Derek Whitefield Quoted in Daily Journal

Offers Insights Into Growing Tension Between New Automotive Technologies and Driver Privacy

Press Mentions

8.23.13

Derek S. Whitefield, Los Angeles-based member of the Firm’s Litigation practice and former head of Dykema’s Automotive and Products Liability Practice Group, was extensively quoted in a recent article—“Collection of car data seen as ‘next frontier’ in privacy suits”—that appeared in a recent issue of the Daily Journal.

In the article, which focuses on the increasing conflict between the information captured by new automobile technologies—which essentially are turning the cars we drive into “computers on wheels”—and the rights of drivers and passengers to keep personal information private, Whitefield notes that a “next frontier in motor vehicle transportation” includes the increasing need to balance “the competing considerations of safety versus privacy.”

As emerging new technologies are more broadly implemented—enabling vehicles to know and to communicate with one another such factors as driver speed and location—Whitefield indicates the possibility of privacy-related litigation if customers are not provided information about how their data is collected and used.

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