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Digital Sovereignty 1.4 - Mobility Services

It is no longer a question, but a fact that the Internet is in the car. After discussing a number of useful mobile services in passenger cars, we have to conclude that our digital sovereignty will be lost if we do not take adequate measures

Cars – the Ultimate Internet Frontier?

It is no longer a question, but a fact that the Internet is in the car. Already 15 years ago, luxury vehicles had been called “rolling computers”. By installing sensors and control units many useful driving functions such as parking a car, distance control, or autonomously braking in case of dangerous situations have been made available to the driver. Following the digital evolution, a number of projects have been kicked-off, which link the vehicle with the Internet and thereby create value-added services for navigation, map quality, emergency calls. However, even more business is expected from the development of new services, which combine vehicle data

Or which accumulate even more data of participating users/drivers/passengers to make more money. In particular the investments of companies such as Apple or Alphabet in the development of autonomous vehicles show these trends very clearly.

Many New Mobile Services Can Be Very Useful

Many of the available or planned mobile services in the vehicle offer useful, in some cases even life-saving functions, which will be useful for drivers and passengers. Deadly traffic accidents may be reduced, time spent in traffic jams can be used productively and minimized. Other features, however, are developed in the interest of Internet giants or car manufacturers. The data rights of drivers and passengers are ignored, their digital sovereignty is violated. In any case, clear data usage legislation is required. Unfortunately, we as passengers or drivers are not (yet?) aware of this or may be even negligent.

Some of these services are listed below with a discussion of relevant data, their origin, their ownership, and relevant actions for their protection.

Potentially useful mobile services as discussed in the following text
Useful(?) Mobile Services

Mobility and autonomous driving are currently high potentials for fully changing the rules in the mobility arena. The driver role is eliminated and the car acts in a selfcontained way. All passengers in the car will be able to spend their time without paying attention to the traffic around them. The year of full autonomous driving is still under heavy debate, but the technical viability mid-term is out of question. Not only the car as a sign of individualism comes to an end. Mid- to long-term, transport related business models such as logistics, vehicle manufacturers, insurance, local and long-haul public transport will be measured in the mobility experience they offer to their customers. By optimizing transport flows a strong reduction of resource use (time, roads, gas and many more) is expected. The vehicles communicate between each other, with the road infrastructure and with traffic management systems in the backend. The mobility requirements of users are included in the selection of routes, transport means etc. Despite of the fact that some time will pass before this “vision” will be implemented, even today a number of important issues with respect to an individual’s digital sovereignty can be seen:

The complete area of „Cyber Security“, mainly of the passengers, needs to be discussed somewhere else. How can one stop attacks in the car (bag with explosives left in a car), by the car (as an autonomous bomb), or on the car (by localizing the passengers)?

It is clear: Autonomous driving requires focused deliberation and research. As soon as available, we will include corresponding references to www.in4com.de pages.

Detailed and exact road maps are not only a requirement for having cars drive autonomously. By using car sensor data combined with location data, streets can be measured and the results can be fed back to the map data for optimized routing.

Navigation is one of the most widely used services, which is derived by combining mobile devices and geo-location. Already today, be it in the car or on the phone, many useful functions are available: searching for empty parking, route, traffic information, the next sushi restaurant, and many more.

Currently, it seems, there is little or no sufficient understanding between information producers, information users/service providers, and regulators on an adequate business model. Data are used by service providers to optimize their business without regulation or control by the data owners.

Vehicle information denotes such kind of information which is used by manufacturers for statistical purposes or which are directly linked with the operation of the car. Examples are maintenance data, management of recalls, software updates in the car, or customer binding campaigns. The expected increase of time share vehicles (such as car2go) is another reason for the manufacturer to collect detailed usage data. Customer identification may be required at least for service billing.

Emergency calls and help are functions, which are legally required in all new vehicles in the European Community from 2018 onwards. Their implementation requires the continuous monitoring of locations, information about the car’s passengers (e.g. via a camera), and details about the vehicle status. Communication via voice using microphone and speakers must be assured. The financial model of the service is yet to be defined. Car manufacturers try to compensate the costs for SIM cards, other vehicle components, and backend infrastructures by combining emergency services with other services paid by users.

Analysis of accidents can be supported by the data stored by and in a vehicle. Court orders are required. The same proceedings as for private homes can be applied. The retrieved data can only be used for the purpose under scrutiny, other ways of usage are forbidden. The general availability of such data for other purposes (governmental or private businesses including manufacturers) should not be assumed.

Traffic flow management requires the combination and analysis of data from many sources: vehicle data, Internet, mobile devices, traffic or street infrastructure and potentially competing traffic management systems. The ultimate goal is the optimization of the mobility of all traffic participants and the required resources. A few examples shall demonstrate the complex situation.

Our Digital Sovereignty Gets Lost along the Way

A multitude of new, mobile services is linked to geo-location, which provides the most exact location of each individual at any time. Very often this is call a “security feature” which protects us from attacks or helps that we are found and rescued quickly. But is it not much more dangerous to be found anytime anywhere? Free, self-defined acts become impossible? Therefore, the digital sovereignty over geo-location data is highly important.

In the vehicle, the logging of car data is highly important and even becomes indispensible in an autonomous car. Similar to the black box of an airplane, the vehicle data are logged in detail and continuously and can be used, for example during the analysis of a traffic accident (velocity, steering activity, brake activities, driver reaction, environmental conditions, exact location). This implies the continuous monitoring of the driver/passenger at least as detailed as the pilot in the course of a flight. Pilots are responsible for the safety of the passengers they are flying and can be held responsible on a professional level. Do we have to request the same for the billions of drivers on the road? Also, the digital sovereignty over the vehicle data we generate must be specified and implemented effectively.

In order for the above examples to turn into reality, the number of required individual, personalized data are manifold. The data themselves are handled within a multitude of IT systems. For most of these operations, rules and measures to preserve digital sovereignty are yet to be set-up. Here we can see the close connection of mobility services to other services such as finance, health care, and others.

Secure Your Digital Sovereignty And Stay Mobile!

Securing and safeguarding your digital sovereignty all by yourself is limited to a certain extent. Firstly, often it is not clear that our data can be used or processed by third parties. Secondly, even if we understand the many ways our data are used (based on the terms of use we all do not read anyway), we could do little. Due to unavailable alternatives we typically have to accept terms of use as set-up by the provider of a service. For example, you have to accept the terms of use for any Android/Apple/Windows10 phone in order to be able to use it. – otherwise we would have bought an expensive, but useless piece of aluminum. Thirdly, even we actively reduce the amount of data being sent across the network, there will remain a residual minimum amount, e.g. for billing (one of the German anti-terror rulings was to require name and address of the owner of a prepaid card). The linkage between a phone and its owner allows many insight views of a user’s behavior and interests. But even without name, address, or telephone number users in many cases can be uniquely identified by their phone’s or computer’s configurations and configuration parameters, as shown in a project at the University Erlangen Nuremberg.

Nevertheless, we should continuously ask ourselves,

Of course, then you need to act according to your answers to the questions above.

However, in order to be able to execute the right of digital sovereignty legal requirements and their implementation are a must. In parallel legal specifications, awareness must be established with our political representatives that digital sovereignty is an important and foundational right. This requires educational campaigns for politicians and all civilians. Consumer associations can play an important role in this, as well as civil right organizations or computer science experts and established data protection agencies and institutions. All these organizations should be involved in the wording of required law. Important scientific work has already been done (see for example the work on the data protection model in Germany). Major resistance should be expected as today’s “data users” are belonging to important international players (monopolies). They are able to spend nearly unlimited resources and expertise to stop the implementation of effective consumer protection legislation.

Looking at the growing number of interfaces to the Internet and of information becoming public by the introduction of new gadgets (home surveillance, body sensors and many more), 100% data sovereignty may not be achievable. There will remain some residual risks – and may be an insurance for it. Stay alert!