More and more, insurance companies are using what could be considered Big Brother tactics to keep track of their customers.

In the last few weeks, Boston-based Liberty Mutual and American Family Insurance began offering discounts in a number of states (Massachusetts is not yet among them) to clients who agree to use wireless smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in their homes and share that information with the company.

The belief among the insurance companies is that they can thus monitor if a homeowner’s detectors are working properly, and if the homeowner performs proper maintenance on the monitors.

Likewise, a growing number of companies now offer car insurance discounts to drivers willing to install data-transmitting monitors that track the number of miles drivers cover, when and how fast they drive, and how often they step on the brakes. All of which supposedly show how good, or poor, a driver is and how likely they are to get into accidents.

Of course, and not surprisingly, many of these insurance companies now penalize drivers whose data show they speed, drive at night or brake more often, which supposedly ?demonstrate they are higher-risk drivers. But does it?

Insurance companies have long used drivers’ credit scores as part of their rating of how good a driver is. I defy anyone to definitively show a correlation between credit scores and a driver’s skill or safety. Not to mention that the ways in which credit scores are decided is extremely flawed.

More importantly, where does it stop? More and more devices, such as those used by athletes to monitor performance, now exist that show a person’s heart rate and other medically significant data. What’s to stop medical insurers from offering voluntarily, and then requiring, clients to wear devices that monitor their bodily functions, exercise, eating habits and the like — and then either refusing to cover some customers or charging them higher premiums if they’re deemed to be at higher risk for medical problems?

Also, with the steady growth of DNA tests that can show a person’s likelihood of developing a life-threatening condition as they age, what’s to stop insurers from demanding such tests from clients to decide what types of premiums to charge each?

The moral of the story: To quote Benjamin Franklin, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Rick Shaffer is host of Boston Herald Radio’s “The Money Show.”