Cars are becoming giant computers on wheels with the increase in technology.
But that might not be a good thing.
And a Detroit Kamalamobile maker’s snitch switch scheme has all hell breaking loose with drivers.
Ford files a patent to report you for speeding
The government is increasingly trying to crack down on speeding by drivers.
One of Detroit’s Big 3 automakers wants to help them do it.
The Ford Motor Company filed a patent in January 2023 that was updated this year for a system to report drivers to the police for speeding.
A patent for the “Systems and Methods for Detecting Speeding Violation” was filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the technology.
Ford noted in its patent application that the technology would make the job of the police easier.
The patent explains that the technology would use onboard sensors and cameras to detect the speed of other vehicles on the road.
GPS would be used to track the location of the vehicle on the road.
Data captured by the system would be sent to the police for their use.
Right now, the system is only an idea but it’s a window into the growing privacy problems with cars as their technology becomes more sophisticated.
The future of the automobile could be as a mobile surveillance tool for the government.
Ford has already gotten into trouble for selling the data about driving habits to data brokers who in turn sell it to insurance companies without the permission of owners, according to a report from the New York Times.
1984 is coming to the automobile
Almost every new vehicle sold can connect to the internet through a user’s smartphone.
That opens the door to all sorts of driving habits that can be collected.
And vehicles come equipped with cameras, microphones, and other sensors that are collecting data on drivers.
Drivers often have no idea how much they’re being spied on when they’re behind the wheel.
The Mozilla Foundation conducted a study on the privacy of various consumer products and found that cars scored the worst.
“Cars seem to have really flown under the privacy radar, and I’m really hoping that we can help remedy that because they are truly awful,” Mozilla’s Jen Caltrider said. “Cars have microphones and people have all kinds of sensitive conversations in them. Cars have cameras that face inward and outward.”
The study found that most automakers are selling the personal information of their vehicles’ drivers.
And there’s no escaping because of the standard technology in most modern cars.
Mozilla found that half of automakers will turn over a driver’s personal information to the police or the government without a warrant.
“Increasingly, most cars are wiretaps on wheels,” Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights Policy fellow Albert Fox Cahn said. “The electronics that drivers pay more and more money to install are collecting more and more data on them and their passenger. There is something uniquely invasive about transforming the privacy of one’s car into a corporate surveillance space.”
Driving an older car could be the only way to keep the surveillance state out of it.
Stay tuned to Unmuzzled News for any updates to this ongoing story.
