“Eco-Surveillance” Risks Personal Privacy and Climate Action

The “environmental movement” is a deeply splintered, widely stretched label for an ever-increasing range of issues. This is through little fault of many of its proponents, but rather is due to the intersectional nature of environmental issues, as well as our collective culture largely lacking shared, critical thought on the definition of “nature” and “our” relationship to it; even if we are part of it every moment of our lives. That fragmentation and general lack of awareness will soon leave consumers susceptible to increased data security and privacy risks, as well as associated anti-environmentalism.

What cannot be denied at present is that “the environment,” however one may define it, is under direct assault by an increasingly privacy-averse and surveillance-bolstering American federal government which has taken up a never-before-seen, explicit antagonism toward our shared biosphere. With direct regard to the natural world, excessive deregulation of defensive pillars of the government, including the gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at home and full stop of already sub-minimal protection of life abroad are topics of wide and ongoing coverage. What remains as more of a slowly awakening whisper is the private industry’s response to the already economically harmful impacts of the ongoing climate and biodiversity crises.

I have dedicated my professional career to the intersection of policy, industry, and the environment ever since I filled out my undergraduate university application. I have worked for legacy and Big Tech clients from New York to Silicon Valley, and provided insights to US government officials at varying levels, all in the pursuit of finding tactical actions and partnerships to combat the ongoing climate crisis. Much of my work has been in the automotive industry, having started in innovation and foresight for an American automaker under which I led development of grid technology built to interoperate with electric vehicles (EVs). I currently work as a media strategist for a foreign automaker, especially drawing on my knowledge of EVs. Through these experiences, much of my professional journey thus far has been in advising major corporate clients on the environmental topics of intelligent grids and EVs. It is through these experiences that I have seen climate-beneficial technologies proliferate, but also the privacy threat that is beginning to emerge.

The intersection between public and private stakeholders in the environmental space has remained as a core focus of my career for two key reasons. First, ongoing American (and global) political polarization has made it such that for sustained environmental progress and momentum we must be reliant on resources beyond policy in order to avoid erratic regulatory implementation (as we are currently seeing from this administration). Second, much of the technology required for realistically effective climate action outpaces the understanding and capability of technologically stunted government and policy makers.

For these exact reasons, large-scale climate action in the years to come will be driven more by industrial actors than governing officials. This is not to discount the work of environmental coalitions, NGOs, grassroots efforts, etc., which are often more aligned with scientific and social realities — but this piece is meant to focus on the ‘policy versus industry’ dynamic of the situation. Those same individuals, however, have a role to play here yet: as consumers.

Even in the face of inflation and economic uncertainty, 80% of consumers are willing to pay a premium for “sustainable” offerings, with “almost nine-in-ten (85%) say[ing] they are experiencing the disruptive impacts of climate change in their lives” according to a 2024 PwC survey. This trend is not going unnoticed by private stakeholders as we see the successful market establishment of “preventative” climate solutions such as renewable energy technologies as well as “climate adaptive” tech, such as smarter air conditioning and purification devices, which pose incredible opportunities to match consumer—and at times environmental—needs.

As a foresight specialist, I advise people to begin to consider the sub-markets of data and digital intelligence that are likely to follow these and many other technologies’ continued rollout as climate-driven crises progress. “Eco-surveillance,” as I will refer to it, is the concept of environmentally-friendly and climate mitigative or adaptive technologies being used as a guise for further informational and digital identity intrusion on an individual; essentially, a greenwashed and health-washed surveillance apparatus meant to divide and confuse environmental justice efforts in a more technologically-oriented path akin to “planet over people” eco-fascism.

To provide practical examples, I’ll begin with a branch of technology I deeply believe in and have personally worked to develop and proliferate: vehicle-to-anything (V2X) tech. V2X is the encompassing label for EV energy interoperability, including functions such as vehicle-to-home (V2H), vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), and vehicle-to-grid (V2G). The basic function of this technology is to allow for a vehicle’s battery to receive and transmit the energy it stores in any direction, providing greater energy autonomy to the user. The devastating run across the Southeastern US of Hurricane Helene in September of 2024 was the first major instance in which many people became aware of this technology, as EV-owning neighbors kept their lights on by running their homes off of vehicle batteries during the extreme weather emergency. Outside of a crisis, this technology also saves its users money as they are able to resell unneeded energy back to the grid during peak hours and recharge when energy costs decrease later in the day. V2X can also ease emissions when a vehicle’s battery stores locally-generated energy for use and cuts down on the need for energy transmission from a further away source. This function tends to be paired with increasingly popular and proliferating home microgrids, which can run off of rooftop solar, a home battery, and an interoperable EV to help homeowners not only cut back on their monthly energy costs, but potentially even be paid to generate renewable energy that then gets shared with their neighbors while never having to pay to refuel their vehicle or light their home again.

This technology offers massive benefit, and is a central solution to exploding energy demand and the need to cull emissions. No solution comes without cost or risk, however, and the risk for eco-surveillance in such an interoperable system is extensive. At the beginning of this year, I wrote about the emergence of energy autonomy from interoperable technologies at CES, and one I was particularly excited about was an automated breaker box software from Savant that enables energy allocation from a smartphone app. It’s a system that will allow for optimized energy use and monitoring that I can’t help but get behind thanks to potential efficiencies and savings, but those like me who have had to professionally grapple with cybersecurity will see the immediate cause for concern: Having every intelligent electronic device and vehicle in your home connected through a central energy command center could provide a digital foothold to your full digital ecosystem. It may sound paranoid, but I’ve heard stories of hackers making their way through corporate cybersecurity through means as simple as IoT fish tank thermometers. The average home lacks that level of protection, while being increasingly filled with always-on voice assistants and personal cameras; not to mention one’s collection of digital footprints, including financial. Whether a hacker or a private industry data scraper, there’s a lot to learn from what devices you have and what information is running through them.

Of course, the call inside a person’s house could very well also come from their own telecommunications provider. Hackers aren’t the only actors leaving people uncomfortable in today’s digital ecosystem as consumers continue to grapple with what level of surveillance capitalism best suits them in a time of predictive modeling, the ever-present yet presently ambiguous “AI,” and precision advertising. Now, it should be noted that certain levels of personalization in consumptive ecosystems have become not just desired but standard, and there are levels of personal data that people feel comfortable having captured — I would hate to have to reset my topical interests in my newsfeed every morning. But as we continue down a path of increased extreme weather and environmental threats to our health and wellbeing, adaptive technologies will be rapidly deployed with protective narratives as consumers grapple with sudden and newfound personal health fears; all while such devices will increase the capacity for outside actors to collect our health data.

Another example: Almost half of the US is currently exposed to unhealthy air quality as the current EPA is set to rollback air quality protections that would save hundreds of thousands of lives. I grew up in Pittsburgh and experienced the New York wildfire smoke when our city was deemed “at that point, […] the worst air quality in the world.” Air pollution has always been a conscious threat to my health, and as climate change increases instances of potentially fatal air quality drops, air filters have already become far more commonplace. Many scoffed at the Dyson air purifying headphones when they were first released, but as I stood across from an orange lit, smokey Chrysler building I remember having conversations about such tech gadgets growing in demand as instances like this year’s LA fires and their lasting health impacts continue to grow in consistency. But even as that need arises, we should be asking ourselves what level of health information these gadgets are gathering.

The Apple Watch is well-known for its impressive health data collection, and Apple itself remains respected for its privacy practices, but emerging tech like a wearable air purifier likely won’t come first from someone as secure as Silicon Valley’s most walled garden, and we have to remain vigilant even in times of sudden, adaptive crisis to try our best to avoid overly-compromising our preferably protected information. Wearables are already posing a greater threat to personal privacy, as smartwatches are planned to be used to connect what was thought to be private health data with centralized NIH records in the present administration’s controversial push to discover a cause and cure for autism. The push has already received mass media attention following an outcry from disability advocates, and reference to similarities of past fascist regimes targeting the disabled. Disempowered communities with fewer options for adaptation are more likely to be funneled into more intensive compromises, whether in quality of adaptation or personal autonomy. Especially as environmental health threats tend to impact communities of color as a more significant qualifier than even socioeconomic level, we must consider the impact of adaptive technologies befalling these communities who are often less equipped to fend off threats to health privacy from both private and governmental actors.

Given the breadth of the impact of environmental issues, the list of applicable technologies is extensive and these are only two examples of where privacy and security threats can become greenwashed and adaptive climate treatment can harbor institutional threat. As with most environmental issues, there is no one clear answer to move forward, but there are two primary reasons I call the threats of eco-surveillance to attention:

1. To create shared issue recognition of the potential scapegoating of environmental threats as a means to undercut consumer privacy and security protections, and
2. To push both tech and environmental stakeholders to mitigate privacy risks in climate solutions — so that we may avoid direct offenses and any associations between environmentalism and over surveillance which could inhibit climate action in a time of crucial environmental need.

As such an existential threat continues to threaten all life on our planet, it will continue to be important that we strike a balance between an effective regulatory landscape and safe tech deployments so that the technology necessary to solve these problems can properly proliferate.