[HN Gopher] Volkswagen tracking firm sued for refusing to find s...
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Volkswagen tracking firm sued for refusing to find stolen SUV with
kidnapped boy
Author : likeabatterycar
Score : 38 points
Date : 2023-11-16 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wgntv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wgntv.com)
| bongripper wrote:
| https://archive.is/5tCup
|
| article not available in VW country
| jtbayly wrote:
| Perhaps it will be good that vehicle manufacturers consider the
| _risks_ of putting tracking devices in cars that only they can
| control.
| eschneider wrote:
| The flip side of this story is someone like an abusive spouse
| social engineering a car tracking firm with a story like this and
| then using the data to track the car's occupant with tragic
| results.
|
| You just can't win.
| jtbayly wrote:
| The only way to win is to not play.
|
| _Stop_ putting tracking devices that you control in other
| people 's vehicles, if you don't want the liability of it.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| If there is no tracking then doesn't the boy being kidnapped
| lose?
| jtbayly wrote:
| No. There _wasn 't_ tracking in this case.
|
| This is the same sort of argument used to get rid of
| encryption, among many other privacy invasions.
|
| If you want to put a tracker in your car, that's up to you.
| Should the federal government mandate trackers in every car
| so they can always find any vehicle?
|
| "Think of the children!"
|
| I _am_ thinking of the children. Having some semblance of
| life outside of Big Brother 's watchful eye is essential
| for the children.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Should the federal government mandate trackers in
| every car so they can always find any vehicle?_
|
| This is a red herring. The federal government _doesn 't_
| mandate this. You said "if you want to put a tracker in
| your car, that's up to you." People _are_ choosing to put
| trackers in their cars.
|
| Honestly, as someone who is fairly strict on matters of
| privacy, I'm fine with a tracker in my car. I don't drive
| it that often. And when I do, it's around town.
| jtbayly wrote:
| No. They aren't. VW is. And VW, not the owner of the car,
| is controlling that tracking.
|
| I'm arguing against a comment that implied tracking is
| good, even if it is controlled by others, because it
| might save a child. The _best_ version of such a system
| is if it is owned by the government, not some company
| trying to make money off of it, so that 's the version I
| decided to argue against.
|
| That's not a red herring. It's steelmanning.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _They aren 't. VW is._
|
| A private company. From whom a person decided to buy a
| car. Hyundai, Kia, Mazda and Nissan make cars without
| trackers or even GPS. That's obviously not most
| consumers' preference.
|
| > _best version of such a system is if it is owned by the
| government_
|
| I strongly disagree. That said, if someone _wants_ to
| install a government tracking device on their car, I
| suppose I 'm not against it. (Didn't you start by arguing
| against mandated surveillance?)
| jtbayly wrote:
| > Didn't you start by arguing against mandated
| surveillance?
|
| Yes. That's the point of steelmanning. Put forward the
| best argument of your opposition. Then tear it down.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Kias get stolen so often you can't insure them in some
| places; hyundai's have that "catch on fire spontaneously"
| controversy, and that steel shavings in the engine
| problem; nissan has their infamous CVT transmissions. I
| don't know much about mazda.
|
| It's hard to find a reliable car. Last time I dug into
| the subject it was a stress-nightmare
| prewett wrote:
| Honda and Toyota are the canonical reliable cars, I
| thought that was well-known, so not sure how finding a
| reliable car is difficult. I associate Kia and Hyundai
| with inexpensive, so that wouldn't be my first choice for
| reliable. (My two Hondas have been fantastic. I bought my
| Honda Fit used, and from 75k miles to 150k miles I have
| had no problems at all, no maintenance required besides
| oil changes. (I suspect the clutch is going to need to be
| replaced soon, though.)
| nailer wrote:
| Process to verify law enforcement officials are easy to create
| and use if people are competent.
|
| The main issue I'd be concerned about are LEOs (or other
| government actors with access to LEO databases) abusing that
| system.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| In the article:
|
| > the family claim Volkswagen refused to assist authorities
|
| An abusive spouse wouldn't usually ask the police to track
| someone down. I also assume the request was off the back of an
| official missing persons/kidnapping charge.
|
| Also, parents of a child would have rights to the location of
| their children a spouse or partner wouldn't, outside a missing
| persons report.
| NOWHERE_ wrote:
| There are people who register domains like polizei-
| dortmund.nrw, set up a reverse proxy to a real police site,
| and set up a email server. Then, they send an official
| looking mail to discord.com's support with some made up
| emergency, like the person behind account X is a suicidal,
| depressive teen and one of their online-only friends reported
| to us (the police) that he intents to end his life. Then,
| discord instantly gives us the IP and even address (if they
| had purchased nitro), and we got that person doxxed.
|
| This is a service available on the obvious scene boards. It's
| classic social engineering, and I bet it works for these car
| tracking services too.
| gtvwill wrote:
| That's called impersonating an officer and is wholly
| illegal af. Those services whilst available are asking for
| a knock on the door from folks way nastier than your local
| cop shop. Rip. That's got state entity attraction written
| all over it.
| kurthr wrote:
| Failing to work with police is a bit different. To be fair VW
| say they have a process and it wasn't followed (by them), which
| may well make them liable or not.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Holding information that is integral to a criminal
| investigation hostage to a fee. That's criminal af.
|
| Jailtime should be the only answer.
|
| Legit I'm gonna crack a bottle of champagne the day that
| holding companies criminally liable for their criminal acts
| becomes the norm. Remember if it's punishment is only a fine
| not jailtime its a law for the poor.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Just require police presence. Pretty easy to get around. Use
| third party aka police to verify validity.
|
| The firm involved in this should have its board thrown in jail
| (vw and their contractor). Holding investigative information
| related to a crime hostage to a fee is criminal enough. Board
| members and managing directors should cop jail time. Basically
| anyone from the point of command who said "no! pay up" north.
| jailtime.
|
| But provisions protecting consumers from companies is weak so
| unlikely to happen.
| fhub wrote:
| "Unfortunately, in this instance, there was a serious breach of
| the process," the statement read. "We are addressing the
| situation with the parties involved."
|
| I'm very curious what the process is. Can anyone call up the main
| support line and say they are law enforcement? Or is there some
| special number and then some way the caller can identify
| themselves as law enforcement. e.g provide a one-time code that
| is pulled up from some app in their squad car.
| bombcar wrote:
| Normally there's a "call back" procedure, where someone can
| verify the law enforcement number and hang up and call back, or
| similar.
|
| In reality social engineering is a thing. Likely you need to
| get past the first-line support to someone who has authority.
| jedberg wrote:
| Usually when I have dealt with these sorts of requests, the way
| we verified they are legit law enforcement was by asking what
| department they work for, and then independently finding the
| number of that agency and verifying their badge number. It
| added time to the process but we wanted to protect our users as
| much as possible.
| belltaco wrote:
| So anyone with a name and badge number of an officer could
| impersonate one?
| jedberg wrote:
| Only if they could also control the phone number we would
| find for that law enforcement agency. We would call them
| back through the number we found independently by calling
| the switchboard and asking for that officer/badge number.
| alephnerd wrote:
| VW ended up making Car-Net free for 5 years in response to this
| incident in March - https://electrek.co/2023/03/07/vw-car-net-
| free-for-5-years-c...
| sorokod wrote:
| Not quite compatible with the _Unfortunately, in this instance,
| there was a serious breach of the process_. Why just not fix
| the breach, unless there wasn 't a breach in the first place.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Volkswagen said it has a procedure in place with a third-party
| provider for Car-Net support services to help with emergency
| requests from law enforcement.
|
| > "Unfortunately, in this instance, there was a serious breach of
| the process,"
|
| Outsourcing support to third party call centers is a bad idea for
| anything important.
| bmulcahy wrote:
| No, it's great! That way when something terrible happens, it's
| not VW's fault.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Judge: "So any errors would not be my fault, if I outsourced
| my decisions on this case to the Plaintiff's law firm?"
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Have you seen VWs in car software? They should definitely
| outsource.
| kube-system wrote:
| It is pretty bad, I suppose a third-party call center might
| be able to make better software.
| tcgv wrote:
| > the deputy was informed that the vehicle's free trial period
| for the Car-Net services had expired and that a subscription of
| $150 was required before the location of the vehicle could be
| provided.
|
| > In a statement released last February, Volkswagen said it has a
| procedure in place with a third-party provider for Car-Net
| support services to help with emergency requests from law
| enforcement.
|
| > "Unfortunately, in this instance, there was a serious breach of
| the process," the statement read. "We are addressing the
| situation with the parties involved."
|
| So the refusal was at a first glance a humam error rather than
| company policy regarding sharing of private data with
| authorities.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| A policy does not exist if you don't build and maintain the
| systems to effectively follow it.
|
| Multi-billion dollar companies need to be held to higher
| standards than "we got a piece of paper around here that says
| we won't do that"
| jstarfish wrote:
| > Attorneys for the family claim Volkswagen refused to assist
| authorities in tracking the car until payment of their tracking
| system was paid and activated.
|
| Considering all news is engineered for maximum outrage, I wonder
| what the reality of the situation is from VW's side.
|
| Did Volkswagen _refuse_ to assist, or was compliance _not
| possible_ because the tracker wasn 't active due to nonpayment?
|
| If the tracker wasn't active, it's unsettling that it could be
| activated with an exigent-circumstances request. Those don't even
| need a warrant.
|
| But if they had the data and refused to share it, VW was rent-
| seeking during a fucking hostage situation involving a baby. I
| don't put anything past anybody but that seems too monstrous to
| believe.
|
| VW continues to eat shit for the emissions scandal, but the media
| has historically been way more dishonest than VW.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| That's what I thought. For my car, I had to take it to a dealer
| to activate tracking. I paid online that gave an activation
| code but it needed a dealer to physically enter the code and
| activate it. Remotely activating it when tracking is disabled
| seems scary really.
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20231116155824/https://wgntv.com...
| swozey wrote:
| I lost my Jeep a few years ago downtown after a parade. Wandered
| for blocks and blocks looking for it down streets that looked
| exactly the same.
|
| Had an epiphany, opened my Uconnect app and called to restart my
| GPS service and they wouldn't do it. Or they said if they did it
| wouldn't find it that night or something. I forget exactly what
| it was, maybe the Jeep had to be turned on or it was just a 24
| hourish delay. I just remember getting annoyed and walking for
| another 45-2hrs until I finally found it.
|
| This was before google/apple maps had the parked here feature.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's the classic problem: you have a system that's useful in the
| 1% case but not in the 99% case. Over time, normalization of
| deviance causes you to extract functionality from the system so
| that it responds to the 99% case 100% of the time. When that 1%
| occurs, your thing breaks.
|
| Obviously the call center did this. Pretty typical.
|
| In any case, I have an Airtag in my car. It's pretty good. Maybe
| I should just wire in an old iphone on a data SIM.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| Before I could even finish reading the final paragraph of the
| article it seems like some kind of javascript noticed I'd
| scrolled to the end and promptly loaded an entirely new article
| automatically.
|
| Christ.
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(page generated 2023-11-16 23:02 UTC)