I'm sorta unconvinced we'll actually see any benefit. Humans are notoriously picky about their privacy; The ability to get black-box data for insurance purposes has been around for years, but most people would rather not, for good reason, have their insurers poking around their driving habits. I expect some backlash against cars collecting this data on their driving neighbors. What if the self-driving car isn't involved in an accident, but witnesses one? Can the courts subpoena google for the two driver's locations and velocities? That will be a fantastic NYT headline: "Are Google cars spying on you?"
Look at public health data. There's a vast goldmine of data that could be collected, that could track, trace, and storm-warning diseases, but that is for legal reasons hidden behind a confidentiality barrier. I'd like it to be a simple check if any of your partners were STD positive; This is currently information that is hard to get reliably (Sure, your partner can hand you test results, but not verifiable ones; The clinic won't attest to it if you call to reference your partner's results, so you can never be certain it's not a clever photoshop). This is data that has direct, tangible impact on those around you, and in many states it is a crime to not reveal certain STDs. Still, these spread, because we're afraid of making the STD-infected social pariahs, and I can't see a world where we don't have the same problem with bad drivers.
All of this information can be derived from a dashcam, and they're ubiquitous today.
And yes, in 10 years time there will be no such notion as 'private travel'. Between your phone's GSM/CDMA, bluetooth and wifi signals and dashcams, security and traffic cameras, there will be dozens of parties who monitor every move any person makes outside of their home in urban or suburban areas (be it by car, foot or bike). With different forms of computer vision, that data is sorted and linked to other recordings of objects and there will be dozens of databases that have exact information on where everybody is, 95+% of the time.
One of my pet research projects (although I'm not making much progress in terms of actual work or publications) is on a system of tracking 'people' in a generalized form. It's basically a concept of 'strands' of information along different axises ('location', 'finance', 'internet', 'health' and a few others) which can be joined by an overarching matching algorithm infrastructure. Furthermore, each 'strand' has a 'source' and one can join datasets by deciding 'this source I know is reliable, take this as truth' or from several less trusted ones by using voting or bayesian inference. It's basically a formalization of 'doxing' - an overarching framework to work with personally identifying data from sources of varying degrees of trustworthiness.
I'm sure many people are working on something like this already, but in private and with the goal of using it against 'us' (for a broad definition of 'us'). The only way (ok, maybe not 'only' way, 'one of' the ways) to defend is to acknowledge that privacy is dead and to develop offensive capacities; much like the only last resort against tyranny is a well-armed populace.
Where in Europe? They certainly aren't here in Portugal nor in Spain, and I don't remember seeing them in Belgium, which I've visited recently.
As for the legality, I wouldn't be so sure. Owning them is certainly legal, but filming the public street indiscriminately is usually considered against the Data Protection Directive, and I don't see why would dashcams be excluded.
Across Europe. OK I guess 'ubiquitous' might be an overstatement, but I regularly see cars with dash cams in Belgium, The Netherlands, France and Germany, which is where I have driven the last few years. I can't find any Europe-wide actual sales data, but I don't see why there would be huge differences in other countries. Also, they're readily on sale in e.g. Spain, Portugal and Hungary (just 3 countries I checked). Which of course doesn't necessarily mean that they're being bought en mass, but which does give an indication.
I rarely see them, but I was told that stores do sell a few dashcam kits. I wish it was a standard practice, I couldn't care less about privacy, people are far too crazy on the roads, even on parking lots (I'd even buy 4 cams to cover all sides).
They might not be illegal here in Germany, but dash cam videos are regularly thrown out as evidence by courts. (And that's quite surprising, the bar is very high for that to happen in Germany. No fruit of the poisonous tree here.)
Sure, so what? They're still mass surveillance even when their footage is not distributed, or used in court. That's my whole point - surveillance that is kept secret is the real problem, and anyone with a few $k or less will be able to set up a vast surveillance database in a few years - very little of which is covered by laws today (yes, some countries require you to register yourself with the privacy watchdog if you hold records of people, but how would anyone check? They're mostly toothless today already, in many places)
No they're not. They've been denied as evidence a few times in court, and you can't publish images/video with recognizable people on them, but that's not a problem if all you want to do is monitor/track people.
> I'd like it to be a simple check if any of your partners were STD positive; This is currently information that is hard to get reliably (Sure, your partner can hand you test results, but not verifiable ones; The clinic won't attest to it if you call to reference your partner's results, so you can never be certain it's not a clever photoshop).
If you want verifiable results, you can get them. Get yourself tested at the same place. Accompany your partner to pick up their results. You'll strain the relationship, but you can have the proof.
Look at public health data. There's a vast goldmine of data that could be collected, that could track, trace, and storm-warning diseases, but that is for legal reasons hidden behind a confidentiality barrier. I'd like it to be a simple check if any of your partners were STD positive; This is currently information that is hard to get reliably (Sure, your partner can hand you test results, but not verifiable ones; The clinic won't attest to it if you call to reference your partner's results, so you can never be certain it's not a clever photoshop). This is data that has direct, tangible impact on those around you, and in many states it is a crime to not reveal certain STDs. Still, these spread, because we're afraid of making the STD-infected social pariahs, and I can't see a world where we don't have the same problem with bad drivers.