China is spying on all cars using Chinese 5G Modems | Hacker News Reader

China is spying on all cars using Chinese 5G Modems

economist.com

53 pointshemantv18 comments

This article was written in 2024, and should probably get a "(2024)" tag attached to the title.

thanks for this, and thanks for everything.

Is it /the/ saurik?!

My thanks for Cydia too.

This kind of data collection is not limited to China (or the future they imagine in the article), as in Germany many car manufacturers do this kind of data collection since at least 2016, often without people really realizing the scope of it. Here's a good article about this (from Switzerland actually but also applicable to other countries in the EU and probably beyond):

* https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/wie-uns-autobauer-ausspaehen (in German)

For example, Mercedes Benz forced people to accept this kind of data collection when signing the buying contract (no consent -> no car), though I think they might no longer be able to do this now due to restrictions imposed by the GDPR, which forbids making an entire contract dependent on the consent to a data collection measure that is not strictly required for the purposes of the contract.

The data does (to my knowledge) not get centralized yet, but a conglomerate of car companies is working on a platform that will make the data accessible to third parties (supposedly with user consent), so that e.g. gas station operators can offer tailored discounts to people based on their route.

In general there's nothing fundamentally wrong with collecting this data, as a German I was very surprised to learn about this though as normally people are pretty privacy-aware here, and having all your movement data (and more) continuously streamed to your car manufacturer didn't seem like something that most people would take lightly. Seems I was wrong about this though as of today no one really seems to mind.

It may be gauche to say it bluntly, but I would consider it a huge difference if German companies held my data vs Chinese ones. China needs to reckon with it's deeply immoral political structures before I will ever feel safe as a consumer if their products.

Sure it's probably better if your data is held by a democratically elected government or a company that's under strict privacy jurisdiction, I would often prefer though if the data wouldn't exist to begin with (or at least would be properly anonymized). Let's face it, such detailed data sets can be very dangerous to a person and his/her freedoms if used by the wrong people, so they should not be created for purely economic reasons.

This article is a fictional account of what the Economist imagines China's future will look like.

OK, good to know that I am still sane. I started reading the article, and was very confused. I think I need more coffee.

This is the danger of China dominating electric vehicles in the future, which is to say China will dominate most of the car industry in the future, because EVs are the future of all cars.

Obviously, this isn't just about the spying and China "invading your privacy". If they have access to the car data, they probably have remote access to other components in the cars, too. Baidu's open source Apollo program is another trojan hourse that the China government would like the western markets to adopt.

IMHO the danger is not just limited to China, but anyone putting these kinds of invasive technologies into cars, without the car owner having any control over it.

HN headlines like this is why China discourages April fools day.

People who don't have time to read the article will have the idea of "China is spying on all cars using Chinese 5G Modems" in their mind and it's hard to correct wrong beliefs.

You can't expect the whole population to have time to read the content and be informed and careful enough to distinguish fiction and facts, especially if it comes from a reputable source like Economist.

this article has overestimated china's tech level, naive.

> this article has overestimated china's tech level, naive.

It's not bad to overestimate your adversary's tech level. The US developed the far-superior F-15 because it overestimated the capabilities and role of the Mig-25.

In this case, the overestimation could spur policy and technology decisions to increase security.

Why is this flagged?

Which cars use Chinese 5G modems?

Care to read the article?

That's not nice, nor helpful. I did read the article, a couple times actually.

Care to paste the line which give a list of specific cars?

The article states: The earliest commercial casualties of Mr Fu’s whistleblowing were carmakers in America, Europe and Japan, whose share prices plunged.

But your question makes absolutely no sense to begin with in the context of the article: it is about hypothetical scenario in 2024. That's why I naturally doubted that you read or, considering your statement, understood the article premise.

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