Our own Joe-in-Mesa had a chance to drive a WWII vet to his 100th birthday party. I bet he enjoyed that! Great work Joe!

This year, 2020, it is estimated that 75 percent of new vehicles sold globally can be linked to the internet. I’ve discussed this issue before, but I thought this article https://www.dailywire.com/news/washington-post-hacks-into-chevy-to-show-how-much-cars-are-spying-on-owners does a good, short summation of how much data is downloaded by new vehicles when phones are connected to them (the full WP article is here).

Of course, even if you don’t pair your phone, your new vehicle still provides a variety of metrics to automakers. Why do automakers want that data? For a wide range of reasons, as this report points out: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/carmakers-are-collecting-your-data-and-selling-it/ . Though automakers will shout “safety and convenience” every time when cornered on the topic, it seems much more about increasing revenue outside of vehicle sales.

Worse, some new vehicles are arriving to showrooms equipped with cameras to monitor driver behavior, such as warning drivers when they appear to be distracted or monitoring their eye-lids to detect fatigue: https://www.consumerreports.org/automotive-technology/who-owns-the-data-your-car-collects/

My personal belief is that, in the end, it will become very difficult to avoid being monitored by both corporations and the government, the former possibly being even more insidious and impactful than the latter. Perhaps the best hope for anonymity is not to try to escape it, but try to make it worthless by flooding it with disinformation (for example, a disinformation app that produces false location geo tags). A simple example of this was how Miami police were falsely reporting their positions to Waze to prevent drivers from knowing their true locations.

Good luck out there in 2020!