The General Intelligence and Security Service has told officials and company staff who handle sensitive material not to treat a connected car as a private room.
In a notice and a three-page explainer published on Wednesday, The modern car as a possible spy, the AIVD says today’s vehicles collect data on occupants, on the car itself and on people and objects nearby.
Those streams sit on systems that are online.
State actors, it says, can ask manufacturers and other firms for the data or break in and take it.
Microphones fitted for voice control and emergency calls can, in technical terms, be switched on from outside the vehicle.
The service’s public advice is therefore not to hold confidential conversations in or near the car.
The warning is aimed first at ministers, civil servants, executives and anyone else whose movements or remarks would interest a foreign service.
The same systems, the AIVD notes, record everyone; but some passengers are extra worth the effort.
Practical steps listed with the explainer include skipping wireless charging, not pairing a phone over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, using a USB data blocker when a cable is unavoidable, and leaving a car that has an outward-facing camera away from a sensitive site.
None of that, the service says, covers every case.
The occupant usually has no real grip on what is stored or sent, because the collection is automatic.
Allied services have already told officials that a new car is a microphone with wheels; some military sites in Germany bar Chinese marques for that reason.
The AIVD did not name a country or a brand.
COMMENT: Total control has never been so cheap, writes Carl Deconinckhttps://t.co/C6Ny6aMB91
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) September 29, 2026
