Private travel is not so private

Last week the California Department of Motor Vehicles held a hearing about rules for testing and operating driverless vehicles that are expected to be part of our Jetson's future. Oddly, much of the hearing was taken up with a discussion of privacy issues. There are worries "they" will know all about your movements.
That's a reasonable concern in our ever-less-private world.
But it turns out that's going on now. One in five new cars sold this year can disseminate information about where you're driving and how fast. It can even report the number of passengers in the vehicle and what's on the radio. Are they also capturing your phone calls? What restaurants you frequent? Whether you made a secret stop on the way home you don't want your spouse to know about?
You may own the car but the information you and your car are generating is claimed as the exclusive property of the car manufacturer. Our cars are becoming sophisticated data transmitters.
It's one thing to equip vehicles with "black boxes" that can be tapped for information about the moments before an accident. It is another matter for some company to constantly collect driving information without our knowledge and certainly without our consent.
A bill before the California Senate would allow consumers to see what data their car emits and to decide what, if any, information they want to share and with whom. Current law prohibits insurers from using data other than mileage to set rates and that protection is part of the bill offered by Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel.
The legislation, SB 994, pits auto manufactures against auto insurers. Fine, let them fight as long as the outcome is that consumers control the information generated by vehicles they bought and paid for.