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Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

My concern is that all vehicles are becoming more and more surveilled, transmitting hugely personal data. Once level 4 centralized control is possible I predict pre permissioned requested travel will quickly follow.

We urgently need a new generation of very basic transportation devices. The 3rd world relies on Toyo HiLuxes etc which are still easy to keep running. LandRover used to be all over the third world because they were rugged, basic and easy to work on. You'd think Tata who now own them would be continuing the tradition but they are building luxury vehicles with no clear purpose except signaling pretensions to offroad abilities. Embroidered with ECM controlled chips, wiring and sensors...</rant>

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Individuals are not powerless in this fight. We can use democracy to try to maintain our freedom. The people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts recently voted to enact the following:

> “Question 1 (2020) required manufacturers that sell motor vehicles equipped with telematics systems to install a standardized open data platform beginning with model year 2022. The initiative defined telematics systems as a system in a motor vehicle that collects information generated by the operation of the vehicle that is then transmitted through wireless communications to a remote receiving point where it is stored. The measure allowed vehicle owners to access telematics system data through a mobile device application and to give consent for independent repair facilities to access that data and send commands to the system for repair, maintenance, and diagnostic testing.”

https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Question_1,_%22Right_t...

No technical solution will work against political problems. Any non-conforming vehicle will simply be forbidden. If you want to change anything, make it known how new cars phone home, what the dangers are, why this should be forbidden - only as a society can we prevent surveillance state.

Now you know why mid-century and slightly newer vehicles are so common in the world of custom cars and performance tuning. Simple and relatively comfortable to work on, with a large aftermarket of parts.

>> I predict pre permissioned requested travel will quickly follow.

Excuse me sir, Did you upload your drive path to NHTSA today? No that will be a $300 fine...

It's not too hard to imagine requesting permission to travel, a robotaxi showing up and taking you to your location and funds deducted per mile and for damage to the planet compensation, assuming you got the necessary permissions granted in the first place...

Sounds like what is happening in parts of Australia today, only under the context of COVID...

Gdpr could be your friend.

GDPR is not enforced enough and it's very hard to get it enforced. Data protection authorities are completely useless at handling complaints from my experience.

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