Recent advances in wireless technologies have led to the development of intelligent, in-vehicle safety applications designed
to share information about the actions of nearby vehicles, potential road hazards, and ultimately predict dangerous scenarios
or imminent collisions. These vehicle safety communication (VSC) technologies rely on the creation of autonomous, self-organizing,
wireless communication networks connecting vehicles with roadside infrastructure and with each other. As the technical standards
and communication protocols for VSC technologies are still being developed, certain ethical implications of these new information
technologies emerge: Coupled with the predicted safety benefits of VSC applications is a potential rise in the ability to
surveil a driver engaging in her everyday activities on the public roads. This paper will explore how the introduction of
VSC technologies might disrupt the “contextual integrity” of personal information flows in the context of highway travel and
threaten one’s “privacy in public.” Since VSC technologies and their related protocols and standards are still in the developmental
stage, the paper will conclude by revealing how close attention to the ethical implications of the remaining design decisions
can inform and guide designers of VSC technologies to create innovate safety applications that increase public safety, but
without compromising the value of one’s privacy in public.
Keywords contextual integrity - privacy - surveillance - value sensitive design - vehicle safety communication technology
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation PORTIA Grant No. CNS-0331542, and could not have been completed
without the valuable guidance of Prof. Helen Nissenbaum (New York University) and Prof. Dan Boneh (Stanford University). I
am grateful to many other colleagues who generously contributed to this work with excellent comments and suggestions, including
Emily Clark and Steve Tengler at the VSCC, and Sam Howard-Spink, Joseph Reagle and Tim Weber at New York University. Drafts
were further sharpened through opportunities to present at colloquia and conferences sponsored by New York University’s Department
of Culture & Communication, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Philosophy and Technology,
and Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry.