Will Technofascism Steal Your Driving Liberties?

Kylie Smith had no qualms with the “black box” tech in her new Prius. She barely recalled the sales associate mentioning it when she bought her new car. “One of many smart features that come standard. It’ll help your insurer drop your rates if you stay accident-free.”

Cool, she had thought, channeling Rain Man’s Dustin Hoffman. “I’m an excellent driver.”

Problem is, Kylie shares her name with another Kylie Smith. The former is a successful exec with a six-figure annual salary. A wife and a mom, she’s never been in trouble with the law. (Except for the rare parking ticket.)

The other Kylie has led a very different life. First arrested at age 17 for shoplifting, she’s been imprisoned for many crimes, including armed burglary and assault.

The first Kylie would have no reason to know all this—or care—if not for the mix-up that occurred one June morning. En route to a critical board meeting, one that might decide her company’s fate, a cop pulled her over. 

Correction. 

The police officer used his cruiser’s “override function” to commandeer Kylie’s vehicle as she exited the offramp, heading for her building. 

“What the…?” she cried as her car took on a life of its own.

She didn’t even know it was possible for the police to use such power. Still reeling from being forced over, she was in for another shock. The cop didn’t approach the driver’s side to request her license and registration. 

Instead, he seized her car’s stereo system to bark instructions: “Put your hands on the dashboard where I can see them. No sudden movements.”

Kylie had never been at a loss for words before. “W-what?” 

“Put. Your. Hands. On. The. Dashboard. NOW.”

Tears stinging her eyes, she did as she was told. Seconds later, the cop exited his vehicle. As he did, all four doors of Kylie’s car opened automatically. The windows rolled down and her engine died.

“You have the right to remain silent…” he said through her car stereo. 

It wasn’t until a handcuffed Kylie Smith reached the police station and spoke to the commanding officer did the truth behind the mix-up come to light. 

“Apparently, data from your new car’s black box mistakenly alerted police authorities you were at large—or rather, a different Kylie Smith—one accused of breaking parole for manslaughter—was. We regret the mistake.”

“Mistake? You treated me like an animal.”

“Our sincere apologies, Mrs. Smith. We were just going off your car’s data. You have a nice day.”

According to toproductoo.com, “The average car has 30 to 50 different computers, and high-end cars have as many as 100, and they are accompanied by up to 100 different electronic sensors.” This represents an explosion of car computing power we take for granted due to its myriad conveniences: touch free dialing, GPS maps, Bluetooth playback. 

Sometimes termed the “Internet of cars,” this phenomenon has been sold to us with great promise. “Imagine if your car was able to call your mechanic when the engine was showing signs of trouble. Imagine if the mechanic could read a data report from your engine and order the required parts ahead of time,” wrote Matthew Yarger for Techcrunch in June 2021. “…. What if your car could pay automatically at parking garages and drive-throughs? Anyone that owns a car is familiar with all these pain points, and the prospect of a new system that erases these spots of friction would be a welcome development.”

Fair enough. But as coauthors of Neuromined: Triumphing Over Technological Tyranny (Fast Company Press, 2023), we worry about the dark side of tech, specifically its potential for misuse and abuse in the hands of authorities with unprecedented, centralized control.  

It's bad enough every car now has dozens of IoT (or IoC) devices talking to various computer networks, spying on us every time we drive. But things are about to get worse. The above story is, of course, a fictionalized dramatization but one based on what’s coming. VRT reported back in July that black boxes (much like the ones in aircraft now) will become mandatory for all new cars sold in the EU:

Most cars are already equipped with a so-called "Event Data Recorder". However, the data it records is rarely requested by the courts. From 6 July EU regulations will change, making it easier for courts to obtain the data contained in a vehicle’s Event Data Recorder in the event of a major accident. The Event Data Recorder not only registers the speed of the car, but also measures, for example, whether the driver has braked, whether he/she has swerved and whether the vehicle’s airbag has deployed.

 Per the article, the data is not to be used to record what is said inside the vehicle, and “in principle, insurance companies will not be able to demand access to the data.” This the current claim, at least. But as anyone who has been paying attention to the slow erosion of our liberties knows, authoritarians often apply a death by a thousand cuts approach. 

This brings us back to the technocratic assault of cars. While the world focuses on other matters, such as a looming recession, so-called vehicle kill switches are quietly being ushered in by authorities in America. 

Once upon a time, the American car embodied our way of life, namely freedom and independence. There’s a reason so many songs celebrate it: Drive My Car, Picture Me Rollin, Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car, On the Road Again, to name a few. But cars aren’t just tools to get us from point A to point B. They represent something symbolic. And that might be the reason so many authoritarians are eager to use them to subvert our liberty. 

Let’s keep them out of the driver’s seat.

This article was originally written with Robert Grant, CEO of Crown Sterling, as part of content for our Substack Channel The Sovereignty Assembly. It is to support our upcoming book Neuromined: Triumphing Over Technological Tyranny (Fast Company Press, 2023. Please visit Crown Sterling’s Data Bill of Rights to learn more about how to regain your (data) sovereignty.