A few Washington State residents took Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, Honda, and Toyota to court. They accused the automakers in five separate cases of violating their privacy rights, which the Washington Privacy Act (WPA) codifies and guarantees. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit bundled them up and said that the plaintiffs were wrong in assessing how the WPA actually works. Here's why that's bad news for those who are invested in not having their information spread around.
Right as I was looking over the details of these cases, a moment from the TV shop "The Sopranos" popped into my mind. De facto New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano buys a 2003 Cadillac Escalade ESV and shows it to an acquaintance. After pointing out some of the cool features the full-size SUV had, the protagonist says that he immediately disabled the built-in global positioning system (GPS) because he didn't want to be tracked down by "the feds."
In the real world, most of us aren't involved in shady stuff or members of the Cosa Nostra. But that doesn't mean we don't care about privacy. If we didn't, then we would have been fine with mass surveillance, snitching on neighbors to law enforcement, digital cash, social credit, and who knows what other Orwellian measures.
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