China tracks electric cars
DRIVERS DON’T KNOW: MANUFACTURERS SEND DATA TO GOVERNMENT MONITORING CENTRES
Officials say the data is used for analytics, but critics call it privacy invasion.
When Shan Junhua bought his white Tesla Model X, he knew it was a fast, beautiful car. What he didn’t know is that Tesla constantly sends information about the precise location of his car to the Chinese government.
Tesla is not alone. China has called upon all electric vehicle manufacturers in China to make the same kind of reports, potentially adding to the rich kit of surveillance tools available to the Chinese government as President Xi Jinping steps up the use of technology to track Chinese citizens.
“I didn’t know this,” said Shan. “Tesla could have it, but why do they transmit it to the government? Because this is about privacy.”
More than 200 manufacturers, including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Mitsubishi and US-listed electric vehicle startup NIO, transmit position information and dozens of other data points to government-backed monitoring centres, the Associated Press has found. Generally, it happens without car owners’ knowledge.
The carmakers say they are merely complying with local laws, which apply only to alternative energy vehicles. Chinese officials say the data is used for analytics to improve public safety, facilitate industrial development and infrastructure planning and to prevent fraud in subsidy programmes.
But other countries that are major markets for electronic vehicles – the US, Japan, across Europe – do not collect this kind of real-time data. And critics say the information collected in China is beyond what is needed to meet the country’s stated goals. It could be used not only to undermine foreign carmakers’ competitive position, but also for surveillance — particularly in China, where there are few protections of personal privacy.
Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China has unleashed a war on dissent, marshalling big data and artificial intelligence to create a more perfect kind of policing, capable of predicting and eliminating perceived threats to the stability of the ruling Communist Party.
There is also concern about the precedent these rules set for sharing data from next-generation connected cars, which may soon transmit even more personal information. “You’re learning a lot about people’s day-to-day activities and that becomes part of what I call ubiquitous surveillance, where pretty much everything that you do is being recorded and saved and potentially can be used in order to affect your life and your freedom,” said Michael Chertoff, who served as scretary of the US department of homeland security under President George W Bush and recently wrote a book called Exploding Data.
“The government wants to know what people are up to at all times and react in the quickest way possible,” said Maya Wang, a senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch.
“There is zero protection against state surveillance.”
“Tracking vehicles is one of the main focuses of their mass surveillance,” she added.
Last year, authorities in Xinjiang, a restive region in western China that has become a laboratory for China’s surveillance state, ordered residents to install GPS devices so their vehicles could be tracked, according to official media.
This year the ministry of public security, a police agency, began to roll out a system to track vehicles using windshield radio frequency chips that can identify cars as they pass roadside reading devices.
Many vehicles in the US, Europe and Japan transmit position information back to carmakers, who feed it to car-tracking apps, maps that pinpoint nearby amenities and emergency services providers. But the data stops there. Government or law enforcement agencies would generally only be able to access personal vehicle data in the context of a specific criminal investigation and in the US, would typically need a court order, lawyers said. – AP
The government wants to know what people are up to at all times.