By Max Aitchison For Daily Mail Australia
12:04 06 May 2024, updated 12:04 06 May 2024
Growing fears about the volumes of data and private information being collected by new ‘connected’ cars has prompted the Privacy Commissioner to launch an inquiry.
Carly Kind, a former Queensland-based human rights lawyer who took up the government agency role in February, warned that there was little transparency over what drivers’ personal data was being used for.
She’s now on a mission to ensure connected vehicles sold in Australia protect sensitive personal data.
‘Cars are now kind of computers on wheels, and that means they are collecting a lot of information about individuals, including location information chiefly, which tells us a lot of other things about individuals, including … about their sensitive personal life,’ Ms Kind told the Australian Financial Review.
‘There’s a lot of data being collected there, and not a lot of transparency or understanding about how that data is being used.’
The Privacy Commissioner’s intervention comes after the Barefoot Investor Scott Pape warned in March that new ‘internet-enabled cars’ in the US often share data about a driver’s speeding, braking and swerving with insurance companies.
Ms Kind said the sale of this data in the US from car manufacturers to car insurers was ‘filtering back to consumers in the form of possibly higher insurance premiums’.
In October, Katherine Kemp, Associate Professor at the UNSW’s Faculty of Law & Justice, warned that ‘Australia’s privacy laws need urgent reform’ to combat the data being harvested by car companies.
‘Australia’s privacy laws aren’t up to the task of protecting the vast amount of personal information collected and shared by car companies,’ Ms Kemp wrote.
‘And since our privacy laws don’t demand the specific disclosures required by some US states, we have much less information about what car companies are doing with our data.’
Ms Kemp cited a US study by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation which found that cars with internet-connected features were ‘the official worst category of products for privacy’ they had ever reviewed, dubbing them a ‘privacy nightmare on wheels’.
They tested all major car brands – Toyota, Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, Tesla, Hyundai – and found they all failed to meet minimum privacy standards.
Almost 85 percent share or sell your data to third parties, while Nissan and Kia reportedly even allow the collection of data on a driver’s sex life.
‘They come right out and say they can collect and share your sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic information and other sensitive personal information for targeted marketing purposes,’ the report by the Mozilla Foundation states.
The Privacy Commissioner Ms Kind added that there was also a concern about the footage electric cars are able to collect.
‘I think there’s a related and separate issue around certain types of vehicles, including electric vehicles, which are collecting a range of other types of information, including video footage around the car, and other types of surveillance imagery,’ Ms Kind told the publication .
‘So, really trying to interrogate what the privacy obligations and issues are in that space.’
Ms Kind founded the London-based data and privacy research organization, the Ada Lovelace Institute in 2019 before taking up her government-appointed position.
The role, which reports to the Attorney-General and involves regulating data and privacy concerns, comes with a total salary of $365,570.
Tags: Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind issues urgent warning Aussies connected car inquiry launched
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