According to a blog in Motor Trader, the National Protective Security Authority, part of MI5, has contacted the UK motor trade to talk about data stored in vehicles.
The overt reason for this was said to be to "build resilience to national security threats". This is a grand sounding phrase but it is very likely that it translates into yet more intrusive surveillance of you and me.
What the spooks were interested in was the collection of data stored in vehicles during annual service checks.
In September the Mozilla Foundation reported that every new car it tested was spying on the driver. This is dogging on an industrial scale, since the data can be deeply personal, including sexual activity.
Are the spooks interested in preventing the manufacturers from obtaining this data during servicing? It seems unlikely.
A much more probable scenario is that they want to get hold of a copy of the data themselves.
Jonathan Brind