Your chip­per TV friend Flo, oth­er­wise known as Pro­gres­sive Insur­ance’s ubiq­ui­tous shill, wants you to be excit­ed – very excit­ed. As you’ve prob­a­bly learned from her effer­ves­cent com­mer­cials, she and her Big Broth­ers in the insur­ance biz want you to see their new track­ing devices for your car not as a pri­va­cy-destroy­ing step to jus­ti­fy rais­ing your gov­ern­ment-man­dat­ed car insur­ance pre­mi­ums. Instead, they want you to see the giz­mos, which record your vehi­cle’s every move, as a great inno­va­tion to get you pre­mi­um dis­counts for safe driving.

Rather than charge you higher premiums after you incur costs, the companies can use this technology to preemptively punish you beforehand, à la Department of Pre-Crime.

Yet, despite the hap­py TV ads, ques­tions are nonethe­less swirling around this so-called ​“telem­at­ics-based insur­ance” – ques­tions that Flo doesn’t want you to ask, because the track­ing sys­tem is so fright­en­ing­ly inva­sive and arbitrary.

To appre­ci­ate that dis­turb­ing real­i­ty, con­sid­er how the sys­tem oper­ates. From an inter­view with a Pro­gres­sive man­ag­er, FoxNews​.com reports that the track­ing tech­nol­o­gy ​“works on algo­rithms that use your dri­ving style to pre­dict how like­ly you are to have an acci­dent and how expen­sive it will be if it hap­pens.” Among the myr­i­ad data points that could be col­lect­ed are brak­ing fre­quen­cies and com­mut­ing routes.

This may seem innocu­ous, but the poten­tial use of such data makes the film ​“Minor­i­ty Report” seem less like fan­ta­sy than spot-on prophe­cy. In that flick, humans have devel­oped tech­nol­o­gy to fight ​“pre-crime” – that is, to stop crimes before they occur and pun­ish peo­ple for alleged­ly prepar­ing to com­mit said crimes.

​“Telem­at­ics-based insur­ance” could eas­i­ly become the insur­ance-indus­try real­iza­tion of that tech­nol­o­gy. It could help insur­ers charge you high­er rates for embrac­ing dri­ving styles and geo­graph­ic routes that sup­pos­ed­ly mean you are about to incur col­li­sion costs, even if you haven’t actu­al­ly incurred said costs – and even if you nev­er will incur said costs in the future. Put anoth­er way, rather than charge you high­er pre­mi­ums after you incur costs, the com­pa­nies can use this tech­nol­o­gy to pre­emp­tive­ly pun­ish you before­hand, à la Depart­ment of Pre-Crime.

What’s wrong with such a sys­tem? The assump­tions baked into the algo­rithms, that’s what. Yes, actu­ar­i­al­ly speak­ing, your par­tic­u­lar brak­ing method may sug­gest you are more like­ly to crash at some point. But cit­ing gen­er­al­ized odds to assume that you in par­tic­u­lar will def­i­nite­ly crash in the future – and to then act on that assump­tion by charg­ing you high­er pre­mi­ums in the present – would be both illog­i­cal and preda­to­ry, forc­ing you to pay for acci­dents that haven’t occurred.

Of course, Flo insists the sys­tem today only exists to give cus­tomers pre­mi­um dis­counts for ​“good” dri­ving. How­ev­er, if and when the devices become a pre­req­ui­site for insur­ance – which many experts pre­dict will hap­pen – we would like­ly see a sys­tem in which the stan­dard pre­mi­um is inflat­ed, and the dis­counts for ​“good” dri­ving only slight­ly reduce premiums.

What can be done about this? Fox reports that some states ​“cur­rent­ly have spe­cif­ic man­dates that pre­vent insur­ance com­pa­nies from requir­ing” the track­ing devices. That’s a good step, but the reg­u­la­tion is easy for the indus­try to get around with puni­tive pric­ing schemes for those who do not put the devices in their vehicles.

No, the only real pro­tec­tion is for states to ban tar­get­ed pre­mi­um hikes against dri­vers who haven’t increased pay­out costs for their insurer.

Insur­ance exec­u­tives will no doubt say that’s an unac­cept­able gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion into the ​“free mar­ket.” But, then, so too is the gov­ern­ment require­ment that all dri­vers buy car insur­ance. And if states are going to force peo­ple to be the insur­ance industry’s cus­tomers – a man­date that is a finan­cial boon to insur­ers – then in exchange, it’s fair to require those com­pa­nies to adhere to some basic con­sumer-pro­tec­tion regulations.

With­out such rules, Flo or anoth­er one of her Big Broth­ers will prob­a­bly soon be in your car – whether you like it or not.