John Deere 'Kill Switch' renders stolen tractors useless (2022)
orchardandvine.net
orchardandvine.net
Not you, but JD controls the kill-switch.
They can disable a device to render it useless whenever something happens that they don't like.
Whether it's theft or violation of your leasing terms.
If the owner was in control of the kill-switch, it would still have all benefits of theft protection, without the problems that arise with a manufacturer controlling devices indefinitely.
Apple has a similar feature for its devices that is in control of the user, but ultimately it's still depends on the device connecting to the internet and getting a ping that it's "lost" from Apple's servers. There's not really anything stopping Apple from locking people's devices, either.
I just feel like "self hosting" isn't a real company solution to a kill switch, so I'm not sure how you have a kill switch without interacting with the company in any way, even if you're not John Deere.
Trivial for who? Someone on HN or everyone else?
Edit: wording
- Requires connection to phone, nfc, other radio signal...
- and/or other deadman switch ideas...
You can’t have any (online) interaction with the company. Even OTA updates can’t be trusted if the company wants to act against your interests or the interests of your country.
Individual farmers need 100% control and I would argue that the only way to accomplish that is to require physical access for all updates and no kill switch at all.
Tractors aren’t close to cell phones. No one is naively and unknowingly buying a stolen tractor off of Craigslist. Engraving serial numbers on parts is a viable theft deterrent if everyone in the industry refuses to buy stolen parts.
Can I interest you in some protection... Err, 3 year service plan?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/bathroom-tunneling-b...
If you mean "suspicious that it might have been stolen", the buyers are suspicious too, but they don't care, they're fine with it if it means they get it for cheaper.
Why so? May be I can't but how difficult it for a repair shop?
This can be fixed by replanting a tiny chip from the old screen to the new screen, requiring extremely precise micro-soldering skills that the average repair shop doesn’t possess.
It was originally supposed to prevent a repeat of the Hon Hai Zhengzhou incident where a team of line workers mixed/matched parts from units that failed QC and sold the Frankensteined units on the grey market. (Massively oversimplified, but that's the general gist)
The resulting near-total inability to swap screens/buttons without knowing someone with FDR update access was seen as acceptable collateral damage.
If that project came my way, it would have been a hard no, go find someone else. You literally implemented the most public unfriendly feature I've seen in a long time. That's one of those cases where sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
While I understand we are all entitled to differently prioritizing ethical red lines, it saddens me whenever I see the public suffering for the sake of increased corporate profits.
...and it is only the company that gained anything. The extra parts on the market would likely have driven prices down, making the handsets less high dollar desirable theft targets. Instead; user servicibility plummeted, planned obsolescence ensured the path of least resistance was "buy another", and the accountants likely beamed at the improvement to the bottom line while the execs patted themselves on the back for a job well done securing money that otherwise "would have been left on the table".
Oh well. So it goes.
I checked online since and it seems that even with the advent activation lock, there's still a lot of phone thefts in some countries. They just sell the spare parts and can make 100 to 200 euros between the screen and battery.
I'd imagine with John Deere tractors, there's quite a few parts that could be resold so an activation lock wouldn't necessarily reduce the value by that much.
If there's violence involved it's another story but if a victim initiates it, they themselves can get into trouble. So these thieves are trained to be ultra passive.
I've seen it myself. Other source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/14/woman-defends-...
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/04/06/washington-apple-store-...
Also, the data on a phone is almost always far more valuable than the phone itself. If a thief steals my phone, it’s much better for me if they erase it. But they can’t do that, so my stolen phone with all my data just sits there one exploit away from being exposed.
Activation lock only serves to benefit the manufacturer as they get to sell more phones. It doesn’t benefit the consumer at all.
Unless these thieves were rolling in money previously, I would imagine they maximize theft as much as they possibly can — why would they leave money on the table? I don’t think they’re stealing to meet some monthly quota like hired hands on a farm; they should just be acting on a risk/reward function.
And as such, I think the more likely scenario as phones decrease in value per theft, other objects are made relatively more valuable (per risk/reward), and theft would transition elsewhere.
<huh, from what?
>myself (:
What remains a problem is the thorny question of field-modifications by farmers who find out leasing rights to software isn't the same as owning an old Fordson or Massey-Furguson and hacking on the PTO.
John Deere has a 'right to repair' conversation going on in the USA but they trade internationally.
Account locks have done a huge amount to reduce phone theft, a tractor is 100x more expensive.
A vehicle should be able to be used without ever being online.
Otherwise you are at the mercy of udpates, the provider good will (and John Deere as little), network availability and so on.
Stallman is extreme, but he got that part right. DRM and other bricking mechanism are not our friends.
In more lawful areas a theft can not use a stolen tractor because of police. Since Eastern Europe is not so lawful, the owner will not receive new tractor or something.
So where is a good use coming from in your understanding?
Just from the fact that the theft will receive $30k in cash instead of $100k as the tractor cost? And that is the reason to buy a tractor with a killswitch which in some another situation (used not original parts, insulted the JD team, did something against ToS) might be activated AGAINST the owner?
And we are talking about a state actor here. I am sure that Russia can find a way to bypass the lock and if not, as mentioned in the article, they will sell the parts.
However, if I was a farmer, I wouldn't want JD to have that level of control on my property. I would want JD to handle that control to me, ideally under the form of public and documented API and free software.
Based on an iPhone 14 @ $1500 and what I saw on a price list I googled, John Deere tractors seem to range from around $40k to around $575k. That's a really wide range, from 20x to nearly 400x as expensive.
https://commercialvehicleinfo.com/john-deere-tractors-price-...
A remote kill switch seems like a useful bit of kit if it's not easily disabled and doesn't interfere with normal operations.