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Protecting Your Car’s Privacy

Privacy By Binnall Law Group - 2018/01/09 at 09:25am

Admit it: you’ve given little thought about how to stop hackers from taking over your car. Sure, you lock your doors and hope that a thief doesn’t hot-wire your ignition, but now hackers are the new danger on the horizon, with the rise of the smart car. In fact, the annual Law Vegas-based hacker convention, DefCon, has been allowing its attendees to try their luck at hacking into cars for a number of years already.

As a result of this threat, international regulators have issued guidance to manufacturers on how to protect drivers’ privacy and safety (see article here). There are a number of common sense measures included in the recommendations, like minimizing personally identifying data stored on the car’s computers, allowing users to set privacy settings, and limiting software that would allow outside users to secretly track a vehicle.

A number of questions will remain, however, including how the government might be able to gain access to such information (either with or without a warrant). Indeed, the Supreme Court is currently wrestling with similar issues in Carpenter v. United States, which will decide whether the government can obtain cell phone location data without a warrant.

civil rights, Privacy, technology