By: Talya Torres
In December of 2023, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) sent letters to nine automakers inquiring as to applications built into vehicles that owners can use to track their cars. The letters were sent to General Motors, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Stellantis, Tesla and Toyotaand asked the companies about what policies they had in place to protect domestic abuse survivors from being tracked. While there are benefits of being able to track a stolen or misplaced car, the FCC is concerned about the potential negative consequences of tracking apps. The FCC letters were sent as part of a potential attempt to broaden the scope of the Safe Connections Act to protect survivors of intimate partner violence from tracking them via their vehicles.
The Safe Connections Act was established on December 7, 2022, and requires phone companies to separate a survivors’phone line from their abuser’s shared phone plan so the abuser cannot track them. According to the Safe Connections Act:
At a survivor’s request, a mobile service provider must separate from a shared mobile service contract the survivor’s line (and the line of any individual in the survivor’s care) from the abuser’s line… Additionally, a provider must separate the line within two business days of receiving a request; allow requests to be made remotely (if feasible); meet conditions related to confidentiality of, disposal of, and other matters concerning communications about requests; and make information about the process for requests available through consumer-facing communications (e.g., websites).
Since perpetrators can track survivors using car tracking applications in the same kinds of ways they can use phone plans to track them, the FCC is attempting to expand the act to cover car tracking apps connected to vehicles. Each vehicle that has an application comes with a set of unique features that can be used when downloading the application to the owners’ phone. Owners of the Tesla Model 3, for example, can not only track their Tesla through a mobile application, but also allows the user to change heated seat conditions, change charging information, open the front trunk and enable or disable the heating and cooling in the vehicle. In 2020, a woman claimed that Tesla’s technology enabled her abusive husband to stalk her. She later named Tesla as a defendant in her lawsuit against her husband, accusing the company of negligence for continuing to provide him with access to her car. When an officer requested data from the vehicle to help with the investigation, a Tesla service manager replied saying “remote-access logs were only available within seven days of the events recorded”.
The Mercedes car company has a similar application called “Mercedes Me Connect” which allows owners to lock, unlock and remote start as well as track their Mercedes vehicles. Christine Dowdall, who fled her home in LA and filed a domestic abuse report, noticed that her husband was tracking her when she visited a male friend’s home. Dowdall’s friend received texts from her husband, and his car driving by was picked up on his front door camera. When Dowdall requested that Mercedes revoke her husband’s access to the electronic application on the vehicle, Mercedes customer service refused to do so since the initial loan and title were in the abusers name.
“No survivor of domestic violence and abuse should have to choose between giving up their car and allowing themselves to be stalked and harmed by those who can access its data and connectivity… [w]e must do everything we can to help survivors stay safe. We need to work with auto and wireless industry leaders to find solutions.” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation stated that “[t]he industry is considering how to best broaden federal or state policies and other protections to help prevent these incidents,” and that it is not acceptable that individuals are able to misuse the applications to stalk and harass people.
The FCC investigation could expand the act to include Tesla, Mercedes and other modern cars with applications that allow an abuser to see the survivor’s location. Since many car companies today have websites and accounts similar to those of phone companies, the provisions would not need many changes to apply in these circumstances. Just as phone companies have todo, vehicle companies should be able to easily separate the survivor’s vehicle from a shared vehicle contract within a reasonable amount of time. The vehicle companies should also be capable of allowing requests to be made remotely just as phone companies do since the issue has to do with applications and tracking. The issue is not with the capabilities of the car companies, but the legal standards that need to be set for the companies to do so.
The intention of the Safe Connections Act was to keep survivors safe from their abusers, and to prevent abusers from being able to continue their abuse by utilizing things that survivors cannot live without. Just as individuals cannot live without the methods of communications that the act protects; survivors should be able to use their vehicles not only to escape their abuser but to live their day-to-day lives without the fear of being tracked.
Student Bio: Talya Torres is a second-year law student at Suffolk University Law School. She is a staff writer on the Journal of High Technology Law and is a member of the Executive Board of the Child and Family Law Association (CAFLA). Talya received a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHTL or Suffolk University Law School.
