There is an “invasive gathering of data” in vehicles, Rep. Neal Dunn (R-FL) explained during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday, laying out the reasons he is pushing the REPAIR Act (Right to Equitable and Professional Auto Industry Repair Act), which would ensure that vehicle owners have access to their own data.
Dunn explained that vehicles collect data, much of which is hoarded by the automaker, sometimes making it nearly impossible for car owners to take their vehicles to cheaper, third-party repair shops for certain fixes. The REPAIR Act would essentially end that monopoly on the data.
“Can you tell us…the kind of data that the vehicles collect?” host and Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle asked. “I don’t think people fully understand this, right? Anybody that’s out there driving right now is probably not even aware of just the level of scientific data that each one of these vehicles — they have big time computers in them. Tell us the kind of data that these vehicles collect and why it’s important that anybody have access to it.”
“It’s absolutely critical for repair purposes to know what’s broken,” Dunn said. “And, and you see them plug these electric, electronic monitoring things, usually … under the dashboard. And go, ‘Okay, this is what’s wrong with your car. That’s why it’s making that noise, or it’s losing power or whatever.’ And they immediately know how to fix it, and the manufacturers are hoarding access to that, you know, those plug-in instruments, if you will — the information.”
“And, by the way, you know, the third party repair shops also pay the OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturer] for the equipment that monitors that stuff. There’s a little more — there’s another little sort of secret that nobody likes to talk about here,” the congressman said. “Your car is keeping data on you that your OEM is getting by Bluetooth or WiFi, and they’re selling it to third party — third parties of all types,” he said.
“So where you’re going, where you are — do you think it’s an accident that they know when you’re going by McDonald’s,” he said, noting that much of this information gets sold to China.
“Your data gets sold to anybody who wants to put the money down. And so your location — and I have looked at this data that they collect. It is incredibly detailed. They know whether you’re walking, driving, driving too fast,” he said. “Your insurance companies can buy this information too, and things like that, but it’s an incredibly invasive gathering of data, and they make billions of dollars selling that data every year.”
“I’m the vice chair of energy and commerce, and so on the commerce side, we’re trying to address a — get a good privacy bill together so that people own their own data and they have to opt in in order to have that data be available to third parties to sell,” the congressman continued, explaining how he is also tackling the privacy issue. “And I think that’s a pretty basic American right.”
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Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
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