Data from TomTom Navigation Devices Used by Dutch Police to Set Speed Traps
April 28th, 2011Via: Guardian:
Dutch drivers might have wondered how it was that speed traps were always in just the right place to catch speeders. It turned out to be simple enough: if they owned a TomTom, their in-car satnav was spying on them, and the aggregated data about cars’ speed was being sold via the government to the police – who used it to set the traps.
The company, which is Europe’s largest satnav manufacturer, was forced this week into an embarrassing apology as the revelation emerged alongside its first-quarter financial earnings, which showed weak demand and let it to forecast growing sales from “service revenues” – including, it said, selling data to governments.
In a public apology (repeated in a video on YouTube), TomTom’s chief executive Harold Goddijn said the company sold the anonymous data believing it would be used to improve safety or relieve traffic bottlenecks.
“We never foresaw this kind of use and many of our clients are not happy about it,” he wrote, and promised licensing agreements would “prevent this type of use in the future.”
Normally the aggregated data would be used to tell subscribers to TomTom services how to route around traffic conditions and give improved estimates of journey time. The sale of data to the government was intended to help it understand causes of congestion and accidents.
But the police had a simpler idea for how to use the data to offset the cost of buying it, and followed that as well.
The timing of the admission comes just after a wave of concern over data collected by smartphones and passed back to the companies controlling them, such as Apple, Google and Microsoft.
It’s all SUCH a BIG surprise that those oh-so-trackable handsets are being used to keep track of people… such functions have only been predicted (read: obvious) from the earliest development.
The credulous tone of articles like these in the mainstream press is more insulting than any name-calling I’ve *ever* endured.
Can I have a huge collective “SIGH” from everybody here?