Over the next decade, systems which create and store digital records of people’s movements through public space will be woven inextricably into the fabric of everyday life. We are already starting to see such systems now, and there will be many more in the near future.

Here are some examples you might already have used or read about:

• Monthly transit swipe-cards
• Electronic tolling devices (FastTrak, EZpass, congestion pricing)
• Cellphones
• Services telling you when your friends are nearby
• Searches on your PDA for services and businesses near your current location
• Free Wi-Fi with ads for businesses near the network access point you’re using
• Electronic swipe cards for doors
• Parking meters you can call to add money to, and which send you a text message when your time is running out

These systems are marvellously innovative, and they promise benefits ranging from increased convenience to transformative new kinds of social interaction.

Unfortunately, these systems pose a dramatic threat to locational privacy.

And today, the New York Times has an op-ed by Adam Cohen lamenting the threats to locational privacy in our contemporary technological ecosystem:

A little-appreciated downside of the technology revolution is that, mainly without thinking about it, we have given up “locational privacy.” Even in low-tech days, our movements were not entirely private. The desk attendant at my gym might have recalled seeing me, or my colleagues might have remembered when I arrived. Now the information is collected automatically and often stored indefinitely.

It’s good to see this attention to locational privacy, but it’s equally important to recognize that these threats aren’t new: I’ve been blogging and advocating for attention to privacy in public, privacy on the roads, and locational privacy for a number of years now (and I’m certainly not the only one). I’ve also published about particular threats to privacy on the roads (here and here), and tried (with limited success) to engage with designers of new vehicle-technologies to design privacy into the new protocols.

I’m thrilled to see the EFF draw renewed attention to locational privacy. I just hope they’re not too late to start advocating for change…

The brief article notes “There will probably also be privacy concerns.” Yep, and you can read my article on how the design and implementation of Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Safety Communication technologies threaten the contextual integrity of personal information flows as we drive along the highways.

(FWIW, Popular Science covered VSC about 18 months ago.)

The piece introduces new research – “the adaptation of defense technology” – to automatically count the number of people in a vehicle so road authorities can charge variable tolls based on vehicle occupancy. These new methods include counting heartbeats, listening for and distinguishing breath signs, sensing different levels of body heat, sensing human skin moisture levels, or (and I’m not sure how this would be implemented) reading passenger fingerprints.

Reaching into the car and searching the passengers in such manners introduce significant shifts in the norms of personal information flow in the context of highway travel, and steps must be taken to ensure these new technologies are designed in value-conscious ways. Santa Clara University law professor Dorothy Glancy agrees:

You can make data anonymous by policy and it’s just a matter of time before policy breaks down. You have to engineer [privacy] into the system.

[via Pogo Was Right]

Recent advances in wireless technologies have led to the development of intelligent, in-vehicle safety applications designed to share information about the actions of nearby vehicles, potential road hazards, and ultimately predict dangerous scenarios or imminent collisions. These vehicle safety communication (VSC) technologies rely on the creation of autonomous, self-organizing, wireless communication networks connecting vehicles with roadside infrastructure and with each other. As the technical standards and communication protocols for VSC technologies are still being developed, certain ethical implications of these new information technologies emerge: Coupled with the predicted safety benefits of VSC applications is a potential rise in the ability to surveil a driver engaging in her everyday activities on the public roads. This paper will explore how the introduction of VSC technologies might disrupt the “contextual integrity” of personal information flows in the context of highway travel and threaten one’s “privacy in public.” Since VSC technologies and their related protocols and standards are still in the developmental stage, the paper will conclude by revealing how close attention to the ethical implications of the remaining design decisions can inform and guide designers of VSC technologies to create innovate safety applications that increase public safety, but without compromising the value of one’s privacy in public.

Popular Science features an article on “The Future of the Car: Behold the All-Seeing, Self-Parking, Safety-Enforcing, Networked Automobile” where one of the emerging technologies discussed is Vehicle Safety Communication technology:

The next giant leap in sensing will be radio networking that enables cars to exchange information. “Communication [between cars] will be like an additional sensor,” says Ralf Herrtwich, director of vehicle IT research at DaimlerChrysler. Car-to-car communication will ensure that your automobile is impeccably informed about road conditions ahead. And this extra “sensor” will have almost unlimited range, because information can be instantaneously relayed from one vehicle to the next, to the next, and so on.

Along with the many safety benefits of such vehicle-to-vehicle ad-hoc communication networks, certain privacy conerns emerge, which the article does mention, if only briefly:

…your vehicle can upload its position to road authorities, so they can use variable road tolls as a traffic management tool—raising the price on busy stretches during rush hours. How do you like the notion that someone somewhere always has the position (and speed) of your car logged?

This is a significant concern: the design of these vehicle safety technologies might change the existing norms of personal information flow in the context of highway travel. My two recent papers discuss this concern, and point to the need for value-sensitive design of these technologies to protect one’s privacy in public.

[via Slashdot]

I am on my way to The Netherlands to particpate in two exciting conferences. I will be presenting my paper “Surveillance, Privacy and the Ethics of Vehicle Safety Communication Technologies” [PDF] at the International Conference of Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry. And I will be presenting my paper “Privacy and the Design of Vehicle Safety Communication Technologies” [PDF] at the International Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.

DaimlerChrysler has made the first public demonstration of a DSRC-based vehicle-to-vehicle communication application. From the press release:

Cars equipped with DSRC can communicate directly with one another, also making it possible to transmit braking signals back over several vehicles, giving drivers early warning that they might soon have to brake. In this information network, each vehicle can take on the role of a sender, receiver or router. It allows a chain of information to be passed on, like a relay race. With the aid of this process, known as multi-hopping, information can be spread further to cover a substantial distance.

The data exchange between vehicles is made possible by ad-hoc networks. These short-distance connections are spontaneously created between the vehicles as the need arises and can organize themselves without the help of any external infrastructure. DSRC uses Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology to transmit data at 5.9 Gigahertz over a distance of up to 1,000 meters.

…The system is primarily designed to enhance safety and improve traffic flow on the road, but it can also be used to transmit other data such as digital music, movies or even map updates for the on-board navigation system into the vehicle which could be added benefits and value.

What is not mentioned, unsurprisingly, are the privacy implications of these applications. I will be presenting papers on the privacy concerns with DSRC-based vehicle safety communication technologies at the CEPE and SPT conferences in The Netherlands this July.

Bruce Schneier links to a report that speculates how Lexus automobiles might be vulnerable to computer viruses transferred via cell phones.(Techdirt has more, too)

The concern seems to be that as cars become more and more dependent on computers, they become more vulnerable. This threat increases with the advent of vehicle-to vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication applications via dedicated-short-range-communication (DSRC) technology. (more on DSRC here and here) While my research has focused on the privacy implications of DSRC, the threat of viruses being transmitted via these ad-hoc communication networks between cars incrases the need for strong security.