[HN Gopher] Tracking and technology in cars is being weaponized ...
___________________________________________________________________
Tracking and technology in cars is being weaponized by abusive
partners
Author : edward
Score : 67 points
Date : 2023-12-31 15:50 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| CharlesW wrote:
| https://archive.is/7lhOw
| ghaff wrote:
| This case seems difficult. On the one hand, maybe the restraint
| order should have been enough? On the other hand, it's at least
| somewhat understandable that the car manufacturer would be
| hesitant to cut the owner off from access to their property.
|
| The broader issue is that if a couple has turned on all sorts of
| data and account sharing it's easy to see how information leaks
| can easily happen in spite of efforts to plug them by one party.
| HnUser12 wrote:
| Yeah. This sounds more like a user problem and also very
| specific one in this case. Sounds like car was granted to her
| use, but officially it was still under her husband's name. So
| Mercedes doesn't seem to be at fault.
|
| Privacy concerns with manufacturer aside, I find the tracking
| feature to be very useful due to the amount of theft and break-
| ins we have over here in Canada.
| pluc wrote:
| Solution: tune it right out of the shop and never bring it to
| your dealer for scheduled maintenance. Would love to finally see
| the hacking community pay some attention to infotainment systems.
|
| Cars are becoming like PCs or phones, pre-bundled with a bunch of
| shit that you'd want to selectively purge upon acquisition but
| somehow car manufacturers don't have to give you the option.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Cars are too expensive to mess with if you're rights to do so
| are not protected and risk warranties
| anonym29 wrote:
| For DIY efforts, sure.
|
| Blatantly untrue for commercial modification though. There is
| no shortage of performance shops that will take a car that
| makes a couple hundred HP from the factory, replace a bunch
| of internals, completely void the warranty, and bump it up to
| the 4-digit range of horsepower, albeit mostly with a small
| handful of the overall number of makes and models, as not all
| cars are good platforms for high performance.
|
| I suspect the reason that we don't see much of a commercial
| privacy modding scene for cars is that there simply isn't
| sufficient demand.
|
| The manufacturers may be educated, listening, and watching
| us, but most people would simply prefer to bury their heads
| in the sand and choose to act ignorant, deaf, and blind in
| the face of this problem.
|
| It's almost like non-technical folks have developed a
| "learned hopelessness" over their privacy, which is really
| sad in some ways. That's the same thing people living under
| many brutal, murderous, totalitarian dictatorships developed
| too after their privacy was obliterated, like in the former
| Soviet Union.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Completely voiding the warranty is the problem, not the
| cost of the mods.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| You're living in a fantasy world if you think a 200 HP car
| is going to make 1000+ HP with a few modifications. The
| people doing this have a factory engine block and that is
| it.
| teeray wrote:
| My dad is a car guy from way back, and laments today where "the
| computer fails in a new car and that's it." Entirely true. What
| he doesn't see is the wonderful counterbalance we've had with
| open source in traditional computing against this proprietary
| nightmare hell now plaguing cars.
|
| I've tried to tell him that a computer in the car should be a
| diagnostic asset, completely usable with open source tools.
| Imagine seeing the timing and dwell on an old car in curves on
| the screen rather than using a timing light (as delightful an
| analog solution that is) and dwell meter. Instead, computers
| have been used by auto manufacturers as a lock in tool--"check
| engine," bring to dealer.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > counterbalance we've had with open source in traditional
| computing
|
| Created by massive activism, unpaid labour of millions of
| passionate people who otherwise are very expensive and have a
| very well paying job.
|
| This is not a practical and sustainable solution for most
| things. In fact it does not work at in when we have to deal
| with embedded software even in something as simple and cheap
| as a phone, TV or a smart coffee machine, let alone a car.
|
| We need a bigger stick, legislative solution with serious
| criminal sanctions. Misusing user's data should be treated
| like a bank misusing customer money - serious business that
| must be audited.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Imagine bricking a Tesla with a shitty jail break from the
| internet. 99.99% of owners will not do that. Hell I don't even
| mess with the speed controller on my ebike. If there were
| standards that auto's had to adhere to then maybe. but until
| then messing with engine management on computerized cars is
| going to be a no go. Especially if you f--k things up and put
| yourself or others in mortal danger.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > speed controller on my ebike
|
| Bafang? Got a nice programming cable, always adjust throttle
| behaviour and soft start.
| RunningDroid wrote:
| > Would love to finally see the hacking community pay some
| attention to infotainment systems.
|
| There are a handful of open source headunit projects, I think
| PILOT Drive* is the most interesting even though it seems to be
| fairly recent
|
| *: https://hackaday.io/project/191356-pilot-drive-an-open-
| sourc...
| anonym29 wrote:
| Removing the SIM card or a specific fuse from the car is a
| strategy that has worked well for me. On a lot of these
| "connected" cars, they use a pretty ordinary cellular data
| connection. Break that connection and you break the data leak.
|
| Bonus points for spoofing GPS to show the car in Antarctica or
| something like that, so that the trustworthiness in the
| accuracy of the entire dataset (and thus the commercial value)
| goes down, instead of just you choosing to opt out.
| kyledrake wrote:
| Tracking a car also has value for finding it after losing it in a
| parking garage, determining whether it's been towed or stolen,
| rescue help in case it's in a more remote area during a blizzard,
| etc. There's more legitimate use cases here than illegitimate
| ones, and its odd to to ignore all of them and presume this tech
| is almost exclusively for stalking like this article is implying.
|
| Auto theft in a lot of places in the United States has spiked so
| much since COVID that being able to track your car is critical
| infrastructure at this point*, particular if you drive the cars
| that are easy to steal right now (I have a friend that had his
| car stolen 3 times). I think being able to steal a car with a USB
| cable is a much worse problem for car manufacturers to deal with
| right now and I really hope we don't hand criminals yet another
| theft tool (on top of their unlimited supply of dangerous
| weapons) by eliminating car trackers by law or self immolation.
|
| * https://www.axios.com/2023/07/20/car-thefts-2023-kia-hyundai...
| hellcow wrote:
| > Crime in a lot of places in the United States is so bad right
| now
|
| Citation needed. Crime rates have been falling for decades. [1]
|
| I have no doubt there are individual areas with high crime, and
| for those isolated pockets, people could opt-in to buying and
| installing tracking devices on their vehicles.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
| kyledrake wrote:
| One of many articles on the topic
| https://www.axios.com/2023/07/20/car-thefts-2023-kia-
| hyundai...
| pc86 wrote:
| Property crime as a whole is decreasing even when
| accounting for this spike of a very specific sub-sub-
| category. All this does is prove that other crimes are
| decreasing _so much_ that this largely irrelevant sub-sub-
| category (most people do not own Kias or Hyundais as they
| 're pretty terrible vehicles) increase is more than
| completely wiped out.
| sbuk wrote:
| Property theft has been on the decline while the use of
| device tracking technologies, among other simple deterrents
| and measures, have simultaneously been increasing.
| Correlation?
| speed_spread wrote:
| That could correlate with a number of things, including the
| elimination of lead-based additives in gasoline, increasing
| the general IQ.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Even with Hyundai's idiocy, vehicle thefts last year were lower
| than they were in 2008[1] and lower than at any time in the 90s
| or 80s. Decades where being able to track your car with GPS was
| a sci-fi fantasy.
|
| A lot of the recent fear of crime feels like it's being driven
| by sensationalist reporting and overstating of the facts. E.g.
| "crime has doubled" has a very different meaning when you
| realize we were at record low crime rates just a few years ago.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191216/reported-motor-
| ve...
| kyledrake wrote:
| https://www.axios.com/2023/07/20/car-thefts-2023-kia-
| hyundai...
| burkaman wrote:
| Note that this is only based on data from 32 cities, and
| it's not clear to me how they were chosen. Here are the
| cities: https://counciloncj.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/07/Figure20-...
| louthy wrote:
| > ... a relationship you should probably end immediately if
| they are doing this ...
|
| > ... tiny handful of creepy boyfriends ...
|
| Way to downplay the very serious issue of domestic abuse and
| coercive control.
|
| _"However, at Refuge we're keenly aware that technology is
| often used by perpetrators of domestic abuse to further
| isolate, intimidate and stalk their partners from their support
| networks, making it even more difficult for women to escape
| their abusers"_ [1]
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/12/tech-
| playing...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Way to downplay the very serious issue of domestic abuse
| and coercive control.
|
| And also to isolate it to men as the perpetrators.
| louthy wrote:
| Where did I isolate it to any sex? I provided a source,
| feel free to provide other sources if you feel like there's
| a need for balance.
| genewitch wrote:
| you didn't. but you quoted:
|
| > ... tiny handful of creepy boyfriends ...
|
| And the person who replied to you was continuing your
| thought with an additional point, not calling you out.
| louthy wrote:
| > not calling you out.
|
| If so, I misunderstood, apologies @robertlagrant
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| There are legitimate uses for tracking, but it's a pretty
| reasonable ask for companies to mitigate the illegitimate uses
| and respect consent about the collection to begin with.
|
| I've seen that internal data before. It's profoundly creepy and
| not something I'm okay with the manufacturer having on my
| family, but I can't meaningfully opt us out of.
| pc86 wrote:
| > Crime in a lot of places in the United States is so bad right
| now
|
| Categorically false. https://www.rubyhome.com/blog/property-
| crime-stats/
|
| "Official" FBI stats only go through 2019 but the rates match
| so I have no reason to believe that the graph showing a marked
| and steady decline in property crime rates decreasing is
| incorrect. Property crime rates have decreased every single
| year for two decades and look to be approximately _half_ what
| they were 20 years ago.
|
| Every single year people regurgitate this "crime is so bad
| right now!!1" meme that never seems to die and is always wrong.
| Crime is decreasing, it has been decreasing in almost every
| geographic area in almost every category. If you're younger
| than Gen X this has been happening for most of your entire
| life. We live in one of the safest times in human history, most
| of us reading this live in one of the safest countries in the
| world, and Kias being easy to steal or some idiotic DAs
| refusing to prosecute petty thefts out of some misplaced sense
| of social justice does not change reality.
| kyledrake wrote:
| https://www.axios.com/2023/07/20/car-thefts-2023-kia-
| hyundai...
| rileymat2 wrote:
| At 86 per 100k per year, if we assume the average loss is
| about 50k (which might be high) we are talking like a $43
| insurance premium per year?
|
| If I understand that correctly it is not a huge problem to
| focus on? But we should keep an eye on the trend
| continuing.
|
| I wonder what the ROI on additional criminal justice costs
| or additional antitheft costs is? They would have to be
| pretty cheap to make it worth it.
| anonym29 wrote:
| You think Kia and Hyundai are bad? Focus one or two more
| layer in, at specific models ans trims, instead of whole
| makes.
|
| Check out the theft rates on Dodge Chargers and Dodge
| Challengers in the Hellcat trim level.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| So, If I don't have those cars it is less of a concern?
| pc86 wrote:
| Yes/of course?
| anonym29 wrote:
| >most of us reading this live in one of the safest countries
| in the world
|
| with many of that group living in some of the most high crime
| cities in the country - SF, Seattle, Portland, Austin,
| Denver, NYC, Chicago, Boston, LA, etc.
| woodruffw wrote:
| NYC is at or near the bottom of most crime statistics. This
| talking point is significantly out of date; you should
| consider revising it.
| dmoy wrote:
| I mean, those aren't even the highest crime places in the
| US (Chicago notwithstanding)
|
| If you want to list actual high crime places in the US,
| it's:
|
| Baltimore, St Louis, New Orleans, Detroit, and Cleveland.
|
| Besides Chicago, none of the others you listed are even top
| 20.
| dmoy wrote:
| I guess unless by safe we mean burglary, not violent
| crime. In which case, yea, I think Seattle is worst, like
| 50% worse than the second worst.
| anonym29 wrote:
| I wonder what Baltimore, St Louis, New Orleans, Detroit,
| and Cleveland (and maybe Chicago?) have in common that
| SF, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Denver, NYC, Boston, and
| LA don't. There has to be some hidden third variable
| besides a weak correlation between crime levels and how
| far west a city is within the US, no?
|
| Looking at the states, MD, MO, LA, MI, OH v.s. CA, WA,
| OR, TX, CO, NY, MA
|
| I was thinking maybe guns but then why would TX and CO
| (relatively relaxed on guns) be in the lower category?
|
| Then I wondered if maybe it's relating to the housing-
| challenged (more property crime maybe?), but I can't
| imagine that climates like those of Detroit and Chicago,
| with subzero temps and tons of snow in the winter, are
| very unhospitable to the unsheltered, probably even fatal
| to those who can't access shelter.
|
| Anyone else have any ideas? I'm stumped here. I know
| crime is a complex social issue but it seems like there's
| some weird variable I must be missing.
| burkaman wrote:
| All of those cities have average or below average crime
| among US cities.
| anonym29 wrote:
| All of those cities have average or below average
| reporting of crime, which informs the statistics you're
| citing from.
|
| But the sum of reported crimes is almost certainly
| considerably smaller than the sum of all crimes actually
| occurring.
|
| After all, how many people in SF or Seattle do you think
| even bother filling out a police report after their car
| is broken into for the 18th time, when doing so the first
| 3 times did absolutely nothing?
| pc86 wrote:
| You're conflating "high crime" with "high property crime"
| and 1985 with 2023.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| We don't have statistics on the number of crimes committed.
| We have FBI statistics which are statistics on the number of
| crimes that local law enforcement agencies reported to the
| FBI. Not all crimes are reported to law enforcement, not all
| law enforcement agencies report to the FBI, and not all
| crimes reported to law enforcement agencies that do report to
| the FBI are included in their reports.
|
| We also have surveys of the public asking if they have been a
| victim of crime, for example the National Crime Victimization
| Survey.
|
| According to the FBI statistics, crime is down recently,
| according to the victimization survey, crime is up recently
| (both say that crime is down since the 1990's). According to
| the victimization survey, the majority of crimes are not
| reported to law enforcement.
|
| From the 2022 victimization survey summary,
| https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-
| victimizat...:
|
| "The violent victimization rate increased from 16.5
| victimizations per 1,000 persons in 2021 to 23.5 per 1,000 in
| 2022.
|
| From 1993 to 2022, the overall rate of violent victimization
| declined from 79.8 to 23.5 victimizations per 1,000 persons
| age 12 or older.
|
| In 2022, about 2 in 5 (42%) violent victimizations were
| reported to police.
|
| Motor vehicle theft victimization increased from a rate of
| 4.3 victimizations per 1,000 households in 2021 to 5.5 per
| 1,000 in 2022."
|
| So whether you believe crime is up or down is going to depend
| on what data you choose to believe. In the victimization
| survey data, crime is slightly down recently in rural areas,
| about the same in suburban areas, and up by a large amount in
| urban areas.
|
| According to my security cameras, crime in my neighborhood is
| down this year, but still at a much higher level than 2019.
| oooyay wrote:
| Thanks for this detailed breakdown. I didn't know they
| published a victimization survey.
| pc86 wrote:
| This is about property crime, not violent crime, so
| conflating the two is probably not particularly useful, but
| I can see why you chose that as it shows your point a
| little easier.
|
| But let's look at property crime at
| https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/quick-graphics#quickgraphicstop:
| Down almost every year, and with the exception of 2010-2012
| every year it increased it decreased the following year.
| The trend is clearly down every year with the occasional
| increase for one year.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| According to the victimization survey, "Households in the
| United States experienced 13.4 million property
| victimizations in 2022, up from 11.7 million in 2021".
|
| Similar to the violent crime statistics, it was flat in
| rural and suburban areas, up in urban areas.
| darksaints wrote:
| I don't know about anywhere else, but in 2020 the Seattle PD
| just flat out stopped doing their jobs. They had been
| dragging their feet for years but now they literally won't do
| anything. I've called the cops for a violent crime in
| progress, requested that they contact me, and then find out
| later that the cop assigned had closed my report and had
| already contacted me and I said everything was fine now. lol.
|
| The effective result of that is skyrocketing crime without
| skyrocketing crime reports. What use is a crime report if the
| police won't do anything about it?
| genewitch wrote:
| if you want to be a PITA, FOIA request the information
| related to the report, where they said they contacted you,
| which should have times/dates/etc and you ought be able to
| easily prove there was no contact. I'm not sure right now
| what you can do with that information, but perhaps the
| Washington State Police might care?
|
| It's against the law to put false information on a police
| report. At least if you're just a scrunchie citizen.
| steelframe wrote:
| Letting other people track my location all the time is a very
| steep price for me to pay for any perceived benefit.
|
| > losing it in a parking garage
|
| I stop for a second and pay attention to where I parked my car.
| Maybe even take a quick picture of the surroundings with my
| phone. The "lock chirp" using my key fob usually makes up for
| the times I'm not quite sure where it is.
|
| > determining whether it's been towed or stolen
|
| Most municipalities where you're likely to be towed have an
| impound vehicle search website. I'm not going to let other
| people track me all the time just for a bit more convenience on
| the extremely rare occasion that my vehicle might be towed or
| stolen.
|
| > rescue help in case it's in a more remote area during a
| blizzard
|
| I check the weather and don't drive into remote areas during
| blizzards. I suppose if you're inclined to do that, you might
| want someone to track you all the time so they can maybe rescue
| you when you make those kinds of choices?
|
| > Crime in a lot of places in the United States is so bad right
| now that being able to track your car is critical
| infrastructure at this point
|
| If you are unfortunate enough to park a Kia in Seattle or San
| Francisco, I guess you've got a problem. But tracking my car is
| more for the benefit of my insurance company in that case.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Remembering to do the right things isn't possible for
| everyone. So you're kind of blaming the victim here.
|
| I'll always have the parking garage problem due to poor
| memory. Sometimes I remember that I take a picture but my
| brain can't remember to do that reliably. Building habits is
| nearly impossible for me. I even have a documented disability
| saying this happens, so it's not for lack of trying.
|
| My solution to solving this problem is to not require habits
| but to preemptively account for my blind spots. AirTags have
| been life changing for me.
| kccqzy wrote:
| You have a patchwork of solutions to deal with the lack of
| tracking. Some people don't like the mental overhead of that
| patchwork of solutions and would rather have GPS tracking.
| It's a valid trade off.
|
| It is however typical HN mentality to _assume_ that nobody
| wants tracking whereas it is a matter of individual choice.
|
| > a very steep price for me
|
| Great. Now have some empathy with people for whom the price
| isn't steep at all.
| hn_acker wrote:
| > It is however typical HN mentality to assume that nobody
| wants tracking whereas it is a matter of individual choice.
|
| Indeed. Which is why car manufacturers should make it easy
| for individual drivers to disable tracking in a way that
| can't be remotely reenabled by car companies.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It is and it isn't, depending on who you are.
|
| It seems this is a case of too much tech for some people.
| Disabling most vehicle tracking is easy. It's usually a
| matter of disconnecting a wire/fuse/antenna/bridge. The
| criminals can easily learn it and defeat it, while many
| drivers don't know how to, or just don't care too until
| they are a victim.
| steelframe wrote:
| Not sure that's really all that easy.
|
| My friend has a 2020 I-PACE sitting in his garage and
| wants to disable remote tracking. Exactly which wire,
| fuse, antenna, or bridge should he disconnect in order to
| do that without negatively impacting any other
| functionality of the vehicle? What tools will he need to
| do it? How long will it take him? What damage might he
| cause to his car if he makes a mistake because he's never
| done this before? How will this modification affect his
| warranty?
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's a bit of a cherry picked example since most cars
| are not expensive imports.
|
| The usual way to get that info is to go to the model
| specific forum (very common for _common_ vehicles). If
| there are no existing instructions, a shop manual is
| hugely helpful.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree that it should be an individual choice. Right now
| it's basically quietly defaulted to on. So not much of a
| choice currently.
|
| I do question your argument about some people not being
| able to find thwir car. Do people who lack the mental
| faculty to find where they parked simultaneously have the
| mental faculties required to safely operate the vehicle?
| otteromkram wrote:
| >The "lock chirp" using my key fob usually makes up for the
| times I'm not quite sure where it is.
|
| Ah, yes, the "letting people who don't care know I'm now home
| or letting everyone know that I'm walking away from my
| unattended vehicle (so robbers better not touch it)" alert
| everyone loves.
|
| Do you do the thing where you hit it a bunch of times to
| blast the horn and show off that 90s tech because you need
| people to see how cool you are?
| oooyay wrote:
| > Do you do the thing where you hit it a bunch of times to
| blast the horn and show off that 90s tech because you need
| people to see how cool you are?
|
| Heh, I do this but it's because depressing the button on my
| remote doesn't guarantee that the alarm will arm. The sound
| of the chirp is key to whatever mode I put it in. I could
| also just use my phone, but the app is stupidly slow and I
| kind of hate that my car has an app. I'd much prefer the
| equivalent of dance dance revolution on a 90s key fob than
| accept all the things that come with an app.
| ghaff wrote:
| I sort of like I can lock my newish car silently by just
| touching the door handle while still having the usual fob
| functions if I'm not sure exactly where my car is.
| hn_acker wrote:
| > Do you do the thing where you hit it a bunch of times to
| blast the horn and show off that 90s tech because you need
| people to see how cool you are?
|
| This line was unwarranted. What part of steelframe's
| response suggested that steelframe likes letting other
| people hear the parked car's location, never mind honking?
| giantg2 wrote:
| In most cases the car trackers are trivially simple for
| criminals to defeat. They really aren't a big detergent. Even
| if you're using a good aftermarket one, its not a detergent but
| a recovery tool - if they know about it they can usually
| disable it.
|
| If you're friend has had their car stolen so many times, what
| are they doing about it?
| 1shooner wrote:
| I don't equate the desire to have the option to not be tracked
| with 'handing criminals another theft tool', and I also
| certainly don't consider having my movements monitored to be
| 'critical infrastructure'. These sentiments are just
| acquiescence to mass surveillance for the sake of property
| control.
|
| Both the tracking described in the article and the usb
| vulnerability are symptoms of an industry that has
| irresponsibly deployed potentially dangerous technology.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's "I have nothing to hide" until suddenly you do. But by then
| it's too late to do anything about it.
| anonym29 wrote:
| And yet every single person who says this continues to lock the
| door when they sit down to use the restroom in public.
|
| They're doing nothing wrong. They have nothing to hide.
| Everyone knows what they're up to.
|
| And yet, they have this strange, inexplicable desire for
| privacy in spite of those three things!
| deaddodo wrote:
| > They have nothing to hide.
|
| Most people would take umbrage with this portion of your
| argument. They clearly _do_ have something to hide; whether
| it 's from shame, embarrassment or politeness.
| pests wrote:
| It's just social expectations. No one wants to see it. Please
| don't allow yourself to be exposed to others, might even be
| children attempting to open the bathroom.
|
| Yet, walk into a gym changing room and you'll see balls
| swinging everywhere. They've done nothing wrong, nothing to
| hide, everyone knows what they are doing - but yet, they
| don't care about privacy?!
|
| Social expectations set privacy expectations. People conform
| to those expectations outside of their own desires or wants
| for privacy / non-privacy.
| jevoten wrote:
| You also rely on many people being able to hide things if you
| want a pleasant society - journalists, whistleblowers,
| activists, anyone doing politically sensitive work (e.g. Tor or
| Signal developers, labor organizers, even small businesses
| trying to enter established markets) that could be destroyed by
| a smear campaign.
|
| Last but not least, any new political party can be crushed by
| information asymmetry - if every minor indiscretion of their
| members is outed, while the ruling parties can keep their own
| sins hidden, thanks to a friendly intelligence apparatus, no
| new party will ever upset the status quo. It also means the old
| parties will be compelled to remain friendly with said
| intelligence apparatus (wonder why section 702 of FISA got
| extended again [1]?)
|
| In other words, even if you personally somehow go your entire
| life without having to hide a single thing, unless others can
| hide things, you will one day wake-up under tyranny.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38799561
| swells34 wrote:
| Honestly, the "I have nothing to hide" line is flawed in
| itself, regardless of whether you actually do or not. With
| enough data about someone, a narrative can be built that they
| are guilty of _something_. And even if it is finally determined
| that they did nothing wrong, it is a massive waste of time and
| energy to prove that. See "railroading", the US Law
| Enforcement's greatest national past time.
| genewitch wrote:
| "Three felonies a day"
| Nevermark wrote:
| AND: data on someone provides a the means to coerce them in
| hard to identify ways.
|
| Would you reveal everything about your financial, work and
| personal lives to someone you were in a business negotiation
| with? Just because they wouldn't do anything "illegal" with
| it?
|
| Information about each of us is leverage. Even when used
| legally, it gives away our power over our lives to others, to
| use against us.
| Spivak wrote:
| This is a nothingburger story. The legal owner of a car as far as
| Mercedes is concerned has access to it. This is really a story
| about the courts being inept at "declaring" that the woman in
| question owns the car but not actually transferring the title and
| loan into her name.
|
| "Your phone may be tracking you (when you don't actually own it
| and you're on your abusive partner's iCloud account)."
| baz00 wrote:
| My abusive ex partner used to poll me to work out where I was. I
| divorced her. You can do that with your car too if it's prone to
| abusing you by proxy (get something that doesn't have any
| intelligence in it at all).
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| "Connected" car services are complete shit and I never opt in to
| them.
|
| That being said, this also seems like the basic _legal_ system
| needs to catch up in some of these cases.
|
| For example, in the first one, the wife had been granted sole use
| of the car but the husband's name was on the title? That doesn't
| even seem legally consistent to me, leaving aside all technology
| matters.
| genewitch wrote:
| On 2023 subaru even if you're not opted in it appears that they
| OTA update the firmware. The "driver steering assist" has
| gotten weaker and weaker since we got a 2023 crosstrek. It used
| to only completely shut off on 1 road near my house, now it
| shuts off on about 40% of roads, with no other changes. Car is
| about 6 months old.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Fortunately my (work provided) Dodge Ram allows me to turn
| steering assist on or off and have it stay that way until I
| change it.
|
| I actually like it when rarely doing hours of highway
| driving, but for my normal use it's absolutely unsuitable on
| the narrow and degraded backroads where I'm often squeezing
| by farm equipment. Definitely don't like it trying to second
| guess me having to go over the line.
| genewitch wrote:
| I can consistently and repeatedly make the Crosstrek
| attempt to murder me. Drive to the left of a semi truck,
| and begin to hug the left line on the road. The car will
| fight you to recenter in the lane. If you loosen your grip
| on the wheel at all, the car will immediately and violently
| swerve to the right, and without correction will wind up in
| the lane to the right. I can always catch it at exactly the
| right line of the lane i am in, but i imagine if you
| weren't expecting it you'd wind up underneath a semi.
|
| I absolutely _loathe_ driving the crosstrek.
|
| edited to clarify: I can shut off steering assist, but
| sometimes i drive with it on because my wife does
| (normally) and i like to make sure it's still "safe" - so
| each time i get in and the steering assist is "slightly
| different" than the last time, i notice. She only sees the
| gentle curve, like maybe the cameras are dirty, or this
| road's lines aren't sufficient for steering assist, etc.
| Whereas i notice immediately that it's acting different.
| eimrine wrote:
| What is an injustice when having a working SOS button requires
| you to give away a lot of potentially sensitive data.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| SOS doesn't have to be always tracking location. Ships and
| airplanes have radio beacons that only activate when something
| bad happens. Cars could do the same.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| It's sad that the man in this story died and can't give his side
| of the story. It sounds like the Mercedes did exactly what it was
| supposed to do-- answer questions about its location to the
| titled owner. The fact that this woman had bad credit and
| couldn't take over the title in the process of the divorce just
| put the car and the Mercedes network admins in a strange position
| of trying to decide which legal claim to believe.
| mannykannot wrote:
| > ...put the car and the Mercedes network admins in a strange
| position of trying to decide which legal claim to believe.
|
| Mercedes has lawyers as well as network admins, and the fact
| that the victim had a court-issued restraining order is not the
| sort of thing that one can simply choose to believe in or not.
|
| If the law currently supports Mercedes' response, it's time for
| the law to be updated to recognize the increasing scope for
| this sort of abuse. The husband forfeited a certain amount of
| freedom of action through the behavior that earned him the
| restraining order, and neither Mercedes' interest in the car as
| security on a loan nor the many other advantages of tracking a
| vehicle necessitate, let alone justify, Mercedes' response.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I fully disagree. This isn't about Mercedes' interest in the
| car, but the legal owner's interest in the car. This whole
| article is misleading in that it refers to it as "her car"
| while it simply wasn't. Replace it with "his car" and
| everything makes sense.
|
| >Mercedes has lawyers as well as network admins, and the fact
| that the victim had a court-issued restraining order is not
| the sort of thing that one can simply choose to believe in or
| not.
|
| It has nothing to do with belief in a restraining order. A
| restraining order says nothing about transferring the car
| title.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| I've noticed a trend with some subgroups of people, which I ended
| up copying.
|
| I share my location with a lot of people on iMessage. Basically
| any time I have ever had to meet somebody, if they're a close
| friend or family member, I share my location with them
| indefinitely and never turn it off, and lots of people do the
| same thing to me.
|
| I think this is like the 2020s version of giving somebody a spare
| key to your house.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are _very_ few people I'd grant indefinite sharing to.
| I'll forget that it's there and I can think of all sorts of
| scenarios like white lies about why I can't attend some event
| they're putting on. Maybe not the end of the world but just
| aren't many people who need that sort of deep visibility into
| my day to day comings and goings. It seems very invasive.
|
| And the spare key analogy seems poor. I can trust a friend not
| to use a spare key to facilitate robbing my house which they
| could presumably break into anyway--without my minute to minute
| movements being any of their business.
| eek2121 wrote:
| That is nuts. I don't even share my location with my spouse.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This is the first time I've ever heard of any anybody doing
| that at that level of scale. That doesn't mean that you're
| incorrect certainly but I don't think that's as universal as
| you think it is.
| wesleychen wrote:
| It's pretty universal among my friends in their early 20s,
| spanning across the country.
| genewitch wrote:
| forgetting to turn off location sharing is universal?
| renewiltord wrote:
| I do the same. Loads of people do it with me. Folks on Android
| get it on Google Maps. Folks on iPhone get it on Find My Phone.
|
| It's been years we've been doing this. Honestly, I can't
| imagine not doing it.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| As others have said, tracking data has value. The problem is a
| lack of (or abuse of) our rights and companies which serve their
| customers more than themselves.
|
| Simply put we need the perpetual right to own, revoke, and
| control the flow of our data. We need the perpetual right to real
| privacy from intrusive governments which, ironic to the
| consitution, are beginning to resemble and exceed the very
| governments they formed to overthrow.
| fnorder wrote:
| "To access content, please click 'I relinquish all my rights
| and expectations to privacy, and my right to challenge this
| agreemment.'"
| Buttons840 wrote:
| If there's the will, we can make such agreements
| unenforceable. Recognizing their danger, we can even make the
| mere presence of such a clause in a contract illegal,
| punishable by a large payment to whoever reports the clause.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Plenty of laws prevent certain rights from being relinquished
| by contract. For example California employment law prevents
| employers from controlling what you work on in your spare
| time on personal equipment, with few exceptions.
|
| I have had friends at Apple, Facebook, and Google question
| whether they could work on open source projects on the side
| and I highlighted this for them.
|
| Note that employers often still put unenforceable
| restrictions on these things in their contact which I think
| sucks. It confuses employees who don't know their rights and
| chills valuable work on open source.
|
| https://www.aegislawfirm.com/blog/2023/01/california-
| moonlig...
| everforward wrote:
| > Note that employers often still put unenforceable
| restrictions on these things in their contact which I think
| sucks. It confuses employees who don't know their rights
| and chills valuable work on open source.
|
| This is a big reason why I think clauses in contracts with
| individuals should not be separable. The entire agreement
| is either valid or not, you can't stuff it full of a
| tenuous wishlist of rights.
|
| Lawyers are far too expensive to ask every citizen to hire
| one every time they want to find out which clauses are
| blatantly unenforceable.
|
| Maybe it made sense when the sum of laws that apply to
| everyone was a reasonable quantity, but at this point even
| lawyers only really know the parts they specialize in.
|
| There have to be millions of pages by the time you include
| all the case law that set precedent.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I might be in favor of such a requirement if it only
| applied to larger organizations. Otherwise regular people
| would have to hire lawyers all the time even to write up
| a simple contract. If a company employs more than 500
| people or makes more than $10m per year in revenue its
| employment contracts must not contain unenforceable
| sections, for example.
|
| Even then I might want to keep the scope narrowly to
| employment contracts. A contract between two large
| companies would have wider implications if it could be
| invalidated completely.
|
| My understanding is that contract law is nuanced and it
| is important for the functioning of society that small
| mistakes can be fixed without major repercussions, but I
| am in favor or making sure large employers aren't
| misleading employees.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't want this type of tech in my vehicles at all. But all the
| examples they are giving have to deal with who the owner is. If
| the name is on the title, then this is a law issue, not a tech
| issue. Most of these technologies can be disabled by removing
| part of the connectivity hardware (I've done it before).
|
| This is a similar paradigm for other things like phone/family
| tracking, smart home, etc. Far too many people don't give a shit
| about privacy or security until they are a victim. Then the call
| is for some third party to make it secure for them rather than go
| with the more permanent and secure fix of doing away with the
| unused features (like removing the connection).
| api wrote:
| A while back after reading about how many above ground atomic
| tests we did in the 1950s I found myself wondering: what are we
| doing _right now_ where future generations will look back and ask
| "what were they thinking?"
|
| Other than burning all the carbon, I think this insane totally
| unregulated, opaque, user-hostile, leaky, insecure surveillance
| panopticon is a good candidate for a large scale human self-own.
|
| Privacy loss is a little like climate change. The problem builds
| but nothing obviously bad happens right away, so people don't
| notice or don't really care. Nothing bad happens until it does
| but when it does it's too late.
|
| One of the things I've found is that Europeans seem much more
| concerned about privacy than Americans. I've chalked this up to
| their experience in the 20th century with Hitler, Mussolini,
| Franco, and the Soviet sphere of influence. Maybe Americans need
| their own experience with totalitarianism to show them why
| surrendering all privacy for convenience and free candy might not
| be a great idea. (Who knows... we might get it soon!)
|
| Another class of very bad things that can happen is foreign
| influence powered by all this surveillance. We've already seen
| some of this from Russia, but China is smarter and better funded
| and probably has 100X the data and access. If they decide to
| invade Taiwan expect a full information warfare assault against
| the US population powered by fine grained surveillance data and
| delivered via social media. Since they probably know when you go
| to the bathroom, they'll be able to use AI with all this
| information to micro-target every single individual.
| lcordier wrote:
| It prolly started as analytics for the engineers than corporate
| started seeing $$$ signs.
| kkfx wrote:
| A very small very personal note: dear automakers what about
| making connected cars, BUT connected to their formal owners? Like
| hey a car with a webui built-in. So for instance instead of
| crapplications and crappy APIs [1] we can simply connect directly
| with dynDNS or a personal domain to our cars and owning them
| fully enough to decide how to upgrade their crapware, witch
| services gives to whom and so on?
|
| I have three cars, only one a modern connected BEV, a modest MG
| ZS long range 2022. Just for instance with it's app sometimes I
| connect to someone else car in another country, localizing it.
| Apparently unlocking and remote command heating/A/c does not work
| sometimes, asking for a pin, sometimes does work not asking for
| nothing.
|
| The problem is not the ex-husband, the problem is the crappy
| crapware you put on your vehicles to control them as you wish
| without much formal owners but in reality just users controls...
|
| That's the real ABUSE.
|
| [1] https://samcurry.net/web-hackers-vs-the-auto-industry/ also
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34230093
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