro-open borders MEPs successfully inserted legal clauses to limit the use of biometric data for border control in the recent AI Act passed in Brussels this year.
BMW, Toyota, and Nissan were among eight companies named last month by U.S. lawmakers as having tapped into user data without proper safeguards when faced with insurance claims. Meanwhile, General Motors faces a class action lawsuit for selling on user data to a third-party firm.
A global phenomenon, growing car surveillance provoked one privacy organisation, ‘Stop Spying,’ to release a report lashing out at the rise of ‘wiretaps on wheels.’ The authors claim that U.S. law enforcement has weaponized dubious car data since at least 2013.
