[HN Gopher] Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling ...
___________________________________________________________________
Texas sues GM for unlawfully collecting and selling drivers'
private data [pdf]
Author : jonhohle
Score : 230 points
Date : 2024-08-14 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.texasattorneygeneral.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.texasattorneygeneral.gov)
| slackfan wrote:
| Good. Hopefully other states start hitting more car manufacturers
| with this.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Yep. It's basically all of them at this point. This needs to be
| illegal across the board.
| PreInternet01 wrote:
| wHaT's uP With the cApiTaLizAtioN iN this TitLe?
|
| I've spent, like, several _minutes_ of my life trying to figure
| this out, and... came up blank?
|
| The title is not copied from the PDF, where such issues would be
| rare but not unimaginable. I also couldn't find any articles
| linking to this PDF with this particular title.
|
| So... a misfiring accessibility solution? Solar rays directly
| going for the Shift key?
|
| (P.S. Yeah, I know "Please don't complain about tangential
| annoyances--e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or
| back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." --
| but this seems sort-of uncommon?)
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I spent a few minutes looking at it and came up blank as well
| :/
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I was perplexed as well. I even tried counting the randomly
| capitalized letters to see if it spelled out a secret message
| or something...but unless someone can tell me what
| 'TSGMUFLCSDVPVD' means, I think it might be a red herring.
| henning wrote:
| I cracked the code, it's an anagram for "Be sure to drink your
| Ovaltine".
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| The hint is that the title makes you want to shoot your eye
| out.
| seanw444 wrote:
| At first I thought it was sarcasm-case. But no, doesn't seem
| like that either.
| squirtle24 wrote:
| Best I could come up with was that they're trying to make a
| mockery of Texas's position on the case. But the odd
| capitalization isn't frequent enough to make it obvious, so I
| too wasted minutes of my life looking for some kind of pattern.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternating_caps
| perihelions wrote:
| Malfunctioning speech-to-text tooling? Note the errant
| capitalization falls on start-of-syllable boundaries.
|
| Alternatively, could be an artifact of an LLM tooling, where
| those boundaries reflect token boundaries.
| Unlaw / Ful / Ly Dri / Vers Pri / Vate
| PreInternet01 wrote:
| Well, I'm not a native English speaker, but I'm pretty sure
| that in "UnlawFulLy" the capitals don't represent
| pronunciation stress points? Those would look more like
| "uNlawfullY", right?
| perihelions wrote:
| Yes, but stress aside, the syllables still divide as "un-
| law-ful-ly". (At least I believe so and Claude also agrees;
| that's a quorum).
| jonhohle wrote:
| Sorry, this was a mobile autocorrect issue I didn't notice
| while submitting. I took the title from the press release but
| had to rearrange some things to fit and apparently iOS thought
| it should capitalize. The title came from the AG's office[0],
| but I wanted to link directly to the filing.
|
| 0 -
| https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...
| PreInternet01 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the exact workflow, and sorry for
| potentially derailing the discussion on this! (For the
| record, I upvoted all substantial comments, and truly enjoyed
| my comment going from +4 to -2 and back again...).
|
| I've _never_ had iOS (either the Cisco or the Apple variant)
| randomly apply CamelCaps, though. One more thing to look out
| for in the future :)
| mproud wrote:
| Mods, wanna fix this title please?
| altairprime wrote:
| Email them using the footer contact link, or else they might
| never see this comment or post.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I requested an edit.
| dang wrote:
| Fixed now. Thanks for emailing!
| dang wrote:
| DoNe
| kstrauser wrote:
| I say this rarely, but way to go, Texas! Every state should be
| pursuing this against every manufacturer who does this.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| As they say, even a stopped clock is still right twice a day.
| RIMR wrote:
| A backwards clock is right 4 times a day.
|
| A clock running at 10,000 rpm is right 14,398,560 times a
| day.
| client4 wrote:
| I've been frustrated by the ability to easily disable vehicle
| cellular systems. In older vehicles you could simply unplug the
| right cable and have it disabled. In newer vehicles I've found
| the cellular system to be integrated with other components --
| making it impossible to disable without also getting a permanent
| check engine light.
|
| Ideally I'd like some sort of CAM module that plugs in between
| the antenna system and the ECM that selectively drops telemetry
| packets.
| nullfield wrote:
| And what else does it break-break, even if you do kill the
| antenna, more that just the annoyance of a light? Integrated
| GPS, because it uses cellular to "enhance" that?
|
| What other risks are there? Haven't we seen CAN bus "hacked"
| over the air to shut down vehicles before? (Even ignoring the
| intentional ability to do so by the OEM, granted to law
| enforcement)
| 14 wrote:
| In my opinion who cares if it breaks the car gps. I have my
| phone that already does this function and never needed my car
| to do this. I would a thousand time over delete my car gps if
| it meant no tracking.
| vel0city wrote:
| Meanwhile I'm actually the opposite. I'd prefer for my
| phone to pull from the car's GPS system instead of trying
| to figure out its own signaling. It would probably be a lot
| better since it's not locked in a steel cage and in
| suboptimal placement.
| Bloating wrote:
| So you perfer your phone to track you rather than your car
| sroussey wrote:
| My car does not have a cellular system. :)
|
| Edit: 2004 model year
| dmitrygr wrote:
| I found the antenna, and replaced it with a 50 ohm resistor and
| wrapped the entire thing in foil, grounded to the chassis. No
| check engine light, no signal
| randcraw wrote:
| I can't imagine why this case should succeed if this same
| practice has long been tolerated by telcos or Facebook -- any
| company that provides no opt-out to collection and sale of
| personal info.
|
| If Texas had real guts, they'd pass a law that clearly prohibits
| the collection and sale of personal info without explicit opt-in.
| But nooooooo...
| fmajid wrote:
| It seems the TDPSA does require consent, just like California's
| CCPA/CPRA, Virginia's VCDPA it is based on, and the EU's GDPR.
| noselasd wrote:
| At least with Facebook you've given them consent to do so.
| fmajid wrote:
| Paxton is a crook, but in this case he's fighting the good fight.
| Texas collected a $1.4B settlement from Meta for its facial-
| recognition scanning, and in this case the monetary damages to
| the victims are far worse in terms of higher insurance premiums.
|
| https://boingboing.net/2024/07/31/meta-to-pay-1-4bn-for-unau...
|
| He should then go after the insurance companies who used this
| data next, and force them to disgorge the excess profits they
| made from the illegal use of data, preferably with triple
| penalties.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Why is the insurance companies' use of this data illegal?
| Unless you can show discrimination against protected groups,
| not sure how this is illegal.
| lithos wrote:
| Why would you be allowed to use illegal data? Especially if
| you have the means to know if it's illegal or not.
|
| Not even Ebay/Craigslist has managed to keep itself immune
| from liability of vendors selling stolen items.
| kube-system wrote:
| Do insurance regulations prohibit it?
|
| Stolen property is a little bit different, there are laws
| that explicitly prohibit possession or dealing in property
| known to be stolen.
| shitlord wrote:
| Insurance is regulated so maybe it's different, but plenty
| of companies rely on illegally obtained data. Websites like
| haveibeenpwned.com and identity theft protection services
| couldn't exist without hacked/stolen information. I guess
| the distinction is that they didn't commission it.
| kube-system wrote:
| Also, newspapers regularly publish information that was
| obtained illegally. e.g. someone breaking an NDA.
| pc86 wrote:
| It's illegal because GM sending this data to insurance
| companies without explicitly user consent violates Texas law.
|
| Protected class has nothing to do with it.
| kardianos wrote:
| When you say "Paxton is a crook", do you mean you believe he
| steals, or do you mean he was convicted, or that he should be
| convicted?
|
| Was Paxton convicted of a crime? Was Paxton accused of a crime
| you believe he is guilty of?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| He's a well known crook.. he's been repeatedly indicted for
| serious financial crimes but due to his position in
| government, the charges either were dropped for nonsense
| reasons or just never prosecuted for over 9 years...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/paxton-indictment-
| texas-d5e57fc6c...
|
| Then afterwards nearly a dozen of his staffers whistleblew to
| the FBI about his relationship with an Austin-based real
| estate developer who was committing serious crimes with
| Paxton's blessing and likely with kickbacks --
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/07/ken-paxton-
| impeachme...
|
| That developer was indicted on a number of serious Federal
| charges where it came out that he renovated Paxton's home for
| free and covered up Paxton's affair with one of his other
| staffers: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/08/nate-paul-
| indictment...
|
| Which ultimately resulted in an impeachment trial where the
| Texas GOP compeletly beclowned itself to acquit an obvious
| crook because they agree with him politically.
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/16/ken-paxton-
| acquitted...
| muaytimbo wrote:
| I don't know anything about this, but indictments mean
| literally nothing. You can "indict a ham sandwich" as the
| line goes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Wachtler
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Cool - which is why I expanded the post to include all
| sorts of other evidence of crimes. And indictments don't
| mean "literally nothing" -- they mean that a prosecutor
| convinced a grand jury that they had enough evidence to
| bring charges against you, no matter how catchy the
| slogan from some judge from 40 years ago happens to be.
| As I'm sure you can appreciate, the rules of evidence and
| general criminal case law has changed pretty dramatically
| since the 1980s.
| burkaman wrote:
| In this case he narrowly avoided trial by agreeing to pay
| significant restitution to his victims, do community
| service, and attend a legal ethics education course. He
| is a rich person with significant resources, he would not
| have agreed to this settlement if there wasn't a good
| chance of conviction.
| dboreham wrote:
| Do you have any recent examples where this happened?
| tristan957 wrote:
| Paxton asked taxpayers to pay his legal fees[0] for a
| situation he himself caused related to whistleblower
| retaliation.
|
| Paxton is a huge Trump supporter.
|
| Paxton committed securities fraud[1].
|
| Paxton and Greg Abbott retaliated against Republicans in the
| Texas Legislature who voted against their school choice
| initiative, which would drastically decrease funding to the
| public school system, and would drastically hurt rural
| communities[2]. Rural Republicans were largely the ones to
| oppose school choice and the defunding of the public school
| system.
|
| Paxton sued Pennsylvania to aid in Trump's steal of the 2020
| election [3].
|
| Paxton cheats on his wife[4].
|
| Paxton's law license is under review by the Texas Bar[5].
|
| Paxton is a routine liar[6].
|
| Paxton has expressed support in prosecuting sodemy and is
| against gay marriage[7].
|
| Paxton's office also routinely wastes taxpayer money pursuing
| causes that they fail to find convictions on including sexual
| assault, voter fraud, and silly first amendment issues akin
| to those of the growing Christo-fascist population in the US.
|
| Paxton is currently under investigation by federal officials
| for engaging in quid pro quo[8].
|
| To say Paxton is a crook is putting it mildly. The dude has
| no business being a lawyer or an elected official in the
| State of Texas, or anywhere in the US.
|
| [0]: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/13/legislature-ken-
| paxt...
|
| [1]: https://apnews.com/article/ken-paxton-texas-securities-
| fraud...
|
| [2]: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-primary-
| runoff...
|
| [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._Pennsylvania
|
| [4]: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/11/ken-paxton-
| affair-im...
|
| [5]: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/
| ken-...
|
| [6]: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/sep/07/ken-
| paxton...
|
| [7]: https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/ken-paxton-says-
| state-...
|
| [8]: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/texas/2
| 024/...
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I think he is a real POS with bad beliefs, but I am not
| sure that say 4 & 7 are directly relevant to being a crook.
| vel0city wrote:
| A crook is someone who is dishonest. You don't think
| someone cheating on their wife is dishonest?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Not playing a game of word association. When accusing a
| public figure of being a criminal, focus on explicitly
| illegal, not immoral acts.
| vel0city wrote:
| The accusation was that he was a crook, not necessarily
| (or limited to) being a criminal. You don't have to break
| the law to be a crooked person, a "crook".
| bluGill wrote:
| I find that people say it is dishonest when they
| otherwise oppose the person doing it, and normal minor
| things not to worry about if they agree with that person.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| In an efficient market insurance premiums are essentially zero
| sum. The more that one person pays to offset their own risk,
| the less everyone else pays.
|
| Safe drivers subsidize unsafe drivers and this subsidy can and
| should be reduced when possible with better predictive
| information.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Perhaps the market should not strive for optimal efficiency
| then.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Why? You'd probably have better outcomes for everyone with
| more information. Unsafe drivers might start reigning in
| their bad habits because it is costing them money every
| month, and safe drivers will save money. Seems like a win-
| win. I'd love it if my dash cam could do ALPR and send a
| video to the registered insurance agency when I see some
| absolutely ludicrous driving.
| klyrs wrote:
| In this model, what incentivizes safe drivers to have
| insurance?
|
| And then when a "safe driver" wipes out in a freak snow
| storm and racks up a million dollars in damages that they
| can't afford to pay, where's the win-win?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The same thing that incentivizes them right now, legal
| requirements to maintain a certain minimum amount of auto
| liability insurance in order to be able to legally drive.
| Which, by the way, is currently far less than a million
| dollars in every jurisdiction I know.
|
| https://www.autoinsurance.org/car-insurance-requirements/
| simcup wrote:
| may i introduce you to the jurisdiction of germany? 7.5m
| for personal injury, 1.3m for property damage and 50k for
| ?financial loss? (ger:reiner vermogensschaden) [1][2].
| granted that's in euro so exchange rates are to be
| considered
|
| [1] https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/deckungssumme-kfz-
| haftpflich... [2] https://www.gesetze-im-
| internet.de/pflvg/anlage.html
|
| edit: as a point of comparison, i can't find it at moment
| but i think i remember my last car insurance was covering
| 100m for personal insuries
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That's amazing, the US plays around in $10k to $50k
| ranges.
| klyrs wrote:
| If the market is efficient, why do you need the force of
| state violence to maintain it?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| The incentive would be being able to pay very little to
| get coverage which insures you even for the circumstances
| where a safe driver would crash.
|
| Wouldn't a safe driver who was considering unwisely
| dropping coverage be more likely to drop coverage if
| coverage was expensive(because they are subsidizing
| unsafe drivers), as opposed to if it was cheap?
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| It smooths the costs out over time, ie. you regularly pay
| a fixed amount instead of having random huge bills you
| may not be able to cover.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| If I can't have any privacy I'll shoot myself, which is a
| worse outcome for me
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I'm not justifying the specifics of your own car ratting
| you out behind your back, merely the idea of having more
| data would let insurance companies segment users based on
| driving habits.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Their modeling will penalize safe drivers who have to deal
| with non ideal scenarios. The OBD2 accelerometer modules are
| a bad idea when you live in an area where traffic and road
| design requires bursts of acceleration to make turns. You're
| going to be lumped in with the bad drivers when the data is
| not comprehensive enough to separate good from bad. Nor will
| they put in the effort to ensure fair driver ratings with
| thorough analysis of the data they do have.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Restricting insurers from using relevant data to calculate
| risk premiums is not the way to subsidize people who live
| in an area where traffic and road design are subpar.
|
| If there is an unfair situation that needs to be rectified
| with a subsidy, it is best for the subsidy to transparent
| to prevent corruption.
|
| For example, the knowledge of this subsidy can help propel
| political change to remedy road design so that some people
| are not driving in unsafe road designs.
| kube-system wrote:
| This already happens (probably more accurately) via other
| metrics. If you live in an area with poorly designed roads
| that cause more claims, you will be charged more because of
| your zip code.
| muaytimbo wrote:
| In an efficient market safe drivers wouldn't be compelled to
| subsidize unsafe drivers.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I pay for insurance to avoid the chance of catastrophic
| loss. No matter how safe I operate, an innocent accident
| (instigated by myself or another) could still lead to
| financial ruin.
| loeg wrote:
| This binary classification into safe and unsafe does not
| match the signal, which is incredibly noisy.
| jordanb wrote:
| Firstly, the entire port of insurance is to spread risk. If
| the the market for insurance is "too efficient" at
| determining who is high-risk and who is not, then it is no
| longer fulfilling its social function.
|
| Secondly, you seem to be implying that only aggressive
| drivers are getting flagged by the data. But the computer
| doesn't know if you accelerate and brake hard because you're
| an aggressive driver, or if your circumstances require it.
| Maybe you have to commute to your job in heavy stop-and-go
| traffic with difficult merges.
|
| Finally, this kind of surveillance changes behavior in ways
| that may make things less safe. If you're driving down a
| street and a ball bounces out from behind a parked car do you
| slam on your brakes out of fear that there is a child chasing
| after it, or do you think that hitting the brakes might make
| your premiums go up so you just _hope_ that there isn 't a
| child coming.
| kube-system wrote:
| Also, the surveillance is bad because of the inherent
| breach of privacy.
| pc86 wrote:
| I think these systems are bad and I think vehicle
| manufacturers piping data directly to insurance companies
| should be illegal whether you consent or not. That being
| said, "but privacy" has always struck me as a weird
| argument.
|
| There is no reasonable expectation of privacy when a
| vehicle with a particular license plate is at a
| particular intersection or on a particular public street.
| Some jurisdictions extend some privacy rights to whether
| or not a particular person is driving it but many don't.
|
| So when it's in public, the location of your car is not
| "private" information. How is acceleration, braking, or
| other engine telemetry data private?
| kube-system wrote:
| The right to privacy is not boolean. There is a spectrum
| of reasonable expectations of privacy. Also, the right to
| privacy in public is not necessarily zero. The varying
| degree of rights to privacy in public are less than in
| private settings, but often greater than zero.
|
| While your insurer may, by happenstance, see your license
| plate while you are driving around, they certainly are
| not following you 100% of the time. The degree to which
| your location is tracked when your license plate is
| plainly visible, is different than degree of privacy
| expectation when that location is being automatically
| recorded.
|
| > So when it's in public, the location of your car is not
| "private" information.
|
| It's just not that simple. It would be nice and
| convenient if "private" was a boolean value. But it is
| very much a float type:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(201
| 2)
| fn-mote wrote:
| > they certainly are not following you 100% of the time
|
| I don't follow the argument being made here.
|
| The state of modern surveillance is different from what
| is described. People are consenting to precise monitoring
| for slightly lower insurance premiums. The question is:
| should it be illegal (should we fight against monitoring)
| for some moral/philosophical reason, or are we accepting
| it because that's the way things are.
| kube-system wrote:
| There is not necessarily informed consent with the type
| of informatics data collection described in these suits.
|
| This isn't a lawsuit about a "progressive snapshot" type
| of device.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Firstly, the entire port of insurance is to spread risk.
| If the the market for insurance is "too efficient" at
| determining who is high-risk and who is not, then it is no
| longer fulfilling its social function.
|
| Insurance is a business, where the insured pays an insurer
| to pay for costs for damages that the insured cannot afford
| to pay. The insurer's job is to calculate the amount of
| premium necessary to ensure they can afford to pay for the
| damages, but they also have to sell the insurance at
| competitive prices, so they probably have to calculate
| premiums based on the risks that each insured represents.
|
| >Secondly, you seem to be implying that only aggressive
| drivers are getting flagged by the data. But the computer
| doesn't know if you accelerate and brake hard because
| you're an aggressive driver, or if your circumstances
| require it. Maybe you have to commute to your job in heavy
| stop-and-go traffic with difficult merges.
|
| The goal is not to label drivers as aggressive or not
| aggressive. The goal is to tease out the factors that lead
| to claims. With a sufficiently large dataset, it should be
| possible to tease out whether or not characteristics such
| as stop and go traffic is an indication of higher
| likelihood of claims. If an insurer does not calculate this
| property, then a competing insurer probably will and hence
| be able to offer lower premiums to less risky customers.
|
| >Finally, this kind of surveillance changes behavior in
| ways that may make things less safe. If you're driving down
| a street and a ball bounces out from behind a parked car do
| you slam on your brakes out of fear that there is a child
| chasing after it, or do you think that hitting the brakes
| might make your premiums go up so you just hope that there
| isn't a child coming.
|
| If a single event of slamming brakes is causing premiums to
| go up, I doubt that insurer is pricing premiums accurately.
| However, if the insurer experiences greater losses in
| neighborhoods where people are slamming their brakes more
| often, then obviously the risks are higher in that
| neighborhood and premiums need to reflect that.
|
| The higher premiums themselves would tell people in the
| neighborhood that either they are driving too fast, or they
| are not looking after the children. And if people are
| choosing to risk plowing into a child for the sake of their
| premiums, then that is more of a moral quandary than a
| problem with insurance pricing.
|
| If the goal is to subsidize a specific population, then
| that should be a government function via taxes.
| kube-system wrote:
| > If the goal is to subsidize a specific population, then
| that should be a government function via taxes.
|
| As I understand, all 50 states require insurers to write
| high risk drivers policies through assigned risk plans. I
| guess you could shuffle the money through the state as
| well, but it seems like an inefficient way to accomplish
| the same.
|
| But really, car insurance and their respective mandates
| exist to protect the innocent, not drivers themselves.
| e.g. No state requires that you insure your property.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Firstly, the entire port of insurance is to spread risk.
| If the the market for insurance is "too efficient" at
| determining who is high-risk and who is not, then it is no
| longer fulfilling its social function._
|
| This might be definitionally correct, but that doesn't mean
| it's right.
|
| There's no reason you shouldn't rewarded for being a
| better-than-average driver (or conversely, punished for
| being worse).
|
| > _Maybe you have to commute to your job in heavy stop-and-
| go traffic with difficult merges._
|
| You don't think we have the technical ability to determine
| this, to some degree? We have self driving cars for crying
| out loud.
|
| > _If you 're driving down a street and a ball bounces out
| from behind a parked car do you slam on your brakes out of
| fear that there is a child chasing after it, or do you
| think that hitting the brakes might make your premiums go
| up so you just hope that there isn't a child coming._
|
| What a reach.
|
| You hit the brakes, because if there is a child, and you
| hit them, your premiums will be even higher.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| > You don't think we have the technical ability to
| determine this, to some degree? We have self driving cars
| for crying out loud.
|
| Depends on how granular the data is. If it's second by
| second telemetry, you could tell this. If it's an
| aggregate report for a month, you can't.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| > You don't think we have the technical ability to
| determine this, to some degree? We have self driving cars
| for crying out loud.
|
| I actually work on self-driving cars, so I have some
| experience on this. Trying to predict safety performance
| based on more easily measured metrics like hard stops is
| _hard_. AV companies spend a lot of time thinking about
| it. I don 't think they get it perfect either.
| vel0city wrote:
| > the computer doesn't know if you accelerate and brake
| hard because you're an aggressive driver, or if your
| circumstances require it
|
| Preface: I'm not strongly for these hyper monitoring
| systems of driving patterns for insurance.
|
| Often being in a situation where you have to slam on your
| brakes means even if you're a good driver you're in a lot
| more riskier environments than a driver who doesn't often
| have to. A good driver that is rarely in a situation where
| he has to slam on his brakes probably gets into fewer
| collisions than the same driver in an environment where he
| needs to do it often. Often having to brake hard is still
| potentially an indicator of higher claim likliehood.
| jajko wrote:
| Yeah but if you really optimize it to ad absurdum,
| everybody will pay according to damages they will cause,
| negating whole point of 'socialized' spread-across-
| variable-population insurance.
|
| End users shouldn't generally want insurance to run over-
| optimally, that benefits just shareholders of given
| insurance and not population overall. That I consider
| myself above-average driver changes absolutely nothing in
| this. And those stupid enough who think similarly and
| think they should therefore pay less can and will be
| easily hit from unexpected angles and end up same or
| worse (age, old injuries/mental diagnoses, family history
| and gazillion other params which are/should be mostly
| illegal to optimize against, and you have little to no
| control of).
| devman0 wrote:
| Hot take: maybe that is actually desirable? If insurance
| has a plethora of good actuarial information and risk
| modeling, and one's insurance costs are high, that's the
| market telling that person that they probably shouldn't
| be driving. If high insurance costs promote alternate
| means of transportation for highly risky drivers, that's
| a net win for everyone on the road.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| the point of insurance is to make sure if you get into a
| crash with somebody else and they are at fault, that they
| even have the means to pay you in the first place. if
| forced to, people make the decision to drive uninsured
| because it is nigh impossible to travel around this
| country otherwise, and then it's worse when they _do_ get
| into an accident and cannot pay the other driver 's
| costs. you can't squeeze blood from a stone.
|
| this is also partially the reasoning behind ACA requiring
| health insurance; hospitals were struggling because they
| could not collect from people with no money that were
| winding up in the ER.
| vel0city wrote:
| Sounds like we need better enforcement of insurance
| requirements. Driving a car uninsured should have some
| extremely stiff penalties. Once again, maybe if the
| penalties are high enough and the costs expensive enough
| for more people, there'd actually be more of a push to
| re-think overly car dependent life.
|
| It will optimize society overall to have risky,
| uninsurable drivers _not driving_.
|
| It's not like healthcare. There will always be healthcare
| costs. We don't have to have everyone drive all the time,
| _we choose to_.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Realistically, the other person ends up in jail and then
| you still can't get compensated for car repairs. It's not
| super clear why that would be better than the pooling of
| risk that happens today that results in compensation.
|
| American society has chosen to create a built environment
| that is inhospitable to anything else except driving, so
| I don't think this is actually a real choice. The people
| who are getting into crashes all the time are not the
| ones pushing for that built environment.
| ds_opseeker wrote:
| > Driving a car uninsured should have some extremely
| stiff penalties.
|
| I want to agree with you, but wonder if you have ever
| been poor? When you need the car to get to work so you
| can feed your kids, but you can't afford all of
|
| - feed kids - rent - insurance
|
| because you got hit by a surprise medical bill (kid got
| sick, maybe?)
|
| I'm strongly in favor of your end goal (less car-
| dependent life), I'm just cautious about using punishment
| as a way to get there.
|
| Unless we made the fine proportional to income?
| vel0city wrote:
| I'm not generally for hyper analyzed metrics gathering in
| this case (I don't like the privacy implications), but
| I'm generally for riskier drivers paying significantly
| more. Individuals should feel the costs of their driving
| more in the US IMO. I don't like heavily subsidizing
| people who drive so recklessly.
|
| Maybe then they'd realize overly building car dependent
| cities isn't that great in the end.
|
| Convincing risky drivers to pick an option other than
| driving seems great to me. I'd be happy if a huge chunk
| of drivers couldn't drive anymore. It would make everyone
| safer and save a ton of lives.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| > if you really optimize it to ad absurdum, everybody
| will pay according to damages they will cause, negating
| whole point of 'socialized' spread-across-variable-
| population insurance
|
| Except spread out over time, which is still a net-
| benefit.
| Retric wrote:
| Ultra efficient premiums should include the time domain
| by charging premiums in winter vs. summer based on risks.
|
| Keep getting better and a 'perfect' system would bump the
| premiums pre accident to cover the full costs of that
| accident immediately before your accident. Making
| insurance a pure dead loss for consumers which means
| insurance must be inefficient to be useful.
| shagie wrote:
| > But the computer doesn't know if you accelerate and brake
| hard because you're an aggressive driver, or if your
| circumstances require it. Maybe you have to commute to your
| job in heavy stop-and-go traffic with difficult merges.
|
| I would contend that this doesn't matter in terms of risk.
| It doesn't matter if the risk is caused by the person being
| a bad driver or if the risk is caused by the commute route
| that you take at a certain time of day.
|
| In either case, there's risk that is shown by the data. If
| you are driving a route that is stressful and risky, it
| doesn't matter if you're a good driver or a bad driver -
| you're doing something that is risky.
|
| In days of old this was done by looking at the commute
| distance and likely route (the insurance company has home
| address and work address).
| hansvm wrote:
| > If the the market for insurance is "too efficient" at
| determining who is high-risk and who is not, then it is no
| longer fulfilling its social function.
|
| Then we need to break whatever that social function is away
| from the umbrella of "insurance." Mandatory car insurance
| is predicated on the fact that you can pay enough on
| average to cover your damages to others but might not be
| able to do so in the worst case. If we're in a world where
| somebody's driving exceeds the external damage bounds they
| can afford _even on average_, subsidizing those people is
| no longer the job of insurance.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Mandatory car insurance is essentially a welfare benefit.
| The benefit is just administered by insurance companies,
| because they are believed to be more efficient than the
| government. (This is pretty common for all kinds of
| benefits around the world.) Mandatory insurance is not a
| private contract two parties have reached at their own
| initiative, and the usual business considerations don't
| apply. If an insurance company wants to provide mandatory
| car insurance, they must follow government policies, not
| their own policies.
|
| If someone drives recklessly and causes excessive damage,
| the government has other tools beyond insurance premiums.
| They can, for example, revoke the license and confiscate
| the car. Or issue a fine or put the driver in prison.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Firstly, the entire port of insurance is to spread risk.
|
| I think that definition is incomplete: Insurance is to
| spread risk _equitably_.
|
| That means accounting for disparate probabilities and
| disparate impacts. For example, consider "house burns down"
| insurance, where premiums depend on whether the house
| is/isn't near a wooded area, and whether it is a
| cheap/expensive house... And yes, also whether or not the
| homeowner has a passion for homemade fireworks.
|
| > If the the market for insurance is "too efficient" at
| determining who is high-risk and who is not, then it is no
| longer fulfilling its social function.
|
| While I agree that various dystopic outcomes are possible,
| the problem is _not_ better knowledge about risks itself.
| Improved information about the dangers we 're trying to
| avoid or fix is--all else being equal--always a good thing.
|
| The real problems stem from those other no-so-equal factors
| like:
|
| 1. Imbalanced power relationships. (Strongly implicated in
| the rest of the list.)
|
| 2. Opaque decision-making that cannot be reviewed or
| appealed.
|
| 3. Information not being fairly discovered/shared.
| (Customer hides known higher risk, insurer hides lower-
| than-expected risks to squeeze out more profit, etc.)
|
| 4. Bad contracts which pull the rug out from under people
| because of how they handle _changes_ in knowledge even when
| risks haven 't actually changed. Imagine health-insurance
| which covers Giant Monsterification, but later a test
| reveals patient has Godzilla genes, and now the customer is
| dropped... Even though the originally-covered probability
| itself hasn't changed, only our knowledge about it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Insurance is to spread risk equitably. That means
| accounting for disparate probabilities_
|
| Everyone defines equitably according to their whims. Does
| it mean the riskier pay more? Those can afford it pay
| more? The unsympathetic pay more? _Et cetera_
| fn-mote wrote:
| I think that the real purpose of government is to
| negotiate these meanings.
|
| That it is difficult does not mean that we should not
| attempt it. And then you see the other factors mentioned
| up-comment...
|
| If the government does not work out this ambiguity, it
| gets worked out other ways - which is why we are having
| this discussion.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Safe drivers subsidize unsafe drivers and this subsidy can
| and should be reduced when possible with better predictive
| information.
|
| Okay, that's an interesting perspective, let's explore. A
| policy that can be unilaterally cancelled at any time, and
| forces you to put cameras in your car, could be the most
| efficient insurance ever. As long they manage to predict that
| you'll be in an accident in time to electronically cancel
| your policy, they'll never need to pay out more than
| refunding your premium.
| ethagknight wrote:
| Insurance premiums also fund salaries, bonuses, massive ad
| campaigns, high end office leases, and more.
|
| If we just had a simple common slush fund (like amongst a
| large family self-insuring), our insurance would be far
| cheaper. The data harvesting boosts profitability but does
| not necessarily equal lower premiums.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >If we just had a simple common slush fund (like amongst a
| large family self-insuring),
|
| Like a mutual insurance company?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance
|
| >A mutual insurance company is an insurance company owned
| entirely by its policyholders. It is a form of consumers'
| co-operative. Any profits earned by a mutual insurance
| company are either retained within the company or rebated
| to policyholders in the form of dividend distributions or
| reduced future premiums.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| They can learn about my safety per mile from my odometer and
| my spotless driving record, not my real time location
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I can't really see how enriching the state of Texas to the tune
| of 1.4 billion US dollars is "the good fight". Meta does
| something that negatively effects individuals & the outcome is
| the state collects a paycheck? No thanks.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Banning books and squashing rights doesn't pay for itself! /s
|
| said as a Texan that vehemently disagrees with the gov't in
| charge
| stctw wrote:
| > Banning books
|
| I don't see how comments saying that are accepted here.
| Everyone knows that no books are being banned anywhere in
| the country. You can go to a bookstore or web site and buy
| whatever books you want. They can be bought in public or
| delivered to your home. Publishers can publish whatever
| they want. The First Amendment protects authors,
| publishers, and readers.
|
| Meanwhile, in the UK, if you share a message consisting
| entirely of a couple of emojis on Facebook, you can be
| sentenced to 2 months in jail, being convicted and
| sentenced in merely 3 days.
|
| Yet people here continue to make accusations of "banning
| books." I hope that the Internet enables humanity to
| eventually "graduate" out of this state in which we have
| infinite access to information yet consume enormous amounts
| of propaganda.
| digging wrote:
| Forcibly removing books (about very specific topics
| related to oppressed cultural minorities) from public
| school libraries is not the same thing as enacting a
| national ban on printing or trading those books, no.
|
| But it's a lot closer to a total ban than it is to _not_
| banning books. (And I stand by "forcibly," if you've
| seen any of the adults screaming at school board hearings
| or issuing threats over these books)
| vel0city wrote:
| Books are absolutely being banned from public libraries
| and schools in the US. There may not be laws preventing
| the private circulation of such books (yet...some are
| arguing bringing back the Comstock act for these works)
| but they certainly are being banned from certain
| settings.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > I don't see how comments saying that are accepted here
|
| because they are true. "The district then banned 14
| titles (bringing its total since 2021 to 30), including
| popular books by Dr. Seuss and Judy Blume"[0] i don't see
| how comments like yours are even made here, but at least
| they are not accepted.
|
| [0] https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/11/texas-
| library-book-b...
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Paxton is a crook, but in this case he's fighting the good
| fight.
|
| The Texas Attorney General is an entire office of people. It's
| always nice to know that while you want to judge the book by
| it's cover you're willing to put that aside.
|
| It is always odd to me that people feel the need to announce
| this.
| pc86 wrote:
| The common belief is that Texas === Republican (it doesn't),
| and folks here need to virtue signal that they're
| _definitely_ not one to be or support any Republican in any
| way ever under any circumstances. This is clearly one of the
| single-digit number of aberrations where a Republican has
| done something that isn 't objectively evil, right?
|
| I don't know why we can't just say a good thing is a good
| thing and leave it at that. Every politician has done good
| things. Every politician has done bad things. Every
| politician (or very close) has probably done something you'd
| consider downright evil.
| digging wrote:
| Paxton _is_ a crook though, abuses the power of his office,
| and generally would prefer to act in ways that hurt his
| political opponents rather than ways that server the public.
| He works against the public interest and should be called out
| for it. So, it 's genuinely shocking for the TAG under his
| direction to be protecting consumers from these kinds of
| abuses.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > He works against the public interest and should be called
| out for it
|
| It's an elected position in Texas. I understand that most
| of the people who frequent Hacker News wouldn't share his
| politics, but it's pretty undemocratic to "call him out"
| incessantly, even when it adds nothing to the situation
| being discussed, and in particular when he's been elected
| by a vote.
|
| It's mindless preaching to the choir to show that, yes, you
| are on the "proper" side of the false political divide.
| It's tiring. So, _I_ call _this_ out.
|
| The attitude, to me, boils down to, "I refuse to
| acknowledge anything good without reminding myself of
| everything bad." What value does this have? Maybe I just
| don't "get it."
| digging wrote:
| > What value does this have?
|
| I'm literally trying to get him voted out because he gets
| rich harming people I care about.
|
| If you think an elected official working against the
| interests of the constituency is just going to naturally
| get voted out of office, I don't have the energy for the
| depth this conversation requires.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Official release:
| https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...
|
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41239635)
| dang wrote:
| Related press release:
| https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-....
| subsubzero wrote:
| Fun fact, as a owner of a GMC auto I got a innocent looking email
| about the discontinuation of the Onstar Smart driver service
| which was the service in question that violated many US laws and
| sent data to insurance companies without customers authorization.
| I hope this hits GM really hard as this type of behavior will
| never cease until massive amounts of money is extracted from the
| perpetrators(GM etc).
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| And not just massive. It needs to be an order of magnitude more
| than they made from those deals. Too many times companies get
| slapped on the wrist for an amount considerably less than they
| made from their illicit activities.
|
| Which I never understood. Normal people that get caught doing
| things like selling stolen goods have to pay a fine on top of
| all money they may have made from selling it. Why aren't
| companies treated the same?
| Scaevolus wrote:
| IIRC the amounts involved were absolutely pitiful compared to
| the reputational damage-- they were being paid on the order
| of $10/car/year.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| What reputational damage?
|
| I know it's a number that gets calculated on cybersecurity
| assessment sheets, but I've never seen it being in any way
| connected to reality. Best I can tell, the actual
| reputational damage is almost universally $0. Security
| breaches are non-actionable oopsies - unless your product
| is literally preventing such breaches[0], it's going to be
| seen as a random event that has no bearing on customers
| making their purchasing decisions. After all, it could've
| happened to anyone, and might just as well happen to any of
| the competitors, and it doesn't even impact any of the
| subjects directly.
|
| --
|
| [0] - And not even then - see e.g. CrowdStrike, who're busy
| turning _the_ greatest security fuckup to date into a net
| positive event for them.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Why aren't companies treated the same?
|
| It's more of a hostage negotiation. You want to hurt the
| company and it's owners, but if you sue too hard, you're
| likely to just hurt it's workers and it's customers.
|
| It's why preventing companies from reaching _anything near_
| monopoly size is so important for corporate jurisprudence.
| "Too big to fail" is just the tip of this insane iceberg
| we've allowed to grow into our economy.
| trhway wrote:
| >You want to hurt the company and it's owners
|
| No. What you'd really want if you really wanted to fix
| things is to hurt the top and mid-managers who decided to
| commit those offenses. Unfortunately it almost never
| happens.
| AmVess wrote:
| The only way to fix things is to drag the occupants of
| the c-suite into civil court and start dropping massive
| fines on their heads. Do that, and this type of behavior
| would vanish within days.
| mrcsharp wrote:
| Don't forget the board. Top managers are made to break
| the law due to demands of infinite growth.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Top managers are made to break the law due to demands
| of infinite growth_
|
| No, they're not.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| I say, let the company be forced to be auctioned away and a
| ban on the executives from holding board/executive position
| for the next 5 years
| ensignavenger wrote:
| GM is nowhere near a monopoly in the automobile market,
| so that isn't an issue in this case.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Given the recent demonstrative pricing power the auto
| industry appears to be an oligopoly.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > You want to hurt the company and it's owners...
|
| The owners of big companies include lots of pension plans,
| index funds, etc. Hurting those owners, who didn't have any
| say in the bad decisions, is probably not what we want.
|
| Jail for executives who approve or have knowledge of
| illegal activities sounds good to me.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| > Jail for executives who approve or have knowledge of
| illegal activities sounds good to me.
|
| But then who would write the campaign contribution checks
| on which our government depends to survive?
| tomrod wrote:
| You're getting it! This is what people want! I say this
| only half joking because I think you get it, so no /s
| required :)
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > The owners of big companies include lots of pension
| plans, index funds, etc. Hurting those owners, who didn't
| have any say in the bad decisions, is probably not what
| we want.
|
| I mean... Shareholders are ultimately responsible for the
| company, they elect the board etc. If shareholders were
| impacted by this, maybe it would make more folks think
| twice about "passive investing"?
| beart wrote:
| I don't see this doing much unless everyone stops at
| about the same time. The largest shareholders have a
| disproportionate amount of power to influence the
| direction of most companies.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Companies need to have to name someone who is criminally
| responsible for the companies actions.
| dboreham wrote:
| Because this isn't Europe -- US government is essentially
| owned by corporate interests, regardless of party in power.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| its not just that
|
| i don't want electronics built into cars
|
| i don't want data coming from my car
|
| i don't need a phone to be built into my car
|
| i don't need navigation to be built into my car
|
| they need to stay in their lane
|
| we need anti-enshittification laws
| ensignavenger wrote:
| I absolutely want electronics built into car! Requirements
| for antilock brakes, electronic fuel injection, and other
| electronics in vehicles has made them safer and more
| efficient. The other items on your list I can agree with,
| though.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| And ECUs make it so easy to manage all of these things! I
| love 80s/90s Japanese sports cars, but I don't think we
| need to go back to the era of using a gazillion vacuum
| lines to control all kinds of esoteric valves and sensors.
| But I agree with everything else; I don't want my car to
| connect to the internet, I don't want my car to track my
| travel and driving habits, and I definitely don't want that
| data sent to the manufacturer to be sold.
|
| It really just smacks of greed and nothing else... selling
| cars has a long history of being a profitable business on
| its own. You don't _need_ to steal your customers ' data to
| turn it into another revenue stream, but it sure looks good
| on a financial report.
| kaibee wrote:
| > It really just smacks of greed and nothing else...
| selling cars has a long history of being a profitable
| business on its own. You don't need to steal your
| customers' data to turn it into another revenue stream,
| but it sure looks good on a financial report.
|
| Its not only greed, its also a race to the bottom. If
| you're GM, you might prefer not doing that, but if your
| competition starts doing that, then you're at a
| competitive disadvantage, because they'll have more money
| to invest in engineers/production optimization, etc. So
| the logic then goes that you might as well do it first.
|
| This is a case where you need government regulations to
| enforce mutual disarmament.
| beambot wrote:
| Let's add "renewable energy sources" for good measure.
|
| Then the only viable solution is a horse. Ha!
| ericmay wrote:
| The best way to combat this is walking and bike lanes. With
| no alternative to cars for most people you will see this kind
| of behavior continue.
|
| Trying to pit automakers against each other on this topic and
| others is the misdirection. They want to distract you from
| wanting alternatives so that you don't even need to have a
| spying car in the first place.
| mjevans wrote:
| I'd be fine with letting the company get to choose between a
| sufficiently large fine, and board level executives who
| encouraged the behavior going to jail for real durations of
| time.
|
| They can pick one of three choices: Don't be evil. Pay more
| than they made. Go to jail for the same duration of time as
| having stolen Option 2's money, and not the scapegoats, people
| actually in charge.
| api wrote:
| Dangerously invasive data like location should be subject to
| HIPAA-like regulations. Leak or sell without authorization?
| That'll be $100k per data point of unauthorized location data per
| user.
|
| This would convert data like that into a liability rather than an
| asset, which would pretty much fix the problem.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Say it with me now: "Transpose EU GDPR into US law _yesterday_!
| "
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| We can learn from GDPR's mistakes and do better.
|
| A single national regime and enforcer. No obligation for
| every complaint to result in an investigation. Fines based on
| gains and damages, not revenue. Liability that can be
| privately enforced. And a trebling of damages where
| noncompliance is shown to be willful.
| unglaublich wrote:
| The GM that discontinues Android and Carplay integrations for
| reasons of 'safety' and 'privacy'?
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| They also should be looking at other brands who did this - like
| Subaru, Hyundai/Kia, Mitsubishi, etc. I recall that Subaru in
| particular did not revise their location sharing policy when
| articles came out earlier this year about how these companies
| resell data to brokers like Lexis Nexis or Verisk. If you get a
| new Subaru with a Sirius XM radio for example, something that
| gets forced onto many or all configuration of cars (not sure), by
| default there is an option selected for sharing your location
| data with them. That might be true for any brand that shoves
| satellite radio into your vehicle. But you also are giving them
| authorization to do whatever they want with such data when you
| sign up for convenience services like the ability to
| lock/unlock/remote start the car from your phone. The fine print
| for those digital services includes giving your consent from what
| I read.
| hondohondo wrote:
| GM aka Government Motors will never learn. Will they?
| mcguire wrote:
| Didn't Tesla recently move to Texas?
|
| What do they do with the data they collect?
| RIMR wrote:
| Texas, the state whose AG said that they were entitled to private
| medical data about patients in other states?
|
| https://www.thestranger.com/news/2023/12/21/79315926/texas-t...
|
| Not surprising that Texas cares more about privacy related to
| your property than they do privacy related to your body.
| pupumeme wrote:
| This case exemplifies a broader trend we're seeing across
| industries: the tension between data-driven innovation and
| individual privacy. On one hand, collecting and analyzing vehicle
| data could lead to safer cars, more efficient traffic systems,
| and personalized services that genuinely benefit consumers. On
| the other, it raises serious privacy concerns and the potential
| for misuse. The key issue here isn't just about GM or even the
| auto industry - it's about how we as a society want to balance
| progress with privacy. Do we want a future where every device is
| constantly collecting data about us, ostensibly to provide better
| services? Or do we draw a line and say some spaces - like our
| personal vehicles - should remain data-free zones?
| steelframe wrote:
| When it came time for me to buy my most recent car I made a list
| of requirements. If I couldn't find a car that meet them I was
| resolved to not bother buying a car at all. The requirement at
| the top of the list was, "It doesn't spy on me." I ended up
| finding one that checked all the boxes once I removed its Data
| Communications Module (DCM) fuse.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Not gonna share your results? Only one?
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