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We’re being conditioned to accept constant monitoring as normal, and this latest move only confirms it.
As of July 7, every new passenger car and van sold in the European Union must include a driver-monitoring camera under the bloc’s General Safety Regulation.
Known as the Advanced Driver Distraction Warning system, it uses an infrared camera to track your eyes and head movements, warning you if it determines you’ve looked away from the road for longer than the permitted time.
Brussels says it’s about saving lives as part of its Vision Zero initiative to eliminate traffic deaths. Maybe it will. But it’s also another example of governments normalizing constant surveillance in the name of public safety.
Officials insist the system won’t include facial recognition or biometric identification and is designed as a “closed loop,” meaning the camera data is supposed to remain inside the vehicle and not be transmitted to any third party.
The problem is that we’ve heard promises like this before.
Automakers have already been caught sharing driver behavior with data brokers, and Tesla employees were previously found accessing private vehicle camera footage.
And once people get used to cameras monitoring them while they’re inside their own cars, it will be easy to mandate additional tracking features. But maybe that’s been the plan all along.
This isn’t only happening in Europe, either. Similar technology is expected to be mandated in the U.S. by 2027, complete with a feature that can disable your vehicle if it determines you’re not fit to sit behind the wheel, all under the guise of “impaired driver detection.”
What it all seems to boil down to is that the surveillance infrastructure is rapidly expanding, and if allowed to continue, it’s only a matter of time before our cars, homes, and offices are infiltrated by it.