Challenge The Hosts:
Automotive and Surveillance/Privacy
You have likely considered data privacy for your phone, but have you ever considered the data you're giving when car sharing with others? In the newest “Challenge The Host” episode of the Scrap the Manual podcast, Angelica and Rushali discuss the difference between car ownership vs car sharing and the role surveillance and privacy play within Automotive. Tune in and get an inside look at the future of the automotive industry and how the adoption of trackable car technologies is changing the way we get from one place to another.
You can read the discussion below, or listen to the episode on your preferred podcast platform.
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Angelica Ortiz: Hey everyone! Welcome to Scrap The Manual, a podcast where we prompt "aha" moments through discussions of technology, creativity, experimentation, and how all those work together to address cultural and business challenges. My name's Angelica.
Rushali Paratey: And my name is Rushali. We're both creative technologists with Labs.Monks, which is an innovation group within Media.Monks with a goal to steer and drive global solutions focused on technology and design evolution.
Angelica Ortiz: Today, we're going to be doing our "Challenge The Host" segment. As a refresher, this segment is where we are randomly assigned an industry and a challenge, and here we brainstorm on the fly what the potential opportunities are within this space, leveraging existing as well as emerging technologies. And the challenge for today is...
Rushali Paratey: Automotive and surveillance and privacy.
Angelica Ortiz: Oooh, this is interesting! So the challenge being automotive and surveillance privacy. It's come up recently with thinking about self-driving cars and what the amount of data goes into it in terms of the people who are actually doing the rides—and then even looking more future-forward, the car can essentially become a digital thumbprint of someone's identity.
Rushali Paratey: I think that was a podcast or an article about how Tesla is best positioned to create a humanoid robot that helps you with your groceries and stuff purely because of the amount of data that is collected by the Tesla car.
Angelica Ortiz: Yikes, that's kind of scary.
Rushali Paratey: Yes it's not just Tesla. If you think about it, when we have to talk about who is going to create the metaverse, Apple is best positioned to create the metaverse because they have hardware so they can collect data through the Apple watches, iPhones. What does Facebook have?
Angelica Ortiz: Oculus?
Rushali Paratey: Yeah, but nobody's wearing the Oculus, like 24/7. People are wearing Apple watches 24/7. So it really is a more easy walk into the apparent metaverse.
Angelica Ortiz: Well, we also have to think about the extension of Meta right? You got Facebook, Instagram…
Rushali Paratey: And WhatsApp.
Angelica Ortiz: And WhatsApp. Within that ecosystem, there's a lot of different data points that could be taken from it because people are scrolling their phones constantly.
Rushali Paratey: True that, true that. But Apple and Google are like the first point of entry for those data points and they're best placed and positioned.
Angelica Ortiz: Yeah.
Rushali Paratey: I have a question for you.
Angelica Ortiz: Yes?
Rushali Paratey: Do you have a car or do you have…no, not a car, an automotive thing...
Angelica Ortiz: ...a vehicle or motorized device of some kind?
Rushali Paratey: Yes.
Angelica Ortiz: I do not own one, but I do occasionally rent as part of a car sharing service. Same thing with scooters. Ever since I've moved to the Netherlands, the aspect of car ownership has changed because there's a lot of mobility with bicycling and taking mass transit like trains or buses.
So the traditional aspect of ownership within automotive has changed slightly since I've been here and that's even reflective of a much larger trend that we might be seeing in the upcoming years too.
Rushali Paratey: Do you prefer owning a car or do you prefer renting a car as you need?
Angelica Ortiz: I think it depends on the lifestyle. So in the U.S. it made a lot of sense to own a car because there were not a lot of mass transit options that were reliable or convenient. So owning a car was something that was preferred then. Now, car sharing is really nice because then there's no long-term maintenance of the car to have to worry about if it gets broken on the side of the road. The company that owns the car is the one that takes care of all that stuff. And then even within the Netherlands specifically there's taxes for owning a car. So it actually is a lot easier to do car sharing.
Rushali Paratey: That reminds me of this book by Jane Jacobs, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It's written in such a lengthy perspective of Los Angeles and how the automotive industry and the infrastructure of it was basically lobbying against public transportation so that people would have to depend on cars.
Angelica Ortiz: Mhmm.
Rushali Paratey: And that's one of the things that the book goes through, and I found it quite interesting because that's how the automotive industry has put its roots down, like the foundations of it. And yet people across the world have figured out ways to evolve, in a way where we can create these shared mechanisms and create these ecosystems where we are going to move out of private individual ownership and go more into Ubering or cabbing. And even if there is no public transportation available, a lot of people still depend on renting cars in different parts of the world, not just in Europe.
But yeah, I think that the whole thing is quite interesting. Because when you own a car, you don't really have to sell your data to someone, but when you're using a shared car, the car is owned by a company and the company is also owning the location of the cars at all points. So in turn you are giving up ownership of your physical data.
Angelica Ortiz: Yeah, I'll give you an example. Whenever I use a car sharing app, the one specifically I use is MyWheels. They have this RFID disc of sorts that's in the front. Which is really cool because essentially you don't need a physical key. You open the car using your phone and you essentially say, "Hey! I'm here, there's no scratches on the car. Everything looks good." And then "click" it opens up. But throughout the entirety of the journey, the car is being tracked.
So whether I go to the grocery store, whether taking a day trip over to Utrecht or wherever...the car is being tracked by the company and it's for a couple of different reasons. One: to make sure, like, where is it going? And then also if the car is never returned where they can actually go retrieve their car. It makes sense from a company perspective to know where exactly the car is but that's part of a larger discussion if people don't internalize the fact that they are being tracked. There's certain types of apps, where there is a disclaimer that says, "Hey, you're being tracked for these and these reasons." But it isn't always there.And then also if the car is never returned, they can go retrieve their car. It makes sense from a company perspective to know where exactly the car is. But in another sense, that's essentially an invasion of privacy. If people don't internalize the fact that they are being tracked, that's also part of a larger discussion where there's certain types of apps, where there is a disclaimer that says, "Hey, you're being tracked for these and these reasons." But it isn't always there. It's like the freemium model, or “free at a cost'' where you get the platform, but they get your delicious data.
Rushali Paratey: Yummy. What was interesting when you said that the company needs to know where the car is, right? When I was living in Santa Monica, I remember there was this scooter company. There were a couple of them. There was Lime. There was Bird. And I once was walking around these small canals in Venice and just looked into the canal and there was a Bird in the canal. Like someone threw a scooter inside the canal and my question to the owners of Bird is: did you retrieve it? Like, is MyWheels going to go and get a car that someone threw off the cliff and into the waters?
Angelica Ortiz: Yeah, I think the answer is yes. Sometimes even when I'm looking at the tracking on my phone for getting a scooter I also wonder, did someone actually throw a scooter into the water because the tracking is so terrible. It says it's in the lake. Okay, great. I can't get that, but it's actually somewhere else.
One thing that I also want to add for MyWheels in terms of retrieving it, knowing where it is. There are times where I'm driving around and I'm like, "Oh, I'm just going to check in" and then it shows exactly where I am on a map. That's also an issue, too. The other aspect that I think about as well is: the smarter cars get, the more data it tends to retain because that data is being used to provide a service of some kind.
A classic example is hooking up your phone so you can use music through the speakers. It seems so basic, right? Like I'm just going to plug in my USB or connect it through Bluetooth to be able to play music. But constantly every time I go into one of these cars, I go into the settings and there's just like this list of people who came before me and their phone. And depending upon if they clicked, "Yes, I want to merge contacts," you could technically have those people's contacts in the car...
Rushali Paratey: Oh no...
Angelica Ortiz: And if they don't delete the phone when they leave, it's just hanging out there. That's something I think about every time I rent a car with them.
Rushali Paratey: And people usually don't remember to delete this stuff. Like it's...
Angelica Ortiz: I do!
Rushali Paratey: Yeah I know you do, but I know most of the people are probably going to be in a hurry or they're going to forget to do that. Why is this designed into the experience of it? You could easily design it, such that you don't have access to others’ data.
Angelica Ortiz: Right. And it's the conflict between the car manufacturer–in this instance I'll say Renault is the one that MyWheels uses a lot. Renault essentially creates cars for the anticipation it's going to be used by one person or one family.
So multiple phones being in there is okay, because it's all in the family or all in the friends. But it's not made with car sharing in mind, and that provides different types of requirements that are needed. Those are where they're conflicting: it's used for one thing, but it was created with something else in mind.
Rushali Paratey: I think they should start to adapt what the trucking industry probably does because truckers are constantly changing. I have never driven a truck. Have you?
Angelica Ortiz: An 18 wheeler?
Rushali Paratey: Yeah, no right?
Angelica Ortiz: No, the closest I've gotten is just sitting in the driver's seat of a moving truck for two minutes while it's in park. That's about it.
Rushali Paratey: Yeah, I just feel like there'll be a better mechanism in place while manufacturing trucks because they are manufactured thinking that it's not going to be the same person driving it every day in and day out. Right? Although I've never connected my phone to a truck. So…
Angelica Ortiz: Yeah, an 18 wheeler, specifically. Because there's varieties of trucks in the ecosystem. There's the Ford trucks, "Ford Tough" trucks. And those are still manufactured as if one company is going to be using it. Let's say on a job site or something, there could be a truck that's for them, or even sometimes for job sites and construction, people bring their own trucks. And so it's still within this ecosystem that only certain types of people will be using it.
Like co-workers would be using it for a construction site, for example. But in a car sharing scenario, complete strangers are using the same car. The only way that you could tie them together is on the MyWheels side, because they know who is renting these things. Because you have to go through an approval process of, “this is the driver's license,” all that stuff. But the other people don't know who the other people are. Except when I see Joe's iPhone 2 that's all I know.
Rushali Paratey: In the Netherlands, at least I have seen people co-own a boat. Basically five of them get together, buy a boat and then you'll just book, "Okay, on Saturdays I'm going to take it." And I wonder if that's something that will happen with cars as well, purely because there will be a group of people who want to avoid giving their data, sharing their data, with let's say MyWheels or something. We are constrained by what is available right now in the Netherlands. We have MyWheels or an Uber.
Angelica Ortiz: It reminds me of vacation homes that certain people will purchase with other people.
Rushali Paratey: Yes!
Angelica Ortiz: And some of them are complete strangers. They just meet each other online. It's like, "Hey, we're going to buy this place."
Rushali Paratey: It's something to do with, like, human connection at the end of the day. Also, your data doesn't get tracked. And on top of that, there's more flexibility. You're not sharing it with the whole wide world. You're sharing it with those five people or there's a limited number of people in that circle.
Angelica Ortiz: It's essentially making something like currently with MyWheels, it's open to anybody with a MyWheels account that has accessibility to book something and that could be a very wide audience. But it would be interesting to consider if MyWheels did “MyWheels carpool” as an option.
Rushali Paratey: Yes.
Angelica Ortiz: So it's still within the MyWheels company, but instead of restricting it or not restricting it in the sense it's only going to be open to people in this group. Or they say, "Hey I tend to go into Amsterdam pretty often, so we'll share it because we know my schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Friday." Or someone else could be Tuesday or Thursday, and they know the other person that's in the car. But that's all infrastructure stuff that would have to be paved to make that happen.
Rushali Paratey: Yeah it's infrastructure, and there's reasons for companies to not build that infrastructure. There is also the need for people to want to step away and be more conscious of what data they give away to companies. So it's always this push and pull between what consumers want and need versus what can be monetized and can't. And it's going to shape the way the automotive industry basically evolves.
Angelica Ortiz: Right. Thinking about it from a car sharing perspective, it would be interesting to consider if the car is kept at a blank slate. And each time you enter in to rent that car, the car can remember the preferences based on your account or based on just your phone being in the area. And it's like, "Oh okay, this is this 'Angelica' user over here." And then when you leave the car or you end the reservation, it clears it again. So it's custom to each person.
Rushali Paratey: Decentralizing it, exactly! Only the car needs to remember who is driving it. Like, I know things can be monetized for several reasons. But if we had to break it down and look at it only through the point of view of transportation and the need of a person to go from one place to the other, putting all this infrastructure and data storage in the car, decentralizing it so that it's not connected to the rest of the world, is just making things a lot cleaner. And I also suspect that as surveillance and privacy policies evolve in the next decade or two, there will be a lot more focus on decentralization and safeguarding the privacy of everyone.
Angelica Ortiz: Right. Now we've been talking a lot about car sharing, but are there ways to, even if someone was to own a car, make that experience more private? That's another question as well, because we can consider how car companies are thinking about how to make the experience even better. So that's why it's like, "We're going to connect your house with Alexa and you can talk through your car." And then even more future-focused, "Hey, we noticed that you're going to the grocery store. Here are these gift cards." “Do you want them to know that you're going every Saturday at X amount of time?” Like, uhh.
Now let's up the stakes here and say, it knows that I'm going to my friend's house every Saturday at five, do I want the car to know I'm going to my friend's house? And further than that, maybe the car company wouldn't be malicious in that way, but could others be malicious having that information going into the hacking side of things? That's the other doomsday scenario that not having enough privacy could entail.
Rushali Paratey: It's on a spectrum. There are people like you and me who will delete our phone's data from a car. And then there is on the other end people who would rather a supermarket have information that I'm coming and have the things that I usually purchase ready. The conversation is not about whether consumers want to give their data or whether they want to hold onto it. The conversation was more about: are people aware that their data has been given away?
Angelica Ortiz: Well, it reminds me about terms and conditions. Yes, there's a lot more discussions on privacy and letting people know. But as probably we all have done at some point when you really just need to get this one thing downloaded, then we're just like, "Yes, I accept these terms of conditions." And companies are kind of getting a little sneaky with it and they're like, "It's there." If you want privacy they'll be like, "You have access to it, you just have to click 50 buttons to get to it." And that doesn't feel like a good experience to empower people to understand what's happening with their data. It's essentially…they're trying to hide it. And they're like, "Oh, you had your chance if you knew the secret password of buttons to click like a video game cheat code, right?"
Rushali Paratey: Yeah, exactly. It's a design thinking change that needs to be brought into the tech industry.
Angelica Ortiz: Yeah. Okay. So now with all of that considered, what are the takeaways that we can consider from this? We've talked about automotive in terms of car sharing versus car ownership, and how surveillance and privacy fit into that.
We've talked about how other industries are innovating the automotive space in terms of the necessary conditions that they need to do their jobs and what they're pushing the automotive industry to do. And then even governmentally, what should we take away from all this? What are some things that we can have our listeners think back on as they're reflecting on this?
Rushali Paratey: I want listeners to have questions about this topic. Like, what do you want to see 10 years from now? How do you see yourself moving from one place to another? Do you see yourself sitting in a self-driving car or do you see yourself sitting in a co-owned car? I think there is a level to which data needs to be collected anonymously to improve driving conditions for road safety and to reduce road accidents and hazards, but all of that can be done not in connection to a user.
Angelica Ortiz: Yeah. For me, what I would want the listeners to take back with them, is thinking about how there is a trend where things are going to be more connected over time and not less connected over time. There was a point where I wouldn't have even thought about the concern of privacy with connecting to a shared vehicle. That really didn't come to mind for me until I was using car sharing a lot more often to get around and do things in that way rather than have my own car. But now with this perspective, the car, in a car sharing sense, isn't safe anymore. Or more specifically, I recommend being more critical of where your data is going. It may not necessarily be just in the places that we mentioned, but is rather a part of that whole ecosystem of things that you use everyday that is connected to an external company or an app that has your data.
And then what are they doing with that data? And like you mentioned earlier, Rushali, it was a great point. Everyone may not necessarily be like, "Delete everything! I want to go off the grid as much as possible." That's one part of the spectrum, but the other part of the spectrum is I actually like having everything connected. So I want coupons. I want things ready for me because they know that I'm leaving my house at this particular time or I'm driving at a particular speed and notifying me, "Hey, this and this and that" based on the patterns and behaviors that you do. There's the two ends of the spectrum of types of people. It's just empowering people to think more critically about where is it going, how automotive fits within that larger puzzle, and how that's going to continue to evolve to be more connected. And push companies that are creating automotive services to think more critically about the types of audiences that may be using it to create different ways to use the car based on different preferences of how people want to use that data.
Okay, so I think that's about it! Thanks everybody for listening to Scrap the Manual. Be sure to check out our blog post and our show notes for more information and references of things that we've mentioned here. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and share. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Rushali Paratey: If you want to suggest topics, segment ideas, or general feedback, feel free to email us at scrapthemanual@mediamonks.com. And if you want to partner with us, feel free to reach out over there as well.
Angelica Ortiz: Until next time…
Rushali Paratey: Thank you!