In China, your car could be talking to the government

Global automakers are feeding real-time location information and dozens of other data points from electric vehicles to Chinese government monitoring centers, potentially adding to China's rich kit of surveillance tools as President Xi Jinping steps up the use of technology to track Chinese citizens.

Generally, it happens without car owners' knowledge, The Associated Press found.

More than 200 automakers selling electric vehicles in China including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Mitsubishi and U.S.-listed start-up NIO send at least 61 data points to government-backed monitoring platforms, under rules published in 2016.

Automakers say they are merely complying with local laws, which apply only to alternative energy vehicles. Chinese officials say the data is used for analytics to improve public safety, facilitate industrial development and infrastructure planning, and to prevent fraud in subsidy programmes.

But critics say the information collected exceeds those goals and could be used to undermine foreign carmakers' competitive position, or for surveillance. Under Xi's leadership, China has unleashed a war on dissent, marshalling big data and artificial intelligence to create a more perfect kind of policing that can quickly neutralize perceived threats to the stability of the ruling Communist Party.

There is also concern about the precedent these rules set for sharing data from next-generation connected cars, which may soon transmit even more personal information.

"You're learning a lot about people's day-to-day activities and that becomes part of what I call ubiquitous surveillance," said Michael Chertoff, who was secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush and wrote a book called "Exploding Data."
"Then we offer the incentives. Then they want to give us the data because it's part of their profit."