One of the areas where the potential and scope of data mining and behavioral manipulation can be seen most clearly is auto insurance. The business of these companies is intimately related to risk calculation—the greater the risk, the greater the amount of money potentially involved in an accident—which can be dealt with in real time through telematics (telecommunications and computing applied to the control of remote objects). With a constant flow of data from the car, today’s technology would allow insurers to directly monitor and influence the driving behavior of their policyholders:

Now the insurance company can set specific parameters for driving behavior. These can include anything from fastening the seat belt to rate of speed, idling times, braking and cornering, aggressive acceleration, harsh braking, excessive hours on the road, driving out of state, and entering a restricted area. These parameters are translated into algorithms that continuously monitor, evaluate, and rank the driver, calculations that translate into real-time rate adjustment.¹

Once this data has been processed, an insurer could impose punishments in real time, such as increases in policy rates, curfews on the vehicle, engine shutdown, or even incentives such as discounts or points for good behavior. This extreme risk minimization through “data-certainty” can only lead to a behavioral determinism in which the agency of the individual is radically reduced to limits imposed by the economic interests of corporations. A loop that closes in dangerously on human self-determination.

---

1. Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, 215 ↩︎