This well-written paper focuses on the potential privacy issues related to vehicle safety communication (VSC) technologies, and the ethical issues springing from these technologies.

VSC technologies would allow vehicles (for example, cars) to transmit to and receive signals from other vehicles and road infrastructure, up to a distance of one kilometer. The data, transmitted ten times per second, would contain information about the vehicle’s location, speed, and identification; the location of traffic lights; and so on. These signals could be received by any other vehicle within the signal range and road infrastructure. Further imagine that all VSC message activity is collected, so that it is possible to trace your travel patterns (with detailed time stamps), your driving behavior, and so on.

The author poses various theoretical questions about privacy and surveillance threats in the framework of contextual integrity, and provides suggestions for the design of VSC systems. The paper tends toward the theoretical, but it is an easy read. People interested in the privacy of electronic data, and, obviously, in the design of VSC technologies, would really benefit from the author’s views.