U.S. Customs and Border Protection purchased technology that vacuums up reams of personal information stored inside cars illustrating the serious risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone.
The push to make our cars extensions of our phones makes them tremendously enticing targets for generously funded police agencies with insatiable appetites for surveillance data. A “vehicle forensics kit”, manufactured by American company Berla, can reveal where you’ve driven, what doors you opened, and who your friends are.
Civil liberties watchdogs said the CBP contract raises concerns that these sorts of extraction tools will be used more broadly to circumvent constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. “The scale at which CBP can leverage a contract like this one is staggering,” said Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
Read the article at The Intercept.
