The Impending Privacy Threat of Self-Driving Cars

Within a few years, fully self-driving cars have gone from science fiction to a very common reality for people in San Francisco with other places in the U.S. also testing the new technology. With innovations often come unintended consequences—one of which is the massive collection of data required for an autonomous vehicle to function. The sheer amount of visual and other information collected by a fleet of cars traveling down public streets conjures the threat of the possibility for peoples’ movements to be tracked, aggregated, and retained by companies, law enforcement, or bad actors—including vendor employees. The sheer mass of this information poses a potential threat to civil liberties and privacy for pedestrians, commuters, and any other people that rely on public roads and walkways in cities.

People’s aggregate movements–their commutes, visits to friends or loved ones, and trips to the doctor’s office or an attorney– could be compiled over time by a fleet of driverless vehicles, which pedestrians don’t suspect can be deputized by police.

Autonomous vehicles rely on more than a dozen cameras and sensors situated around the car in order to detect other vehicles, traffic signs, obstructions, and pedestrians. Because the most visible autonomous cars are operated by private companies, there is a lot that we do not know about the storage, security, and access regarding this footage. It is unclear, for instance, how detailed the footage is of pedestrians on the street or whether that footage is run through any image recognition. What capabilities do these vehicles have to collect audio? How long is this footage stored for? Who has access to it? What protections are in place to keep the footage private and safe? How do these companies comply with local and state-wide privacy laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act?

Another major line of questioning is the relationship between autonomous vehicles and law

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