The California Privacy Protection Agency—created under a ballot initiative in 2020 and the only regulator in the nation solely dedicated to privacy issues—will examine the growing amalgamation of data collected by smart vehicles and whether the business practices of the companies collecting that data comply with state law. “Modern vehicles are effectively connected computers on wheels. They’re able to collect a wealth of information via built in apps, sensors, and cameras, which can monitor people both inside and near the vehicle,” Ashkan Soltani, the agency’s executive director, said in a statement in July 2023.

Regulators in Europe also have opened investigations into how the auto industry uses personal information from cars such as location data. In February 2023, Tesla agreed to offer a software update in Europe to change camera settings in cars after the Dutch privacy regulator investigated the company. Tesla disabled vehicles’ external security cameras by default until a driver turns on the function to record activity outside a car and changed the camera settings so they only save the last 10 minutes of footage recorded from outside the cars, compared with one hour of footage they previously had saved.  The Dutch regulator also said it was a privacy violation for the cameras to extensively record people outside of cars without their knowledge. The Tesla update also included features to warn people inside and outside of cars that the external cameras are recording. Headlights blink if the cameras are recording and a message is displayed on a touch screen inside the cars.

Automobiles represent the latest frontier for regulators, raising fresh questions about who will control the data generated by vehicles as they move through the world. Numerous companies are in a position to access the data—including the automakers themselves, companies that make or run in-car navigation or infotainment systems, satellite radio companies and in-vehicle security and emergency services providers. Insurance companies have also been encouraging consumers to share information about their driving behavior, sometimes in exchange for a discount.  

All the data has commercial potential. In some cases, it can be used by insurers in determining how to set rates, evaluate risk and gauge safe driving behavior…In some cases, data brokers make vehicle data available for sale—stripping it of personal information such as names. People’s movement patterns are often unique, however, and their real-world identities can be inferred in large-scale location data sets even when the data is stripped of personal information.

Law-enforcement agencies also can now obtain the historical location of suspects, usually with a warrant. The sensors on modern cars have raised national-security concerns as well. China in 2021 banned certain officials from owning or driving Tesla vehicles citing concerns that data the cars gather could be a source of national-security leaks.

Byron Tau, California Opens Privacy Probe Into Who Controls, Shares the Data Your Car Is Collecting, WSJ, July 31, 2023