Elec. car mfg, surveillance

Hundreds of thousands of electric cars made by Volkswagen (including its subsidiaries, Audi, SEAT and Skoda) were reporting the car's movements to the company. Sometimes security breaches in the cloudy servers Volkswagen uses allow others to get the data too.

Bizarrely, the author is not outraged at Volkswagen's snooping, not that itself. Perse seems to think that would be ok, if only Volkswagen had taken care not to let others, even others unknown to Volkswagen, access the data too over the net.

And Volkswagen reassures the owners that where they went is not very sensitive information.

Of course, the most dangerous thing the car company can do with that data is give or sell it to the state, if the state is repressive (as many are).

If you own a "connected" car, be sure to engage a mechanic to deactivate the antennas that enable it to (1) receive GPS (and therefore remember the location for the next servicing) and (2) make radio transmissions (whose location of origin are tracked).

Owners of connected cars should organize to demand that manufacturers let the owners deactivate these malfeatures. If the manufacturer makes it necessary for you to trust them not to tell others where you went, it is already mistreating you.