9 car companies willingly provide data on car location history

It is possible to raise a thousand and one objections against the customs of the Tesla car company, but in one respect it is correct. If, for any reason, the American authorities request the history of the location of a car, it will provide it exclusively on the basis of a court order and, as the only one of the fourteen examined, it will also inform the owner of the car about the provision of the data.

This follows from a letter from US Senators Ron Wyden and Edward Markey, addressed to the Federal Trade Commission, which deals with the security of the data of car drivers and other people in vehicles. In modern cars, internet connection is basically a matter of course, and car companies can collect data for various purposes. Among them are also good things, such as improving the quality of various services or the possibility of finding a car in case of theft.

However, storing data also means a risk to the privacy of the owners, including a risk from the police and other state authorities. Therefore, in 2014, a number of car companies operating in the US market pledged to provide sensitive data about the users of their cars, such as location history, to the authorities only on the basis of a court order.

However, according to the letter, many brands currently provide data to US authorities even without a court order, only by subpoena. They should be Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, Volkswagen, BMW, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz and Kia brands. Internal regulations of these brands according to the letter “they are in direct contradiction to the public statement they have made and which they have asked the Federal Trade Commission to review. These companies were thus able to engage in deceptive conduct”.

On the contrary, the brands that will only provide location history data on the basis of a court order are all the brands of the Ford, Stellantis and General Motors concerns, as well as Honda and the already mentioned Tesla. She said that her cars send location data only in case “critical safety events, e.g. accidents, airbag deployment or activation of automatic emergency braking”.

Mercedes-Benz stated that “does not systematically collect data on vehicle location history” and it only stores the place where the car was parked, and that only until the car is parked elsewhere; then the original place is covered over. On the contrary, according to the letter, Hyundai keeps vehicle location data for up to 15 years, Toyota for up to 10 years and Honda for up to 7 years.

“The authorities must have a court order to be authorized to request the contents of emails, photos on cloud storage, or the contents of the phones of American citizens. Location history data is just as sensitive and deserves just as strong protection.” the senators continue in the letter. In the letter, they urge Lina Khan, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, to look into the problem.

Congresswoman Debiie Dingell also addressed a similar letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. In it, she highlighted cases where perpetrators of domestic violence misused car connectivity tools to track their victims’ movements. He requests that it be possible to prevent the rapist’s access to the data in question in such cases.

It should be noted that the efforts of various parties – whether authorities or insurance companies – to obtain data from vehicles will probably not abate in the future. According to the Carscoops website, the American NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) is already looking for a way to obtain information from cars, for example, about how many times the driver has been warned on the display that he has exceeded the speed limit. So it seems that the only way to be safe from the pitfalls of data collection is to have no such technology in your car at all.