Data protection nightmare

How police could soon be screening drivers

Radio signals from the car and devices in it can be used to uniquely identify drivers and passengers.(Bild: Viktoria Tom)

A new technology from the Italian armaments and IT security company Leonardo is set to enable law enforcement agencies to create an individual "fingerprint" of drivers. The technology is now being tested for the first time in the USA, and data protectionists are alarmed. PLUS: Why cars are already a real data protection nightmare.

Whether smartphones, wearables such as true wireless earphones and smartwatches, tracking collars on our four-legged friends or books from the library: many objects in our connected world send out signals. Individually, these may say little about us, but together they create a unique digital fingerprint - a fact that law enforcement agencies now want to exploit in traffic.