Your car is spying on you – but police won’t say if they’re using the data

11 comments

1. TLDR: They are using your data

   Data isn’t ever collected for any reason other than to be analysed and used against you

2. The Murdaugh Murders podcast is a good eye-opener on how much data your car collects.

3. [deleted]

4. It’s a bit of a non story be honest, what were they expecting? The police/NCA to disclose all their investigative tools to the public? They should really be reporting on why car companies are collecting all the data in the first place.

5. Privacy is gone for good. Something that blows my mind is that Teslas have a cabin camera that’s constantly recording/analysing you whilst driving

6. So basically some forces confirmed in serious cases they have use data extracted from a car they’ve seized as evidence or as a lead to identify further suspects.

   And some other forces haven’t said they do the same, which fulfils the “
   but police won’t say if they’re using the data” part.

   Now my gut feeling is that the reason they haven’t confirmed it is that they’ve bought some expensive kit but don’t have anyone officially trained in its use yet…

   As to whether your car is spying on you, to me spying involves actively passing the information on. I mean is your computer spying on you when you save a document? Are we outraged if call logs are used as evidence? Maybe I’ve misunderstood.

7. Of course it is, if it’s for their own benefit such as knowing when the pedals were pressed during an incident.

   Yet weirdly they won’t use any data if the car is stolen. You can have a tracker and find the car before the police before do and they still won’t do anything.

8. Show me you know nothing about technology without telling me you know nothing about technology.

   Yes, car and phones represent a data risk but a car doesn’t have the storage capacity for 25gb per hour of use. A car is also not usually connected to the internet other than through your phone and I’m pretty sure your mobile provider would have something to say if it was sending 25gb per hour of use in the car. Even if the car was connected to the internet 25gb per hour per car would cost a fortune to whoever was paying for it.

   I think what they are actually getting at is apps on your phone when connected to your car that use GPS or monitor the engine and so on. None of this is new. Some cars with built in GPS will also save journeys but that is limited by the amount of memory the car has or maybe you stuck a micro-SD card in there. However only the phone data is accessible remotely but we know that anyway and it has nothing to do with cars.

   Silly article really.

9. Lawyer, Steve Lehto, has done a couple of videos on this topic in America. Worth a watch

10. Coundown to a “well-respected” officer using this to track a woman down and rape her.

    And the police claiming its “unexpected”

11. Is this surprising? If you are involved in crime then your phone may be forensically examined, same goes for cars and every other piece of tech. All forensic examination is covered under GDPR and the Investigatory Powers Act, so this article saying it’s unregulated is rubbish.

    If you are a victim of crime, police will ask for your permission to do a digital examination of the vehicle and won’t do anything without your consent. Legally, under GDPR, anything that isn’t pertinent to the crime being investigated shouldn’t be downloaded and retained i.e car was in criminal possession for two hours, so they can’t download the data from either side of that unless they have good justification for doing so.

    A lot of car manufacturers are no longer storing their data within the cars and are sending it to the cloud so that it cannot be accessed by law enforcement anyway. I would be more concerned about the data the manufacturer is storing about you without your knowledge and how they are processing it to make money off your driving habits.