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Prashant Mishra
The fast-paced world brings with it millions of opportunities and aspirations on one hand and challenges on the other. It is not possible to separate the two as these two aspects are intertwined in every innovation and scientific intervention. When it comes to autonomous vehicles, it is no different: the advantages aside, autonomous vehicles face many legal challenges and privacy concerns. While on one hand, we see that autonomous vehicles have gained traction in the market, I am interested in looking at how its drawbacks still make it far from today’s reality.
If we look into the privacy issue, there have been cases of data leakage for organisations as reputed as Tesla even though Tesla Inc. assures millions of its electric car owners that their privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us.” The cameras it builds into vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy”. But between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system highly invasive videos and images recorded by customer’s car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees. The data leakage included private camera recordings, captured by cars, which were shared in chat rooms.
Seven of Tesla’s ex-employees also revealed that the computer program they used at work could show the location of recordings – which could potentially reveal where a Tesla owner lived. This becomes a threat to the privacy of an individual.
Though companies like Volvo are ready to take the entire responsibility while the vehicle is in autonomous mode, merely taking responsibility cannot be a solution because monetary compensation cannot compensate for all kinds of losses. As Brodsky mentioned in her paper, quoting Volvo’s CEO Håkan Samuelsson, that Volvo “will accept full responsibility whenever one of its cars is in autonomous mode.” but even this does not clearly outline to what extent and under what circumstances. In the modern era of tech and data, every gadget that is connected to any network is prone to cyber threats. Personal loss, which might be the loss of a person due to accidents or poor cybersecurity of the vehicle, can never be recovered.
Waymo CEO John Krafcik said in an interview with The Indian Express that his company’s vehicles are still encountering occasional problems at intersections. He added, “I think the things that humans have challenges with, we are challenged with as well. So sometimes unprotected lefts are super challenging for a human, sometimes they are super challenging for us.”
There is also an ongoing debate about the legality of autonomous vehicles, and legal scholar Bryant Walker Smith argues that the Geneva Convention, the 1949 multi-country agreement that promotes road safety by establishing certain common rules for automobiles and other vehicles, “does not categorically prohibit automated driving.”
However, companies should think of better alternatives rather than simply taking responsibility, for instance, designing highly secure systems that reduce the chance of any privacy leaks. The data collected from any vehicle should not be misused or shared with any third party. Only strong data policies can gain customers’ trust.
Strict policies need to be formed which clearly outline the accountability of the AVs. Though they claim to be safe and secure, they are not yet ready with the perfect solution to keep the data and information intact. Even though there have been several debates around the accountability and responsibility of AVs between customers and companies, we do not have legal policies about AVs yet laid out.
With the knowledge that there are strong chances of their data being attacked, cameras being monitored, and privacy being breached, people will continue to be hesitant about autonomous vehicles unless they have the assurance and proof that their data and privacy are safe. It is rather unfortunate that the world is not yet ready for this much-needed transfer to AVs due to a lack of infrastructure, lack of awareness, and lack of legal and traffic policies.
Legal actions are crucial to ensuring accountability and safeguarding the privacy of individuals. Companies that collect, process, and store personal data must adhere to strict privacy laws and regulations.
In terms of data and privacy leakage, the following actions should be taken: -
1. Individuals who have been harmed by data breaches or privacy abuses may launch lawsuits against the corporations in charge of maintaining AV data. Legal actions should be taken if data protection rules and laws are violated.
2. In case of a data breach harming a larger community, individuals can come together and launch lawsuits against the company responsible for the data breach. They can also consider boycotting the company which can hamper the growth of the company.
3. Local data protection authorities have the power to impose fines and penalties on companies that fail to comply with data protection regulations.
4. Individuals affected in terms of privacy breach, identity theft, and other emotional distress should be provided compensation.
5. In case the court proves that the data breach was intentional, and the motive was corporate greed, criminal charges should be brought against the companies responsible. The media should highlight such instances of data breaches and privacy violations which can result in a loss of customer trust and decreased market value.
6. The supreme bodies like courts should make standard rules and regulations that can guide the companies about handling data.
These measures are only rudimentary but will help make sure that customers are not treated merely as data and that their privacy is valued. Even though the world is not yet ready for AVs, technology is not a distant dream;eventually, we will find better solutions to the problems which will ensure that our data remains in safer hands, and we do not have to worry about privacy concerns. The world will welcome autonomous vehicles sooner than later and a new era of technology will be born. Let’s be ready to embrace and adapt to autonomous vehicles in the future.
Prashant Mishra is a second-year BTech student at Plaksha University where he is majoring in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.
