Buried in Infrastructure Bill Is a Mandatory Backdoor Kill Switch for Your Car

What, for example, if you're living in a rural area, then your wife goes into labor (or there is any kind of other emergency) and the car thinks your somewhat "erratic" driving style, due to the stress of the situation, warrants killing the engine? It only talks about detecting "impairment" which may mean a lot of things. Or maybe you had a beer and then the emergency happens, and the car detects "passively and accurately" your BAC.

Banning drunk, drugged and impaired driving is good. But every rule has exceptions, and software is generally too rigid to account for every possible exceptional case.

There won't be a "It's an emergency" button (because a lot of drunks would just press it), nor a "I am lawfully driving on my own private property" or a "I am not actually impaired, I had to drive 'erratic' a moment ago not because I am drunk or fell asleep, but because a kid ran into a street and I had to do an evasive maneuver" one.

That is assuming the software is working "correctly" in the first place. Which I am very doubtful about here, because they aren't trying to model something deterministic, but model something that will use some kind of "learning" to spit out some probabilities.

That aside, the privacy implications look pretty real to me. Once you have a system that monitors your driving proficiency, BAC or both, a lot of companies will get curious about that. Insurers may start to politely ask for the data if you want lower premiums, or a contract at all. No more car leases unless you can provide a "positive" driving score. Judges will sign warrants for such data. And so on.

That is precisely what a killswitch is. The circumstances and/or requirements of the activation of the killswitch are irrelevant to whether or not it's a killswitch. Is it a good idea? Maybe. Will I, as a teetotaler, be ripping this out of my future car on sheer principle? Yes.

Having just watched "No Time to Die," Rami Malek's character has a classic vilian diatribe in which he says:

The thing that no one wants to admit is that most people want things to happen to them. We tell each other lies about the fight for free will and independence, but we don't really want that. We want to be told how to live and then die when we're not looking.

It strikes me that perhaps storywriters keep adding lines like this to movies, books, etc because it's actually true for a significant amount of people. And that's really saddening.

You just repeated what the title says: they want to implement a mandatory kill switch in your car.

The fact that you believe it will be used for good, and will be "accurate" is certainly up for debate. I don't want them to be able to lock down my car and prevent it from being used. That scenario is unimaginable to me.

(*A critical system with modules that promote unreliability, including potential security issues.)

How would this work for being a designated driver? The drunkards in your car would setoff whatever sensors "monitoring" for alcohol.

This is a stupid law that has no right to be included.

And "impaired" is a word that is significantly more far reaching in its meaning than "legally intoxicated":

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impaired

> Definition of impaired

> : being in an imperfect or weakened state or condition: such as

> a : diminished in function or ability : lacking full functional or structural integrity

> b : unable to function normally or safely (as when operating a motor vehicle) because of intoxication by alcohol or drugs

While part (b) above does note a "because of alcohol or drugs" part (a) of the definition leaves the law open to a wide range of "impairments" that are not "drunk" or "high" such as "had a long day, and am quite tired and a little sleepy". Which would result in an "impairment" of your driving as compared to "got a good nights sleep, feel refreshed just now" when getting behind the wheel.

How does it 'passively' monitor a user's BAC? How does it deal with false positives from things like hand sanitizer? Will I have to blow into a tube every time I start my car running errands because I'm keeping myself safe from rona or the flu? This is idiotic.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684...

Making non-drinkers pay to install a system (that can fail, and require maintenance) to prevent drunk drivers is not fair otherwise.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_bill

The bills are designed to make the politics easier, at least for the Canadian bills I've read about.

The complexity makes the bills difficult to understand and scrutinize. This makes them nearly impossible to cover in a parliamentary debate and makes it impossible to inform the public about their implications, even in broad strokes. The lack of context makes the interpretation of the ensuing laws more difficult.

At least, that's what I've absorbed from reading up on the issue when it's come up in Canada.

Yes and no. If what you want to get done is sneak something in under the radar, or force the other party to approve one piece of legislation they wouldn't normally approve, in order to pass some other legislation they want more, then it can make it easier to get things done. Unfortunately, those things are often driven by special interests and not what is best for the general population.

The "twist" is that an article there is likely to be formulated (hypothetical) more as something like:

on the third paragraph of article #x of Law #y of dd/mm/yyyy the sentence "the provision in the preceding art.x is intended to be ..." is replaced with the sentence "the provision in the preceding art.x, as modified by the #nth paragraph of Law #w, article #z, of dd/mm/yyyy is due to be ..."

Which makes it totally not understandable until you also have handy Law #y and Law #z and even then, there are probably another two or threee references to other Laws.

I wish it was: this is basically routine in Italy. As an example, last month the government issued a decree, informally referred to as "capienze" (capacities), that regulates the amount of people allowed into cinemas and theatres. Sounds innocuous, right? Unfortunately it also contains an article that significantly reduced the powers of the Garante della Privacy (the italian privacy watchdog).

And this is not limited to the government, the parliament also loves to sneaks unrelated and controverial stuff into ordinary laws. This usually happens early in the summer or late friday evenings, when most MP are absent.

What Francis Fukiyama calls the "vetocracy". The entire stack of US policy work, legislation, lawmaking has many, many veto points. For better or worse.

The functional purpose of the US Senate is to prevent legislation.

"Congress is where good bills go to die." -- legislative aide, personal friend

One consequence is strong tendancy for big bang (punctuated equilibrium) over incrementalism. A recurring scenario is that once a coalition has a veto-proof supermajority, they bum rush as much legislation as possible, before the next mid-term election dissolves the coalition.

That's why progressives and reformers have always advocated for majority rule.

Another consequence of vetocracy is empowering the executive. Explaining why the rise of executive orders.

Alas, many are happy with the status quo, gridlock, dysfunction. My brother, for instance. Who believes that any day spent legislating is a crime against humanity.

What reactionaries like my brother don't grasp is someone will fill the power vacuum, continue to make decisions. Where legislators are impotent, the admins, commissions, lobbyists, executives, judges happily make their own laws and govern without any accountability.

The neoreactionaries (monarchists), like Peter Theil, explicitly prefer the Aristolian philosophy king model. Because people (the polis) are stupid, only natural leaders who are benign dictators would rule, and so forth.

On a side note there is over 2.5 billion allocated to tree equity. No one has figured out what that really means.

And these days debates just don't happen on bills. Since they have super majority they do whatever they want.

People who cry tears of blood against the govt still don't elect opposition members in Parliament who could stop unfavorable bills and then they cry (sorry fir the reddit-esque sentence) "OmG OpPoSiTion Is UseLesS"

You know copyright, IP rights, and a such is highly related to fishery. Or not?

The US system has the senate, congress, presidency, and a bunch of committees - all of which can impede the others' work, and all of which can be under the control of a different party.

And every person who can block your bill is someone who can extract a concession. You want your bill to pass, and for a mere extra 0.3% pork you'll have my enthusiastic support....

With the result they get thousand-page bills, and a country dotted with more dams and bridges than they can afford to maintain.

Not sure if there's a legal system that DOESN'T use nasty euphemisms though...

What does that do to the existing used car stock? Good luck getting usable metrics out of my '96 Nissan.

Also, Florida, where you can drive the inside of a car without the outside of the car and that's totally fine. How could a monster truck high lifted F150 be considered safe, or a 1500hp rollcage on wheels be considered safe, in the same breath as this legislature.

UBER, Google, and a whole lot of government acronyms such as IARPA were present.

What they spent most of the day obsessing about was:

“We know, statistically, our technology WILL kill a child. How do we handle the public and political fall out of that?”

In my view they were more concerned about that than looking for technical solutions.

I brought up a personal experience:

I once almost had a accident on Interstate 80, in a construction zone.

Somehow a car that was over packed pulled from between some construction equipment, in front of me.

This driver could not see out any window but right in front of him, and he was pulling *across* the interstate traffic, not going with the flow. He could not see out the passenger window, that was facing me, it had a sleeping bag in it.

He shot out from between the construction equipment about twenty feet in front of me, while I was doing 45 MPH, remember it was a construction zone.

The correct solutions to the problem was to floor the gas, so that I could get in front of him while there was still space, and get off on the right hand berm of the road.

Any solution the applied the brakes would have caused a collision.

The experts in the room replied that Aircraft Autopilot software may have been able to avoid a collision in this example. No one was sure and few seemed to care.

If I buy a "regular car" and self-driving capabilities take over for me, my control is being taken. Maybe it's justified because my driving has been erratic in a "he must be tired" kind of way so there are some immediate benefits but maybe not.

It comes down to control and choice. Without me being able to decide and turn it on or off, I'm subject to the rules, interpretation, and controls of a black box system that I'm not allowed to understand.

An actual FSD vehicle won't care if you're drunk because it is the one that is driving. That's the right way to solve the problem.

And yeah there's is a middle-ground where you're having to get into an argument with an algorithm to get what you really want out of it.

If I want to drive, then I want to drive my own car, over which I have full authority. I don't want any automation beyond ABS.

If I just want to get somewhere, then I'd rather hop in a self-driving taxi. It doesn't even need a steering wheel.

I won't be satisfied with any awkward compromise between the two.

Many laws are passed not because people think it is morally wrong to do something, but rather because they feel society would be better if no one (or at least fewer people) did it

There are problems. Having to do a breath test in the middle of your drive. Can't drive after eating or brushing teeth. No mints or chewing gum while driving. Must be very careful with medications. Regular calibration. Vehicle service might require a certified technician to verify the device isn't tampered with. False positive means you can't get to work on time. Sharing a vehicle is much more difficult. This is a very high burden to put on the average driver who has done nothing to deserve it.

This is not a new idea:

Performance Tests vs. Drug Tests. Dec. 25, 1990:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-12-25-fi-7155-s...

>The Factor 1000 test is simple and takes only about 30 seconds. It consists of a software program on a personal computer equipped with a special keyboard and a control knob.

>Before starting on a job, the worker uses the knob to try to keep a swaying pointer in the center of the screen. The pointer swings faster and faster from left to right, and the test ends when the pointer swings too far, as it inevitably does. Workers pass if they can keep it relatively steady long enough to show that they are up to their own, predetermined standard.

>The computerized hand-eye coordination test indicates whether a person is too impaired to work for any reason--drugs, alcohol or even because of a sleepless night.

The Advantages of Impairment Testing over Drug Testing to Improve Workplace Safety:

https://predictivesafety.com/the-advantages-of-impairment-te...

>Since President Regan’s mandate for drug testing Federal employees in 1988, many private sector employers followed suit, and continue to follow suit, by testing their employees for drug use, especially in safety-sensitive industries like construction and manufacturing, under the impression that drug testing helps create and maintain a safe workplace (1). However, more and more employers are beginning to recognize the limitations and detriments of drug testing as a tool for enhancing workplace safety, understanding that drug testing is not a preventative safety measure if it can be considered a safety measure at all. [...]

>Cultural changes notwithstanding, some experts have been advocating in favor of impairment testing over drug testing for many years because drug testing is not a preventative measure, as described above. A 2010 report by the National Workrights Institute put it succinctly:

>Impairment testing is the practice of determining which workers in safety sensitive positions put themselves and others at risk by directly measuring workers’ current fitness for duty. Urine testing, in contrast, attempts to determine which workers have used specific substances known to cause impairment in the relatively recent past. (10)

Not to mention, you’ll probably just end up buying humid air blowers that get past this block.

So would criminals, at least those professional enough to plan ahead. So I expect pre-kill switch vehicles to be used exclusively by such criminals.

Motivation... I expect it's just another bullshit "law and order" law-enforcement power grab, thinly disguised as a "safety requirement".

If it is mandated that all cars should have this killswitch, then a lot of old-but-serviceable cars have to be taken off the road - and replaced with new ones.

If you want to use the superior constitutional approach, you would need to first stop voluntarily contracting with them.

https://www.madd.org/press-release/madd-hails-monumental-dru...

Here in Norway, we have had the same problem with the anti-drug lobby, where police, schools and other government agencies have gotten away with obvious injustices for decades, in the name of the utopia that is a "drug free society". Only now is people and the press waking up to the fact that so much of what has been going on in the service of "the greater good", actually has been illegal and caused a lot of harm and suffering.

There basically wasn’t any. Which guess what? WORKED GREAT! Until… some moron decided cars needed WiFi hot spots (3G), then OTA flashes, and etc. Wasnt hackable until you hooked it to the internet.

So of course they spend as little as possible, with the cheapest network providers. And there is a big public hack by two clowns that were fed info by a letter agency. A Wired article, bla.

Fast forward… most mfgs use approx the same firewall now. It blocks data access to between the radio/telematics and rest of car. That was their solution, not to harden the car, not to get rid of the fucking Internet, just put radio and garbage on its own network. Best part? The firewall isn’t a required part of the car. You can just unplug it and tie the bus wires together.

Next gen vehicles are using more busses, automotive ethernet, and a much more complex firewall, but still the same idea. Not sure if the new vehicles have checks to make sure the firewall is there. At least with automotive ethernet you’ll need a switch and can’t just jump wires together.

So… you aren’t far off with needing an OpenWRT. The issue is the custom hardware. IIRC, the next gen firewalls use a specific 90-pin connector (yazaki?) that only Bosch can buy, that’s the absolute minimum step / issue.

Best part though!? The immobilizer won’t be the firewall most likely, it’ll be it’s own module and by 2026 I really expect crypto secure MAC’d messages.

So… yea, good luck homie.

That way you don't need to depend on Daily Caller or any other intermediary else to know the truth.

Importing cars is not a viable option for most Americans.

They can make it a crime to disconnect the switch.

Integrated electronic systems of the type in context are not.