The Dutch intelligence service AIVD has told government officials and anyone handling sensitive material to stop treating their cars as private spaces. In a notice titled “The modern car as a possible spy,” the agency warned that modern cars carry voice-control and emergency-call microphones that an outsider could, in principle, switch on remotely, letting that person listen in on conversations the driver assumed were private.
Cameras, GPS trackers, infotainment systems, telematics modules and EV charging stations all collect data on occupants and their surroundings, often storing it on systems that cloud providers, app developers, dealers and manufacturers can reach long after a trip ends.
The AIVD is urging drivers to skip confidential conversations near the car, avoid wireless charging and connect phones through a USB data blocker rather than directly, and think twice before entering a home address into the navigation system.
The notice does not name China or any specific manufacturer. Some German military installations have already stopped using Chinese-made vehicles altogether, and Thuringia’s head of constitutional protection Stephan Kramer said in January that “the threat of espionage through Chinese electric cars is real,” pointing to the sheer volume of location, communications and driving-behavior data these vehicles collect rather than any single confirmed spying incident.
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The same day, from the other side of the North Sea, MI5 publicly named the China General Technology Research Institute as having unusually close ties to China’s Ministry of State Security, saying its purpose is “to fund academic research that directly improves MSS technical capability for espionage.” More than 100 academics based at UK universities have taken part in research the institute bankrolled, some without realizing its ties to Chinese intelligence.
Security Minister Dan Jarvis told university leaders to cut ties with the institute immediately, warning that staying involved could put academics at risk of prosecution under Britain’s 2023 National Security Act. Jarvis’s letter gives UK universities a concrete deadline to unwind their funding ties.
China’s embassy in Britain dismissed the claims as “imaginary and purely fabricated.”
