The Internet of Criminal Things
lwn.net
lwn.net
Politically, DRM is still a feature not a bug.
Any entity only perceives things it can measure and control. It will therefore never work to reduce its control, even when doing so would further its mission.
Hackers turning their / your car into a socially offensive mechanism should be treated similarly to putting firing pins back in decommissioned handguns.
Other than that the owner should have complete control over the thing they own. I'd rather suffer the occasional hick "rolling coal" than be restricted in what I can read and write.
> turning ... your car into a socially offensive mechanism should be [illegal]
Sure, but police the violation - not the mere ability to violate.
i think we need to discuss why you should be able to write to your car. Or rather, there will become a OSL layer style to the car. Drive train, brakes, steering. These are things I question why you should be able to do more than verify the binary. If you want to, turn up the fuel mix or something (showing my clear understanding of cars), well, apply for a UEFI key and sign your own binary. If the GPS on the car shows you on a public highway with a unlicensed binary drive train, frankly they can pull out the tyre bursting chains.
I don't think there should be some untouchable chip at the bottom of the stack able to stop the car if the "right" people send the code. Too dangerous. But I also don't want half coded ideas driving next to me at 100kph.
Does this mean there won't be a Debian binary for Ford, undoing all the crap they throw in. No it should exist, but should also get on the highway approval eventually.
Yes, you should be free to modify your car, to the bare metal. No you should not be free to drive your modified car on the road next to the rest of us.
All our cars pass yearly tests assuring us they meet minimum engineering standards - why not the software in the car.
And no, not so stringent on the rest of the OSL layers - you can swap binaries on the CD player
This type of cryptofascism is quite odd to me. You are not tolerant of modifications, so why bother pretending to be? Invoking some ambiguous authoritative "us" is ridiculous in light of actual reality.
People are driving all sorts of modified cars, on the road, right now. People modifying things necessarily know about them in depth and are likely to do better maintenance and care than someone who expects a car to "just work" if they bring it to the stealership on the service schedule (and otherwise have no idea what a weird sound means or even how to react in the event their Toyota "suddenly accelerates").
> All our cars pass yearly tests assuring us they meet minimum engineering standards
Lol. Vehicle inspections (I'm familiar with MA) cover the bare minimum of safety/signaling, plus emissions. You can technically be rejected for some types of aftermarket parts that don't meet FMVSS from when the car was manufactured, but only some shops check a couple specific things (say, headlight dispersion).
If your comment had any basis in reality, we wouldn't nearly have as many idiots driving around with "HID retrofits" that blind oncoming drivers. Do you realize that in the US, most auto parts actually aren't tested or certified by the government, but merely "self certified" by the manufacturer as conforming?
Sorry if I'm bursting your bubble here.
> These are things I question why you should be able to do more than verify the binary
You can currently take apart apart and modify any of these mechanical systems, yet people have a strong incentive to make sure they work before driving anywhere. Where exactly is this a priori worry and FUD coming from just because those systems are becoming software? Open software aligns incentives properly - it enables inspection, maintenance, repair, and design fixes long after the manufacturer has lost interest - just like standardized wrenches and threads. Our computerized devices should not be black boxes that we can only worship or discard.
But cryptofascist?! Honestly ?
I mean this is HN. You are supposed to play the ball, not the man, and certainly not call the ball a cryptofascist ball.
Do you do this to people in real life? Have you actually used the word "cryptofasist" to a living breathing police officer? Did it come with the word "Man!" as well.
Really, stop it.
I should probably comment on the rest of your points, but it's hard to get over the first point. :-)
Edit: so, actually trying to respond.
It seems you say that open source software will align incentives, in a similar manner to (openish) standards of wrenches and parts.
I am a big supporter (can't spell proponent) of OSS in place of black box solutions - it opens up an enormous range of positive solutions. However OSS does not produce or guarantee standards. And standards are the issue I see here.
The ability to freely inspect is vital to produce a market of reliable products. It however is not sufficient - open inspection, agreed tests and measurements, and enforcement, are just parts of that.
Fake spare motor parts (OK, spare parts not meeting standards and with no accountability) should be prevented from entering the market - they increase the risk of failure, and even if it is possible to inspect the goods to determine their suitability, why should we impose that cost on every market participant? We have standards and enforcement to avoid such a problem - it could be seen as nanny state keeping people safe, or it could be seen as encouraging markets.
The method of ensuring markets are not polluted to the point of market failure will vary - most people relying on licensing and enforcement. It usually works.
I am arguing that someone who wants to inspect and play and learn about their car software should be allowed to just as they should be allowed to strip and clean an engine.
But even the cursory annual inspections (MA I assume is similar to UK's MOT) are supposed to catch below standard modifications. Even when I was younger, engines were too complex to be learnt, Father to Son, without a Hayes manual.
These days I am sure it is possible for a motivated, intelligent person to become sufficiently skilled that they could modify a modern engine, but I doubt they could do that and learn how to spot fake medication, determine if an aircraft jet engine was properly serviced and if their office block is using the correct steel joists.
The world is way to complex for us to trust God and test the rest. We have to trust that there are sufficient standards and enforcements in place that we can rely on goods and services - otherwise we see market failure.
And finally in my rambling, I do not see it sufficent that if someone has modified their car, their own self preservation instinct will prevent them driving it if it could kill us both. That's never going to fly.
We need standards, inspection, accountability to ensure we defeat market failure.
We want to move beyond markets that deal in goods or services that cannot be trivially inspected by each participant.
Ps The code of Haranumbai (?) is an interesting example of regulatory failure and where standards are needed. There is a part
> If the GPS on the car shows you on a public highway with a unlicensed binary drive train, frankly they can pull out the tyre bursting chains
To me, it's a bait and switch to lead off as if you're open to end-user modifications, only to draw a line ruling out doing so on a public road - the normal and only use of 99% of consumer vehicles. And I don't think my characterization of your solution as "fascist" is overzealous either - it's based on fundamental reasoning that if someone breaks the rules they deserve immediate and severe punishment.
Also FWIW, I don't think I've ever encountered any police officer who was a cryptofascist. Perhaps the ones in unmarked cars.
Now, looking at your profile I see that you are in the UK (although I should have perceived based on spelling and kph). And I know regulation works much differently in the EU, with deny-by-default whitelisting instead of only reacting to problems. Perhaps in that environment, an individual working on their car really is different from an "official" mechanic. Or maybe the more cohesive regulatory environment just has you believing that it's more foolproof than it actually is.
In the US, an individual and a mechanic are the same thing, both philosophically and practically. And while the US's ad-hoc regulatory environment causes its own problems, I wouldn't say that an epidemic of mechanically unsafe cars is one of them.
So the only difference I see between modifying software and modifying hardware is that software has developed an insidious culture of "seems to work; good enough", even while being much more complex. But I think the answer to that is to push for openness and proper engineering, rather than entrenching manufacturers' sloppy processes of cobbling together reams of C and then keeping cameras out of the sausage factory.
edit: I'll respond to the points in your substantial edit tomorrow, since it requires internalizing the two very different philosophies of top-down guarantees vs bottom-up flexibility. But I will say that in the US, the self-preservation instinct has indeed been enough for people to mostly self regulate (and when it fails, insurance). Perhaps not as much as the UK (no idea about the relative stats), but it is sustainable.
No, it's not "overzealous". It's insulting and a clear violation of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You defending that word choice shows a blatant disrespect for others here on HN. I'm really surprised you haven't been flagged to oblivion.
I am going to have to digest a lot of this (I cannot see you have landed any significant mind-changers) but it is more and more clear that public policy is going to be informed and sometimes driven by a software literate culture - and the "works on my machine" approach you allude to is correctly more terrifying than "started up ok in my garage" approach to mechanical issues.
But I honestly think that what I understand of the libertarian / anarchy / whatever approach places waaaay to much emphasis on individual ability to determine the reliability / safety of goods available.
But all of this speaks to the needs for standards and guarantees in the commercial marketplace, yet you're applying them to private after-market modification.
We can't prevent someone from ordering paper brake pads and internally-stressed-steel bolts direct from China, putting them on their own car, and then selling it. Or jury rigging repairs in any manner of ways. Which is why there is such a market for "immutable" new manufacturer-authentic cars.
Presently there's no way to know if one's ECU's software was modified by the previous owner, and even if it has some modifications that are necessary because other hardware has been changed - such that replacing the ECU with a "stock" one would actually make other things stop working.
Free software actually solves this aftermarket-modification problem with regards to software, since a buyer would be able to re-flash the car to stock (and even require the seller do so before money/title changed hands).
And this fundamental problem of aftermarket inspection is also why state vehicle inspections don't certify the "entire car", but the bare modicum of external behavior (gross safety, signaling, and emissions). These are the "standards" we're talking about with respect to individual modification, and currently one can modify most anything they like as long as it meets that external behavior. Preventing any aftermarket modification whatsoever is a much stricter regime, one that I don't see the necessity to change to.
> But I honestly think that what I understand of the libertarian / anarchy / whatever approach places waaaay to much emphasis on individual ability to determine the reliability / safety
Anybody driving a car, at any time, can choose to steer into others, drive drunk/high, speed, drive on the wrong side of the road, park on the highway, use dodgy aftermarket parts, ignore mechanical upkeep, tow unsafely, be distracted, or fall asleep.
And despite all of this, people's own sense of self-preservation and personal responsibility does actually work to keep traffic mostly flowing!
Please stick to substance.
If it wasn't "crypto" I would have tried to be more palatable than saying "fascist", but I thought it worthwhile to reference the general pattern.
Apparently this is a really offensive word to some people, but I didn't think HN had banned swearing?
I think just avoid inflammatory rhetoric altogether. If your argument is strong, it doesn't get stronger by invoking "fascism". It just makes you sound like Britta Perry.
I assume this TV caricature you referenced is seen as annoying and is generally ignored, rather than someone who is getting in physical fights all the time for offending people? To me that sounds hyper-benign, not inflammatory.
This isn't about swearing, it's about discussion quality. Inflammatory epithets are noise, distract from the substance of what you're saying, and lower the expected value of the thread by increasing the odds of an nasty, low-substance subthread. Conversely, if you edit that out and stick to substance, your argument will come through more clearly and you will increase the odds of high-signal replies.
Your account doesn't have a history of being uncivil, so we've unkilled the flagkilled comments upthread.
You and tptacek are right in that my entire comment would have been better if it were much less personal. I ended up down that road because the comment I was replying to seemed to be hand waving away my point with a perspective that glossed over key points. I still can't necessarily see how I could have responded better in-the-large (local edits could obviously make it seem less personal), but I will take a step back next time.
Besides altruism or avoiding repercussions, why would anybody choose to tune for emissions? It's a collective action problem. Maybe when slowing down / stopped, so a tailwind didn't leave you breathing your horrible exhaust.
Thinking a little further, inspections won't be able to prevent this modification if flashing is really easy - just revert before and restore the modifications afterwards.
My general stance is "fuck trusted hardware", because any contemporary implementation is likely to involve a foreign asymmetric key that makes it so someone else owns "your" hardware. But I do see a Free approach to it that involves time locks / hashing proof of work, and possibly logs changes. This way would provide some appropriate physical security and auditing, while not restricting any party in long-term possession of the device.
At least for petrol engines, ultra-high emissions usually means low fuel economy and performance, as optimum combustion means negligible CO and NOx (and unburned hydrocarbons). In other words, turning for those will decrease emissions to a low point, although maybe not to the point where the environmentalists are satisfied. The three points are quite close together.
With diesels the situation is somewhat different, since there's no throttle plate and the only thing that can be adjusted is the amount of fuel injected, and increasing that both increases power and emissions while decreasing fuel economy.
My point is that if you don't care about emissions, then there is nothing to trade off. A computer controlled system can be tuned entirely for mileage at low power output and also tuned entirely for power at the high end.
It seems like municipalities with emissions testing requirements could easily catch these "socially offensive hackers" if they use the older hook-it-up-to-the-tailpipe testing technology. Then we wouldn't have to get permission from our betters to alter our own property.
As for the firearm, let's imagine decommissioned firearms are all painted pink, because that tells other people the gun is completely safe. If you replace the pin in a pink gun (or paint your real gun pink) you are sending out fake and potentially lethal social signals. Regulation is not part of it. Convention is.
We have enforced minimum standards and behaviour on drivers and cars, because the social signals tell us something useful. And still morons drive too fast in souped up cars.
Edit: the analogy is not meant to imply you are the moron. It's a bit early in the morning
Hey downvoters, why don't you take that attitude to the army and see how they react? Professional gun-handlers tend to have a lot more respect for guns than you have. That ought to make you pause for thought.
Edit: drat, and the site you can use to get more stats: http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10_us.html
[1]: http://tinyurl.com/qfqn5oz
You can't have perfect security. You can have security that makes bad actors pay more for the privilege of being bad actors.
Or whatever - the point isn't the methods, it's the pattern of one-upsmanship.
Hell you could put a green odometer in it and give a tax break proportional to the percent of miles driven in green mode to encourage it's use.
Trying to force car enthusiasts to give up performance will just drive them to older cars which don't have crippling software or dangerous hacks to bypass the restrictions.
So, say I want, for instance, to represent the stereotype person who rolls coal on their diesel pickup and believes global warming is a left-wing conspiracy. Look it up on youtube if you don't know what rolling coal is. (We can get into a whole debate on whether stereotypes are inherently good or bad, but that's not the point. They're a very effective commumication tool, which is why humans are so quick to label and group other humans, but obviously they're only to be used when not offensive.)
And I suspect that a luxury performance car owner would be just as likely to turn off emission controls if it would help performance as a rural pickup truck owner of whatever political persuasion (in both cases).
If we're trying to avoid gaming the system, wouldn't it be better to drive around a bunch of cars, using the natural variability of the conditions to defeat the cheaters? Sure, it's not as precise, but you get better accuracy because people can't trick the system.
And also, how will you ensure that certain manufacturers aren't actually given better conditions?
You look at them with disbelief and ask why they designed it to skirt the edge of illegal levels of pollution and be so likely to fail.
For CAFE, makers sell some high mpg models at cost/slight loss to allow them to sell high-margin luxury and sports models.
I suspect that in a few decades time this will be regarded as a heavy blow to the internal combustion engine - or at least against Diesel. It is an inflection point at which a scandal pushes into public conciousness and mass media the mounting evidence against Diesel engines and the health effects of smog, and the insufficient actual progress fixing it. Meanwhile electric cars are gaining fast.
The politicians are in "something must be done" mode, which is the usual reaction to a problem that has been ignored for a while and now is in the news.
e.g.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/france-consider-phasing-diesel-tax...
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/10/03/uk-volkswagen-emiss...
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/01/uk-governmen...
For most software projects these days, it's impossible to verify that a binary blob came from a given set of source code.
It's possible to do, though. Bitcoin, tor and a large number of Debian packages build reproducibly:
https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds/About
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/deterministic-builds-part-t...
We should encourage more of it. Maybe give the competitors a factory each.
This may work with politicians. I fear, persuading them to grant users other freedoms (like a freedom to change program or distribute your changes) is very unlikely to happen.
[1]: "The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish"