A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
I would totally buy a brand new car without all the "visible" electronics (by visible I mean all the screens and doodads. I don't mind ABS and other "invisible" electronics as long as they are reliable which is not a given nowadays).
I don't get the point of turning the interior of a car into a smartphone experience.
I watched a YT video of a Mercedess class S review. So many screens, leds, buttons etc. The reviewer was so busy fiddling with the controls that he never saw a pedestrian woman wanting to cross the road. If she hadn't payed attention he would probably have hit her.
Touch controls for anything a driver needs to manipulate while driving are obviously ridiculous, so there's not much else to say there. But given how dangerous using a phone while driving is under most circumstances, what on earth are phone-related controls doing taking up prime real estate on a steering wheel in so many modern vehicles, even if they're tactile? Either way, it's like the car makers said "OK, we get that using these features while driving is about as dangerous as driving while you're drunk, but the kind of person who will buy our premium vehicles is going to be grossly irresponsible anyway, so they might as well have an easy time doing it."
And then after distracting the driver's attention and giving them lots to look at other than what they actually need for driving, they act all surprised that the driver who was "required to be fully aware and able to take over control of the vehicle immediately at any time" was messing around with the infotainment system with lane keeping, cruise control and automatic distance keeping turned on instead of watching the road, and point to the legal small print when the inevitable tragedy happens because of course the driver was not actually able to take over immediately when something unexpected happened.
This whole issue makes my blood boil. It's like the worst example of prioritising flash and gimmicks at the expense of making something that actually works properly, and in a context where safety is a huge factor and people are literally dying unnecessarily every day. These kinds of idiocy should have been regulated out of existence the day after they were announced.
It makes new wonder how these non-tactile buttons and entertainment systems are even legal to use while driving. And if you had to stop your car to adjust the radio then these touch screens would immediately disappear.
It's actually not ideal because now the passenger can't use it either, but at least they've made an attempt to stop drivers interacting with the screen at high speeds.
Mazda is clearly aware that they work better, but I'm sure customers who don't drive often or don't pay attention to the experience of driving simply assume that a larger touchscreen is better and somehow more modern.
I sometimes even turn the screen off completely, on long drives or at night; I only wish there was a dedicated button to do so.
The car is great too - it has dedicated buttons for pretty much everything else, including a dedicated, physical volume knob in the center armrest and track change buttons on the steering wheel, climate control, various driver assistance features, etc. It was all clearly designed with the driver in mind, and the touchscreen was an afterthought.
These are pretty damned reliable, IMO, in absolute terms (before even giving credit for the fact than an automobile is pretty harsh environment for electronics with temperature and humidity swings, large voltage transients, poor grounds, mechanical shock/vibration, road salt, corrosion, etc). I've probably changed more power window regulators than ABS or EFI modules.
That’s the kind of failure case I wish fancy electronics had. Component breaks = now you’re driving a lower trim-level. As opposed to $5000 touchscreen module dies and now you can’t use the car.
You say this in jest, but depending on your locale and transport needs, you could consider a motorcycle or bicycle. The interface is a bit like riding a horse, just more 21st century (obviously).
Modern bikes come with ABS and fuel injection, and tires these days are great. Motorcycles don't come with any of the annoying road-car nanny-state stuff. Riding a bike is cool too.
This would be a dream.
I live in a reasonably deserted/seasonal neighbourhood, so it has a neat 2-lane divided avenue down the middle, but it is usually very empty (a car maybe every minute).
This doesn't mean I can ride anywhere but the very edge of the asphalt, almost tripping my pedals on the sidewalk rise (I forget the word in English), since drivers love to pick up some speed in the avenue and drive at frankly disrespectfully close distances, even though they could have almost entire lane of distance to a cyclist.
> This would be a dream.
Or the kind of urban nightmare where motorcycles (sorry, battery assisted bicycles) are rushing down sidewalks at 20 mph, barely missing baby carriages, dogs, and other humans.
The curb?
There is no truth to this: First, riding a horse is a _cooperative_ enterprise. You have to communicate with another living being and convince it to do what you want. It is not just a matter of pull one way to go in that direction. Second, the horse has a survival instinct. With good communication that instinct is lined up with your desires. A motorcycle, on the other hand, does not care whether it or you survive anything.
I am far from being a competent rider, but I'd rather be on a horse.
The wife and I enjoyed a tourist horse ride. Because of my motorcycle past time I was assigned "the fast horse".
The enjoyable leisurely ride out only had a minor disagreement regards a path shortcut under a low hanging branch.
The ride back included a gallop in shallow lake waters.
Apoplectically incompetent I hung on for dear life trying to balance standing crouched in the stirrups while we proceeded to overtake everyone thanks to the horses own plan.
Thankfully the lead guide called forwards telling it to slow and it was someone else who fell off into the shallow water as we came to a stop.
I am far from being a competent rider - either horse or motorbike - but I'd rather be calling the shots!
To each their own. :-)
With a horse, you get to communicate and convince. Also, stretching your legs and not squeezing would help.
> To each their own. :-)
Definitely.
Which is still, while perhaps not as “atrocious” as plural “orders of magnitude”, without doubt something people considering riding bikes be fully aware of and prepared to accept the risk/consequences of.
I personally believe you can manage that risk. But I might be bullshitting myself because I want to ride because I enjoy it a lot. 32 years and approaching 1 million km on the bikes I own with my most serious injury being a dislocated shoulder is a fun/consequence ratio I’m happy enough to live with. (I suspect my decision there might be different if I had children or other similar responsibilities…)
Risk management is a personal thing. If you are lax about it, expect lax outcomes - which explains a proportion of the 10x worse figure, but not all of it clearly. Some risks you can't mitigate much and humans with a metal shield around them are predictably better off.
Regards kids... I gave up my bike for $$$ to move cities. Upon first kid birth, I bought another bike off a guy who was giving it up because his wife was having a kid.
My friends joked that it was clear his wife loved him more than mine loved me. :-P
But I missed riding, my wife has no issue and the logistics justified the cost. I am still wanting to add ride cameras though.
Enjoy! Best wishes for safe riding.
It's the same deal with avoiding wire insulation that rodents enjoy eating. Your only option is to buy a car from before 2000-ish.
I'd actually like to find a DIY subculture of taking old car frames and swapping in newer features a bit at a time. People do it with electric motors, but it still seems hard to get decent range/mileage/etc on a DIY EV project.
This is not true.
- Alcohol interlock installation facilitation and attention detection
- Emergency stop signal (aka autonomous braking)
- Intelligent speed assistance (aka adaptive cruise control)
- Lane keeping assist
- Reversing camera or detection system
All these systems require the car to be aware of its surroundings, i.e. require some "intelligence" in the control systems.
None of them seem to require recording or log files.
Does NHTSA recommend rearview video systems? Yes. As of May 2018, NHTSA requires this lifesaving technology on all new vehicles. We recommend you look for RVSs that meet NHTSA’s performance specifications when shopping for a vehicle.
A rear view camera allows any vehicle to meet the regulation regardless of vehicle styling and design. They are cheap, too.
But they are not strictly required. Your average 1980s sedan probably would meet the requirement as long as it had mirrors on the driver and passenger side.
Here is the regulation: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.111
For example, I am 100% certain that the benefit of having an airbag between my legs does not outweigh the monetary cost plus the comfort cost of not having an AC vent under the steering wheel.
Why should people not be allowed to make that choice?
Keep in mind that the only reason we have airbags is because Naderites did not believe that one could rely on people using seatbelts so there needed to be technology that did not require cooperation from humans.
Fast-forward a couple of decades. Oooops. Airbags have no use without seatbelts and provide only a small amount of additional protection in most cases (thanks to crumple zones and improvements in shaping the interior of the car).
The real benefit is in rigid passenger cabins that keep tires and engines out of the occupants legs.
IMO side curtain airbags are a far better safety improvement than frontal airbags because the safety technology in the sideways direction and space for dissipating force is lacking so something needs to pick up the slack.
There's a happy medium somewhere. In an ideal world, we would regulate what is really important and ignore what isn't, but we're still figuring things out.
Personally, I like the idea of universal sunsets to deal with the difficulty of repealing old regulations. Codes could be reviewed on an N-year basis, with old rules requiring a cost/benefit analysis and 'yes' vote to renew. But in practice, those kinds of processes seem to end up with people rubber-stamping "last year++" revisions, like with the USA's defense re-authorization acts.
Because in practice people don't make that choice. Manufacturers do.
Yes, but only so long as you don't take your cellphone with you.
That used to be just something seen in hostile devices. Now it's standard equipment.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/PortaPow-3rd-Gen-Data-Blocker/dp/B06X...
This is like having sex with your wife through a condom because you're worried about STDs.
And frankly, I don't trust many of my own devices not to fuck me. (figuratively speaking)
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001139641708.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001524934944.html
A small plug stays with the device that moves about, the cables stay put with the charger, "mag-safe" for all the things ...
Or is this an Android/BlindlyHittingYes situation?
Educated guess is that it is generally people blindly hitting yes situation. Often people just want to quickly setting it up and ready to be used. They don't want to wait 30 sec or more to look through the dialogs. They want instant results, that what they get for blindly hitting yes. In my experience, most of my friends and family are impatient when it come to pairing the phone to the head console.
[1] A USB dongle that only passed the power pins through for charging. Data is either blocked or physically disconnected.
Remember when going around mapping wifi access points to location was "wardriving"? Well, then it became a business model. Although google was slapped on the wrist for doing it with their google maps cars early on, now all smartphones apple and google populate the database.
No reasonable person would ever expect that connecting your phone to a car's wireless audio system would transfer all your contacts -- but that's Bluetooth for you!
Someone has just rented a car and is likely in unfamiliar surroundings. I guess some renters will renting regularly, but let's assume not. The want to hit the road while getting their seat in the right place, fixing mirror positions, familiarizing themselves with the dash, etc.
They also want to listen to some podcasts and in the back of the head they think they need to let someone know of their arrival time when they are closer to the destination. The fumble through the BT connection menu while multi-tasking. They are always going to do what's most expedient unless they are security conscious and know about this issue. Their contacts get picked up.
This is the manufacturer optimizing for the car being a single person machine. They often don't support multiple family members sharing a car. It's interesting to see how some sales people handle this situation when giving a test drive. Many are aware of the issue because there was one customer who spent time clearing things up before the test drive.
Can this be fixed? Technically, yes. It won't be fixed because manufacturers don't seem to care. The only option is for Apple or Google to make it part of qualification of some kind for CarPlay or the Android equivalent.
I'm not, because of all the random technology trivia and footgun crap that 'everyone' should know, any random person is not going to know a lot of it.
You can't prevent them, but don't consent to a search just because you don't do drugs, transport drugs, transport anyone who does drugs. Carrying cash is considered a valid pretext for a search (have any coins in a change tray?), as is being too polite or not being polite enough (maybe because you're annoyed at being stopped).
Now that a search of your vehicle also includes a search of any information it's received from any connected devices as well as a history of your locations and speeds you need to make sure you preserve any and all possible avenues to challenge anything found.
"Your honor, we didn't find any drugs but during the search he consented to we found evidence that he was driving far in excess of the posted speed limits on these 20 occasions so we're charging him with 20 counts of reckless driving. He confirmed to us during the initial stop that he is the only driver of the vehicle. He was also carrying cash so we're moving to seize those funds and the vehicle."
Who, what, when, where and how fast, all neatly tied into one package.
Aside from the fact that I enjoy drives through some pretty empty parts of the country, especially in the Southwest, where range is a concern (e.g., I drove the Great Basin Highway a few years ago), what bothers me about that measure is this sort of data collection thing.
I wouldn't mind a move to all-electric vehicles nearly so much if it were possible to get a "dumb" electric and the range was better.
I'd love an electric too, but the way I figure it, continuing to use a fairly efficient vehicle that already exists is probably better for the environment than buying something new anyway. It takes a lot of resources and material to build a car.
I do miss my old Saab though...
> It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security.
[Very relevant BlipShift t-shirt I saw today](https://www.blipshift.com/products/enable-2fa)
I've been trying to buy a new J70, but AFAICT you can't buy a new one in the EU or US, and it's practically impossible to import one either. I'd be very happy to be corrected.
Far easier than maintaining a complex system to track every drivers' location over time. Ugh.
That seems like something that one ought to be allowed to opt out of in favor of an odometer reading; I do something like 99% of my driving in my home state, and would rather just go with an annual odometer reading and maybe slightly overpay on my road taxes than have a tracking device in my car.
Solution? Increase the cost during those 2 hours such that fewer people choose to use the road during those hours. You can give poor people cash and they can decide if it's worth using that road during the times with higher congestion, but the problem of exceeding a road's capacity along with the inability to build infinite lane roads is separate from income/wealth gaps.
The drywaller has every right to sit in stop and go traffic with the investment banker.
Congested roads have externalities such as the congestion backing up into side streets, rubber banding the congestion along the rest of the road, and extra use of brakepads/fuel energy to stop and go.
Spending time in congestion also adversely affects lower paid people because the cost of their time spent in congestion is implicit. If it was made explicit via tolls, then employers would have to pay better to get them to their workplace at peak congestion times.
Not that I support this initiative at all, but your suggestion misses some key issues.
The second best solution if you must tax miles driven is to mandate new cars include short range Bluetooth readable odometers and let users electronically submit this data to oem. While we are at it car electronics should be mandated to be able to perform this task without giving your contact data to the fuckin car.
I'd like to think it's because EV proliferation makes the gas tax too regressive but I'm not that good at lying to myself.
> ... a goal is established for the state that all publicly owned and privately owned passenger and light duty vehicles of model year 2030 or later that are sold, purchased, or registered in Washington state be electric vehicles.
http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2021-22/Pdf/Amendment...
The actual bill: https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2021-22/Pdf/Amendmen...
On page 12:
line 36 & 37: Nothing in this section: a) Authorizes any state agency to restrict the purchase, sale, or registration of vehicles that are not electric vehicles;
and the actual quote around 2030(starting @ line 16):
"... then a goal is established for the state that all publicly owned and privately owned passenger and light duty vehicles of model year 2030 or later that are sold, purchased, or registered in Washington state be electric vehicles."
And laws like that will just make even older vehicles more desirable.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/washington-state-passes-bil...
[2] http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2021-22/Pdf/Amendment...
Given how many manufacturers are jumping on the electric bandwagon, the extremely fast decline in the cost of batteries, the rate of progress to date AND these kinds of laws to give some good motivation, I think it's very safe to say the electric vehicles on sale 9 years from now (2030) will be vastly superior to today's offerings.
However, less on the original point and more on yours, the iPhone of 9 years ago didn't have that much worse of a battery than today. Batteries have technically been progressing, but it's slow.
Those cars exist in India and China, but for some reason Americans don't want to buy them. It could be that outside of the techie bubble, nobody cares very much about this problem, and within the techie bubble, most people stop caring the moment that they can be the first person on their street to own a Tesla.
I hope you are right. Discounting the environmental and societal impact of mining the materials needed for these advancements and the electrical generation, my concern is selfish. We drive for vacations and sometimes push 12 hours a day. A quick fill up of gas in the minivan seems better than an hour or two of charging.
Others have mentioned hybirds alleviate the long distance concern. There are minivan and larger vehicles already using hybird technology, so it should work out. It is such a wild change to think about.
CBP's warrantless searches are plainly unconstitutional.
President Obama signed off on a drone strike on foreign soil targeting and killing a US citizen, in direct violation of the constitution depriving a citizen of a fair trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki
We didn't collectively do anything about it then, except cheer it on or say nothing, so it will continue and expand until, and if, we do.
https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/detention/inde...
As my grandfather said: "You might be right, but you don't want to be dead right."
CBP already have extra authorities due to border control because crossing the border is not a constitutional right.
The most egregious expansion was the declaration that all territory within 100 miles of the border is 'authorized' for all CBP's nonsense. That happens to cover about 90% of the US population.
There is a lot of anguish about the intelligence agencies doing their jobs against very serious threats, including Nuclear, Biological, Chemical. Meanwhile the real damage to civil liberties is from the CBP and INS, who literally storm homes every day, and engage in this kind of 4th amendment trashing.
Edit: I see - I was thinking only in terms of e.g. the Arizona southern border, however looking up the Constitution Free Zone shows that it means the entire US - California, all states connected to Cananda etc.
Eidt 2: Would this mean ALL of Hawaii is in this Constitution Free Zone?
I'm curious how much and how long it takes for this to drive migrants inland away from the border... and then how long it will take for them to make an excuse to make it 200mi...
And the entirety of a handful of states in the Northeast US, as well.
Yes, it is.
"In Nguyen v. INS (2001), on a separate matter of citizenship, the Supreme Court put down, in writing, that citizens of the US have the absolute right to enter its borders. It was in recent times more or less presumed to be the case, though historically there have been a wide range of decisions that did deny entry by citizens, mainly by denying the underlying citizenship. This right extends to lawful permanent residents, so long as they maintain their status."[1]
[1] https://www.quora.com/Can-a-U-S-citizen-be-denied-entry-into...
I should have said 'crossing the border without being searched is not a constitutional right'
I can't cite chapter and verse, but I'm pretty sure that you do effectively consent to search in the act of crossing the border -- if you don't want to be searched for controlled or taxed items, you can choose to not cross the border, so...
This information has been captured, stored, and made available for analysis since at least the early 00s. I remember the first time I hooked up VAGCOM to my 03 VW, it has data from so many sensors available for the tech to look up and could turn on and off hundreds of different features, it was like going into the VW equivalent of chrome://flags. And this was in a 2003 car!
You'd probably have to go back to pre-ODBII days (mandated in 1996 for the US) to really get away from this. In my experience (which is not comprehensive) 90s cars tended to keep telemetry mostly on engine performance (timing advance, cam/crank sensor positions, throttle position, etc).
On the other hand, the MIB or stereo, has a lot more interesting stuff: contact lists, GPS data, media, bluetooth devices, and even Wifi. The clock is GPS synced and it logs every time you touch the console: change radio, enter POI, phone calls.
And you can stick one of the new Carplay headunits into any old pre-OBDII car and now enjoy the same level of surveillance. Sony, Kenwood, JVC are all running QNX or Linux . And all of them just has a plethora of information behind some very basic security.
Assuming that includes wheel speed (and possibly tire pressure) and steering wheel angles, yes, that can be used to compromise where you went (via dead reckoning from your driveway or parking spot).
There's a lot of sensors and flags, but it isn't really logged anywhere in significant amounts. It just stores log of occurred errors, and dump of selected module parameters at the moment of error entry.
says "iVe currently supports BMW, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Ford, GMC Hummer, Jeep, Lincoln, Maserati, Mercury, Pontiac, Ram, Saturn, Seat, Skoda, SRT, Toyota and Volkswagen vehicles generally as far back as 2008 models" - so older might be better :)
Obviously a person could pick a car of a given year/model that meets their needs and rebuild it forever, at least until the government or (once again) the insurance companies regulate you out of it. It's for the children after all.
I no longer have to subsidize heavy drivers, and my rates are much lower as a result. I can always check the location of my car (in case of theft or forgetfulness) and there are other smaller benefits like diagnostics being pushed to my phone. As a bonus, they allow you to change your policy at any time, enabling me to opt in and out of comprehensive and collision based on the time of year.
Now you know which brands to avoid!
My guess is the manufacturer wants to upload "diagnostic" data, they would just use that same SIM card. And you probably can't disable it because it's a legal requirement (or, maybe you can on your Volvo?).
Maybe one could just put a prepaid SIM card with zero bandwidth quota/zero call credits, because those are still able to call the emergency number.
Interestingly the automatic "call the cops" function means hit and runs would be a lot harder, since the cops would get a timestamp of an accident, and a phone number as a car identifier...
>The in-vehicle system has a valid SIM that enables the provision of the eCall service. It is to be configured only for making an eCall, or it could also be used, in addition and as optional, for commercial service provision. In the first case, the IVS will be in a dormant mode (not traceable and active only in case of eCall triggering)
https://eena.org/wp-content/uploads/eCall-and-open-issues-20...
I agree, though, all our devices are becoming hostile to us.
I'd recommend physically removing the entire transmitter (the electronics can be removed with a chisel), but if you're trying to fry the transmitter, don't cut the antenna; that leaves a undamaged but low gain transmitter a la [0] (though probably not powerful enough to detect outside the vehicle). Instead, short the antenna to a power rail (or ground, but V!=0 is more likely to damage it) to fry the transmitter and also keep it from moving the antenna voltage enough to transmit anything.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sQF_K9MqpA (at 17:06)
[0]: https://gist.github.com/ryjones/73739f6a7e662b9ed9ba64d9141f...
"TripDate": "",
"FuelUsed": "",
"StartPos": {
"Lat": "",
"ODO": "",
"Time": "",
"Lon": "",
"Datum": ""
This should be illegal.
Has anyone been through going 'radio silent' in a Tesla more recently?
People need to understand, despite the efforts of sticks in the mud like me, industry should be considered malicious by default. If you don't pay attention to what people are doing and call it out, nobody even raises a finger. Those that do are ignored, or told there's a place for people like them with a condescending smirk.
I don't trust the car to get it right, but I do trust apple to get it right.
The problem is only partially solved by CarPlay.
> MSAB claims that this data can include “Recent destinations, favorite locations, call logs, contact lists, SMS messages, emails, pictures, videos, social media feeds, and the navigation history of everywhere the vehicle has been.” MSAB even touts the ability to retrieve deleted data, divine “future plan[s],” and “Identify known associates and establish communication patterns between them.”
I seriously doubt my car has records of my emails, pictures, videos, and social media feeds even though it has Android Auto.
Why?
Look up https://cccis.com/
Mobile/automotive networking has been a big thing for a while now, and there is no dearth of software people who will predate on most people's expectations that software only does what the UI makes apparent to them. Even if they don't realize they are contributing to it because they've been hired to do a job, but don't take the time to grok the consequences of the business model.
Never assume. Trust, but verify.
Even if you car does not, your phone does. So the phone being connected to the car during the time when the accident occurred, could lead to checking that you were in fact, watching unboxing videos on Netflix at the moment the wreck occurred while you were in the driver's seat.