Paul Lewis on EU plans to put tracking devices in new vehicles
... or is the Leko flatpack car just an intricate April Fool's joke?
Allen keys at the ready: it seems Ikea is about to launch its very own car called the Leko. Well, that's the first impression you get if you head over to the rather cryptic French website Roulez-Leko.com, which shows a car covered in a white sheet with the words "Leko – la voiture selon Ikea".
The internet is currently abuzz with talk about the Leko website, with most of the chatter focusing on the site's large clock which is currently counting down to 1 April. Surely, this is just a rather lame April Fool's viral?
However, there are some aspects of the site which suggest there could be something of interest here. The site's Flash video carries a message from the car's "designer", Christophe Grozs, who says the car will be environmentally friendly. The site also carries the official panda logo of the conservation charity WWF, which is known to work with IKEA, suggesting it must be either in on the joke, or is genuinely involved in the project. (Fast Company notes that 1-7 April is France's Sustainable Development Week.) Over at Fark.com one commenter called "TheYeti" – who admits they've been watching too much Lost – has been analysing the name "Christophe Grozs":
"Anagrams for Christophe Grozs contain the word scherzo and scherzi. Wiki: Scherzo (plural scherzi) is a piece of music or a movement, in a certain style, that forms part of a larger piece such as a symphony. The word "scherzo" means "joke" in Italian. Sometimes the word scherzando (joking) is used in musical notation to indicate that a passage should be executed in a playful manner."
It has also been noted that there is a rather handy Hungarian chess grandmaster called Peter Leko, although what this alludes to – other than game playing – I'm not too sure. My French and Swedish are both admittedly woeful, but maybe the car's name is internationalised shorthand for "L'Eko" ("Eko" being Swedish for "eco")? Or maybe it refers to Mr Eko, one of the many mysterious characters in Lost? (OK, I have to admit I've also been watching too much Lost.)
Elsewhere, some people have been scrutinising the website's HTML code for clues. At Digg a commenter called "tavallai" has spotted probably the most revealing clue of all:
It's a carshare scheme. Until they changed the HTML code and Flash filename, it referred to the movie as "covoiturage.swf" which is French for carpooling.
Indeed, the Flash filename does now read as "siteEKO.swf". Is IKEA going to launch a carpooling initiative at its French stores on 1 April? Interesting, but not exactly up there with the launch of its very own (flat-packed?) car. There's only one way to nip all this speculation in the bud and that's to put in a call to Ikea. A few hours later I receive an email from Isabelle Crémoux-Mirgalet, Ikea France's PR manager:
What I can confirm is that Ikea France has decided to support a new car system in line with its positioning: cheaper and more responsible than any other; allowing a dramatic reduction in your gas spending; built so it can adapt to the products you want to carry. But, no complementary information is supposed to be released before the launch, on 31 March. Some more days to wait.
Full marks to her skills as a PR manager, as she's ably performed the first part of her brief, namely, create a buzz. I just hope whatever is announced lives up to the hype.
• Privacy row brewing over surveillance on the road
• Box could reduce accidents, pollution and congestion
The government is backing a project to install a "communication box" in new cars to track the whereabouts of drivers anywhere in Europe, the Guardian can reveal.
Under the proposals, vehicles will emit a constant "heartbeat" revealing their location, speed and direction of travel. The EU officials behind the plan believe it will significantly reduce road accidents, congestion and carbon emissions. A consortium of manufacturers has indicated that the router device could be installed in all new cars as early as 2013.
However, privacy campaigners warned last night that a European-wide car tracking system would create a system of almost total road surveillance.
Details of the Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems (CVIS) project, a £36m EU initiative backed by car manufacturers and the telecoms industry, will be unveiled this year.
But the Guardian has been given unpublished documents detailing the proposed uses for the system. They confirm that it could have profound implications for privacy, enabling cars to be tracked to within a metre - more accurate than current satellite navigation technologies.
The European commission has asked governments to reserve radio frequency on the 5.9 Gigahertz band, essentially setting aside a universal frequency on which CVIS technology will work.
The Department for Transport said there were no current plans to make installation of the technology mandatory. However, those involved in the project describe the UK as one of the main "state backers". Transport for London has also hosted trials of the technology.
The European Data Protection Supervisor will make a formal announcement on the privacy implications of CVIS technology soon. But in a recent speech he said the technology would have "great impact on rights to privacy and data".
Paul Kompfner, who manages CVIS, said governments would have to decide on privacy safeguards. "It is time to start a debate ... so the right legal and privacy framework can be put in place before the technology reaches the market," he said.
The system allows cars to "talk" to one another and the road. A "communication box" behind the dashboard ensures that cars send out "heartbeat" messages every 500 milliseconds through mobile cellular and wireless local area networks, short-range microwave or infrared.
The messages will be picked up by other cars in the vicinity, allowing vehicles to warn each other if they are forced to break hard or swerve to avoid a hazard.
The data is also picked up by detectors at the roadside and mobile phone towers. That enables the road to communicate with cars, allowing for "intelligent" traffic lights to turn green when cars are approaching or gantries on the motorway to announce changes to speed limits.
Data will also be sent to "control centres" that manage traffic, enabling a vastly improved system to monitor and even direct vehicles.
"A traffic controller will know where all vehicles are and even where they are headed," said Kompfner. "That would result in a significant reduction in congestion and replace the need for cameras."
Although the plan is to initially introduce the technology on a voluntary basis, Kompfner conceded that for the system to work it would need widespread uptake. He envisages governments making the technology mandatory for safety reasons.Any system that tracks cars could also be used for speed enforcement or national road tolling.
Roads in the UK are already subject to the closest surveillance of any in the world. Police control a database that is fed information from automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras, and are able to deduce the journeys of as many as 10 million drivers a day. Details are stored for up to five years.
However, the government has been told that ANPR speed camera technology is "inherently limited" with "numerous shortcomings".
Advice to ministers obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act advocates upgrading to a more effective car tracking-based system, similar to CVIS technology, but warns such a system could be seen as a "spy in the cab" and "may be regarded as draconian".
Introducing a more benign technology first, the report by transport consultants argues, would "enable potential adverse public reaction to be better managed".
Simon Davies, director of the watchdog Privacy International, said: "The problem is not what the data tells the state, but what happens with interlocking information it already has. If you correlate car tracking data with mobile phone data, which can also track people, there is the potential for an almost infallible surveillance system."
A Europe-wide car tracking system may sound far-fetched, but the scientists behind the scheme say the technology required to make it happen is already part of our everyday lives.
The system uses the same connections as those in mobile telephones, Wi-Fi internet and security tags attached to clothes in shops.
A car will constantly stay in touch via all these methods of communication, stashed in a router behind the dashboard.
Crucially, vehicles beam out a "heartbeat" message, revealing their precise location, speed and direction, to all other cars within a 400m range.
The heartbeat can send out other messages which, scientists say, will save lives. So when a car is forced to brake hard, or its wheels encounter a slippery surface, that information can be supplied to other drivers in the area.
Vehicles can also communicate with the "roadside infrastructure", with beacons implanted in gantries or bridges to give and receive information. So traffic lights or intersections will be alerted when vehicles are approaching, while in return cars will be told about congestion ahead.
Scientists believe the data will be of most use for traffic controllers, who - without the use of cameras - will be able to know exactly where vehicles are on the roads and respond appropriately.