Government regulation looms for manufacturers and service providers of smart devices like cars, sharebikes and air tags unless they strengthen safety features and consumer education to prevent technology-facilitated violence.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant issued a new safety advisory on Monday warning about the increasingly use of smart cars as a means of domestic and family violence, renewing calls for manufactuers to embed safety by design principles.
The advisory outlines the Commissioner’s expectations for companies, recommending safer default settings, reduced data collection and simplified account transfer processes for victim-survivors.
Ms Inman Grant said the advice would “put the burden back onto… manufacturers themselves to assess the risks of products”, but warned that the rapid rise of tech-facilitated abuse could make new legislation inevitable.
“We may need to see a second seatbelt moment from car manufacturers now that these vehicles are becoming more like computers,” Ms Inman Grant told reporters on Monday morning.
The eSafety Commission has seen around 400 calls for help and 20,000 requests for information about smart car abuse in the past 12 months, with abusers using remote vehicle access to track victims, lock car doors and even cut the engine.
Social Services minister Tanya Plibersek said the swift uptake of smart devices had left the government in a reactive stance, warning “countless people” could already have been harmed by the time a device was understood to be at risk of misuse.
“It is very important that companies themselves integrate safety features into the design of these products,” she said.
Technology-facilitated abuse had become like “science fiction”, Ms Plibersek warned, with abusers locking victims out of smart fridges, and using everything from cat feeders with cameras and food delivery services to stalk and intimidate.
“It is the unintended use of these devices for surveillance that is particularly insidious and harmful, so companies need to consider – if they’re selling a tracking device for example – you need to make it obvious you are being tracked, and how to switch it off in a way that’s safe for the user”, she said.
Ms Inman Grant said she would meet with Australia’s largest car seller Toyota this week as part of efforts to improve Safety by Design standards for smart cars, including a possible ‘ghost mode’ and the ability to end shared user accounts in situations of confirmed abuse.
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