Lenders deploy telematics that remotely disable cars when payments lapse

Evidence

Varian’s blithe statement that “it’s a lot easier” to instruct a vehicular monitoring system to shut off a car when a payment is late is not hyperbole. For example, Spireon, which describes itself as “the largest aftermarket vehicle telematics company” and specializes in tracking and monitoring vehicles and drivers for a variety of customers such as lenders, insurers, and fleet owners, offers a system akin to Varian’s ideal. Its “LoanPlus Collateral Management System” pushes alerts to drivers when they have fallen behind in their payments, remotely disables the vehicle when delinquency exceeds a predetermined period, and locates the vehicle for the repo man to recover. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 670

Categorization

• XREF: The reader’s thesis ‘small acts of decorum toward corpses matter more than practical logic’ relates to how technical capability shapes treatment of debtors; also builds on Milgrom’s institutional analysis — surveillance substitutes for trust-based credit.
• SEED: This is the concrete mechanism behind ‘behavioral surplus as new capitalism’: a repossession system with no human confrontation. Could fuel an essay on how the remote kill-switch replaces the repo man as a social actor.