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The infrastructure needed for a technological dystopia — a total surveillance state — is already being built.

The European Union has a plan to reduce road traffic deaths and injuries by 50% by 2030.

The European Commission states that 50% of all car accidents in Europe are the result of human error related to fatigue and distraction. As such, from 2026 the EU will require that new vehicles be equipped with a Driver Monitoring System (DMS) to detect driver distraction. This means that all new vehicles will be fitted with a sophisticated system of cameras, sensors, and AI that monitor drivers and alerts them when they seem to be getting tired or distracted.

As one DMS technology website puts it,

“From seats that automatically adjust to a registered user to gaze-activated windshield wipers, to infotainment systems that can sense the driver’s mood and emotions… [the DMS] Tracks the driver’s eye, head, and face movements to detect distraction and identify even the earliest signs of fatigue – making sure that focus stays on the road ahead.”

No doubt this technology would prove useful for preventing accidents, but this technology becoming mandatory to meet the EU’s General Safety Regulation standards means that buyers of new vehicles will not have a choice about this constant monitoring.

It’s the old tension between safety and privacy, and the path is being laid out for a safer future with little privacy. At this stage, such technology is not mandatory in Australia, but I suspect there will be a push for us to adopt the approach of the EU.

Dystopian

I recently had a conversation with Andrea Amico of Privacy4Cars, a leading expert on vehicle privacy and cybersecurity, who talked with me about how cars can be used to collect and hand on our data to corporations and government departments.

You can watch that conversation from my podcast BASED here:

It is easy to see how DMS technology could undermine privacy. DMS technology would become just one more piece of the ever-expanding surveillance architecture.

From phones to computers, smart watches to smart TVs and much more, it is troubling to consider the rate at which our society has introduced technologies capable of recording biometric and other personal data, yet we are so often met with the same lazy argument that “if you are doing nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide.” As a result, we might discover that the infrastructure needed for a technological dystopia has already been built.

Reducing fatalities and injuries on the road is a good thing, and the advances in technology certainly help to achieve that. However, such safety means surrendering privacy, and the expansion of the surveillance infrastructure being built around us. How many times have we heard about data being stored by governments when we were told it wouldn’t be (COVID QR codes, anyone)?

There must be protections to ensure that our vehicle data, often stored without us thinking about it, is not used in underhanded ways. At some point, our nation’s parliaments will need to discuss this.

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Image courtesy of Unsplash.