The government has been spying on millions of electric vehicle drivers through their mobile phones as part of a ‘bizarre nanny state’ plan, a new report has revealed.
The Department for Transport commissioned mobile network operator 02 to spy on 25 million devices as part of a £600,000, two-year study intended to produce a ‘comprehensive evaluation and understanding of the uptake and usage of electric vehicles’.
At the request of the DfT, 02 tracked people’s mobile phone data and tracked car journeys, with EV users identified by their use of EV-related apps.
It also tracked those people’s physical movements and sent ‘anonymised and aggregated’ data before it was received by the department.
The report by the DfT this week revealed details of the project.
The work was conducted by the department under the previous Conservative government and ended before Labour won the 2024 general election, The Telegraph reported.
The report states that it set out to discover where EVs are kept overnight and how spread out ownership is across the country, trip frequency, locations and distances travelled.
The mass surveillance project ended after the DfT concluded that ‘mobile data cannot directly be used to provide information around charging behaviour or travel time.’
The government has been spying on millions of electric vehicle drivers through their mobile phones
The Department for Transport commissioned mobile network operator 02 to spy on 25 million devices as part of a £600,000 two-year study
Around the same time, the department and the Treasury were exploring ways of introducing new taxes on EVs.
O2 searched through the web browsing history of its own customers, and those of other networks that ‘piggyback’ on its infrastructure, to identify EV owners.
These other networks included Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile, GiffGaff and Virgin Mobile.
It is not known whether these operators were informed of the mass surveillance exercise, which O2 offers as a paid service under the brand name O2 Motion.
The report raises strong questions about the level of tracking that firms are making of phone users, and if the scope of how data is being used by mobile phone providers.
A DfT spokesperson told The Daily Mail: ‘This was a time-limited project using fully anonymised and aggregated data, with no risk of being linked to any individual’s personal information or location.’