Senator Markey Sends Automakers A Letter Criticizing Their Nonexistent Privacy Standards

Back in September Mozilla released a scathing report showing how modern vehicles are a privacy shitshow. After studying vehicle systems for over 600 hours, researchers found that most cars hoover up vast swaths of sensitive location and other information on consumers, then, like most companies, sell access to that data to pretty much any nitwit with a nickel.

The problem is particularly severe if you routinely attach your phone to your vehicle via Bluetooth, something that required an entirely different report showcasing how automakers also recklessly collect data from your mobile device and monetize it. Often without getting permission. And often with zero transparency as to security and encryption standards.

Mozilla's report got the attention of Senator Ed Markey, who this week penned a letter to the auto industry asking for more details:

These practices are unacceptable. Although certain data collection and sharing practices may have real benefits, consumers should not be subject to a massive data collection apparatus, with any disclosures hidden in pages-long privacy policies filled with legalese. Cars should not-and cannot-become yet another venue where privacy takes a backseat."

The data collected stems from location data (down to the meter), to even biometric data collected on drivers (pulse rate, breathing patterns). As with everything else you now do online, that data is then anonymized" (a useless term) and sold to a rotating crop of barely regulated data brokers, who in turn merge this data with other datasets to build vast profiles on every consumer alive.

The potential for abuse is obvious in the post-Roe authoritarian dipshit era, yet Congress still hasn't managed to pass even a baseline privacy law or regulate data brokers. In part because of lobbyist-induced apathy, but also because the U.S. government has grown fat and comfortable buying this kind of data to bypass warrants.

Whether Congress will do more than chirp after Markey receives the data he's looking for (he gave automakers until December 21 to answer numerous questions about their data collection practices) is unclear, but if history's any indication this probably ends with zero substantive reform whatsoever.

It's not clear what kind of scandal will be required for Congress to shake off its legislative, lobbyist-induced apathy (aka corruption) on privacy, but it's clearly going to require the kind of massive scandal that makes the ugly problems we've seen so far look like child's play by comparison.