Surveillance Technology To Become Mandatory in New Cars Despite Privacy Concerns

Privacy advocates are warning that technology that will be required in new cars as early as next year is opening the door to the government to spy on drivers or even remotely shut off cars.The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill required new vehicles to be equipped with “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.” The law gave the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration four years to put the new standards in place and now it is preparing to put them in place.Infrared cameras and sensors will create a biometric assessment of driver alertness and sobriety, Gadget Review reports. The technology will track eye movement, pupil dilation, and drowsiness patterns. The system will use that data to decide if the person is fit to drive.The anti-drunk driving group MADD supports the system and disputes the notion that there are privacy concerns. “Advanced impaired driving prevention systems use sensors integrated into a car that passively determine if the person behind the wheel is illegally impaired,” the advocacy group says. It adds that no one outside the car will have the ability to operate or disable the vehicle.Congressman Thomas Massie says, however, says the technology is “unworkable” and predicts that there are going to be too many false calls that could potentially strand drivers. He says a driver swerving around potholes could be mistaken for being impaired and the vehicle could force them to stop driving.“Your car dashboard becomes your judge, your jury, and your executioner,” Mr. Massie said on the House floor last month.He proposed an amendment to an appropriations act to block funding for the measure.“My question is, how do you appeal your sentence once your car, the technology in your car has judged you incapable of being able to drive once it’s disabled you,” Mr. Massie asked. There are no federal rules on how or when a driver could get out of that vehicle shutdown.The Alliance for Automotive Innovation has also argued that more research is needed before mandating the technology. “Even if 1 in 10,000 trips were expected to experience a false positive, this could result in thousands of unimpaired drivers encountering problems that prevent them from driving each day,” the alliance wrote in 2024.“None of us wants to be on the road with drunk drivers,” a co-sponsor of the amendment, Congressman Scott Perry, said. “But here is what I don’t want to see in America, everybody being punished for the people who drink and drive.”“The next thing is going to be, ‘We need to hook this thing up to the government so we can dispatch the police,'” Mr. Perry said. “I’m just going to tell you what happens next. They’re going to be shutting your car off when they decide whatever they decide from wherever they decide.”Despite those arguments, the House did not support the amendment.Gadget Review says the impairment sensing technology comes at the same time other software integration is being deployed that allows systems in the vehicle to be remotely updated, opening them up to potentially add monitoring capabilities at a later date.The Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety says there are security measures in place to prevent third parties from accessing data collected by the technology. The group’s president and chief executive officer, Robert Strassburger adds that talk of remote kill switches is hyperbole and not part of the technology that will be deployed.The Future of Privacy Forum has cautioned, however, that any safety systems need to have clear privacy rules including minimized data collection and strict limits on off-device data use by impairment-detection technologies and “robust access and deletion options” of the data by drivers.There are already instances of driver data being used without their knowledge.The Federal Trade Commission punished General Motors last year for allegedly selling driving data from customers without their permission. It banned the car maker from providing driver data to credit bureaus for five years. Consumer Reports, however, said nearly every automaker in the American market is collecting and sharing so-called “driver behavior data” with other companies.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told the Associated Press last month that it is still “assessing developing technologies for potential deployment” and hopes to report back to Congress soon. Supporters of the technology say the decision could be pushed to next year and auto companies would have another two to three years to deploy it.

Surveillance Technology To Become Mandatory in New Cars Despite Privacy Concerns

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