Thanks for reading and apologies for the confusion. I thought I’d offered up the conclusion by implying that you shouldn’t buy, operate, or ride in any car if you’re keen on fighting for your privacy, but I can see how that may have been missed or is useful to expand upon.

So, to your question: my conclusion (in keeping with the theme of the article) is that you don’t have control over your privacy — or more accurately, how much control you have is dictated by the broader cost:benefit of how much is to be taken. The examples provided illustrate that lack of control, and the notion of “fighting” is naive if you don’t go all the way, as fighting against self-driving cars over privacy concerns will protect virtually none of your privacy. What’s taking your privacy is not the impending self-driving car: it’s your current car, your cellphone, your computer, your credit card, your bank, your local authorities, your federal government, etc. Fighting means opposing all of that and all that is to come, which likely means living and functioning in a world where none of that exists, at which point none of the vested parties (which includes society at large) would be interested in the cost:benefit of trying to take your privacy. So in a way, you won… but in another, more accurate way, you forfeited.

If you found that perspective on privacy unappealing, this will either displease you further or help you understand why I don’t think “fighting” for privacy is a productive approach, and fighting for transparency is the real battle:

https://medium.com/@mitchturck/privacy-is-the-enemy-of-progress-b8a813a27c1e