Big Data From Our Cars – Big Brother More Like
Friday, 5. August 2016
Is in car technology running ahead of legislation now? The Act of Parliament that controls the way that data is handled is the Data Protection Act 1998 and whilst there have been some periphery changes over the years we still rely upon the Act to ensure that we are all protected from miss-use of our data.
But in the days when this Act found its way onto the statute book things were vastly different. Most cars didn’t even have a hands free telephone system fitted let alone the mass of connectivity now fitted into cars. Arguments are appearing all over the place as to who owns the data and it all gets very confusing to the likes of you and I.
Of course not all information is sensitive and can be used by manufacturers to develop new cars and systems as well as provide accurate data to buyers. We all know how inaccurate fuel miles per gallon figures are but with so much data being recorded a manufacturer could average out fuel consumption across thousands of cars and come up with a far more accurate figure than they do at the moment.
But the question is – how to they arrive at this average? They would need to identify when you are driving around town compared to driving across country or on a motorway to measure Urban and Extra Urban figures. And how can this be done? Using GPS used by your sat. nav., even when you are not using the sat. nav.
Is it right that somewhere in the Big Data database there are recordings of where and when you traveled in your car at any point in time? These are questions that need to be addressed by the Government and a new version of the Data Protection Act worked on before Big Brother takes over our lives. By Graham Hill
