The Free and the Dead: Our right to privacy and our right to safety
For three days Lamara lay beside her dead boyfriend in their mangled blue Renault Clio. No doubt she will have heard other motorists minute by minute, hour by hour passing the scene of her own apocalyptic crash, hoping for the sound of a siren. After 72 hours she was finally rescued. She died in hospital shortly afterwards, leaving behind two children.
It was July the 5th 2015 and John Yuill and Lamara Bell were returning from a camping trip in Perthshire when their car left the road on the M9 southbound junction near Bannockburn. A string of errors by the police, including failure to log and follow up a report of a car off the road, ultimately led to their deaths. Arguments were heard and blame cast.
In June 2013 the European Commission adopted two proposals that would ensure all new vehicles sold in the EU from 1 March 2018 would be fitted with eCall. First proposed in 1999, eCall is a system linked via a SIM that, when activated, sends the vehicle status and location automatically to the emergency services. This technology will undoubtedly save lives, with the EC’s own press release estimating a reduction of 10% of the roughly 25,000 lives lost in accidents across the EU annually. It could have saved John and Lamara.
An obvious question is why has this technology has not been applied earlier. I’ve been able to find an Uber since 2013, but the emergency services can’t find me in 2017? It’s a sobering thought.
For grieving families change can’t come fast enough.
And yet…
The freedom of four wheels has resonated in every vehicle sale since Ford offered “Any colour as long as it’s black”. Today cars like Crossfires and Shoguns, Rams and Mustangs, all conjure images of the untamed and the free. Even the luxury Range Rover means freedom: Range: (verb) vary or extend between specified limits. Rover: (noun) a person who spends their time wandering.
It’s the open road, the call of the wild. From the teenage road trip down Route 66 to the Sunday afternoon through the backroads of Kent, freedom is at the core of every car sale, and freedom’s bed fellow is privacy.
Privacy, or its absence, features frequently in both media and policy. Those for and against argue it out online daily. Here in the UK the plans for the eCall rollout were delayed when then Conservative transport minister Claire Perry questioned the costs and a string of privacy groups such as Big Brother Watch waded into the argument, eventually prompting the EC to publish the nattily titled document “Do you have any concerns for your privacy? You shouldn’t…”
The intentions of the legislation are pure. Technology applied to save lives can only be a good thing, but my concern hinges on a lack of debate around access to our data. Time and again we’ve seen how fearlessly government agencies reach into our lives, overstepping the mark time and again. Meanwhile the list of data breaches grows ever longer.
The erosion of privacy grinds slow but fine.
Three years ago if you sent me a text your only clue as to my receipt of the message was if I replied. Today you know if I received it, if I read it, and crucially if I ignored it, when my “Last Seen” time is after the text send time.
As these details seep into the everyday, society eventually folds them into accepted norms and opting out becomes irregular.
A world where our driving location and habits are tracked is around the next bend. We will put faith in the businesses and authorities that keep this data safe and to use it for our benefit. Eventually apps like Glympse will break into the mainstream, evolve, and broadcasting your location will be the norm. Opt out, and when driving a friend home you’ll have to explain why you’re not broadcasting your location in real time.
There are no easy solutions. The balance of freedom and safety shifts on a moving fulcrum of societal opinion. Every industry is grappling with this and ours is no exception. I’m an advocate of strong privacy laws, and yet put me in a room with the parents of John and Lamara and I would struggle to assemble an argument.
I do however believe it is a debate we as an industry, and the public as a whole need to have.
Here’s to hoping we can find a balance.
