Jul 09, 2024 10:46:00

Chinese self-driving cars have driven 2.9 million km in the US to collect geographic data

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S5A-0043

Fortune magazine found that Chinese-made self-driving cars have driven 1.8 million miles (about 2.9 million km) in California alone since 2017. These cars collect geographical data about their surroundings and use it to train the self-driving system, but Fortune points out that 'there are privacy issues and the US government has not fully scrutinized this data collection.'

Chinese self-driving cars have quietly traveled 1.8 million miles on US roads, collecting detailed data with cameras and lasers | Fortune
https://fortune.com/2024/07/08/chinese-self-driving-cars-us-roads-data-collection-surveillance-national-security-concerns-investigation/

California has established a system for training self-driving cars within the state, and has authorized 35 companies, including US-based companies Waymo and Zoox, to conduct test runs. Of the 35 companies, seven are based in China.

The United States is known for aggressively pursuing an anti-China strategy, including a nationwide

ban on the Chinese social media app TikTok, but Fortune points out that intelligence gathering by self-driving cars has been 'surprisingly unscrutinized by the government.' Self-driving cars traveling around the state are said to be taking pictures of their surroundings and creating maps with an accuracy of within 2 centimeters, and Fortune points out that 'this information could be used for anything, from mass surveillance to planning war.'

by City of Surprise, Arizona

In addition, in the past, Google has been known to collect personal information over many years by using Wi-Fi in cars to create Street View in more than 30 countries. Fortune noted that, 'without monitoring, it cannot be ruled out that such data collection is happening again.'

But despite the importance of the data, state and federal agencies overseeing self-driving car testing admit they don't monitor exactly what data China is collecting, and have no process for doing so, nor do they have any rules or policies in place for monitoring Chinese-made self-driving cars and those in the program operated by U.S. or European companies.

'There is no evidence that Chinese companies testing self-driving cars are illegally collecting data, or that the data they collect is being used by the Chinese government, but even if they were, it's unlikely that US authorities would notice, given surprisingly lax oversight,' the security expert said.