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Comment by Nifty3929 | Hacker News Reader

The biggest problem I have is tracking that the government has access to. We're in a situation where the government knows everywhere your phone has been, and everywhere your car has been. I doubt we're far from the gov't being able to de-activate your car at will also.

I would like to have privacy from corporations, but I really wish we'd keep the focus on privacy from our governments, since they have such ultimate power over us.

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Kill switches are now required for cars produced after 2026. https://www.musclecarsandtrucks.com/biden-infrastructure-bil... It is for your safety. ;)

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-402773429497

"It's not a kill switch, it slows the vehicle to a stop instead of being instant." I fail to see the practical difference. I don't want my car incorrectly deciding I am impaired and "coasting to a gentle stop" on the way to a hospital during a medical emergency or something.

Maybe kill-switch is not the best definition of the feature. The required technology monitors the driver to prevent starting the car or forcing it to pull over. In the context of the parent article which explains how the overall monitoring systems fail on privacy and security, we can see how these combined with the car stopping feature can be used against us. We are ultimately trusting the companies and government to do what is in our interests rather than theirs. Some people trust Apple not to use or share their data with government to be used against them. Trusting the largest corporation in the world and the most powerful government in the world is a major leap for me, but everybody theoretically makes their own choices.

Pretty much the definition of corrupt/biased "fact checkers" right here. It's a mechanism where the car can decide to turn itself off and prevent you from driving. It's literally a kill switch, where the car refuses your commands. They're arguing semantics about how it currently isn't a remote kill switch, only a local kill switch. Reminds me of other similarly ridiculous "fact checks" where someone claims something like "X is raising taxes by 9%!" and they fact check it as "completely false" because technically it's not 9%, it's 9.1%, or whatever.

Of course in the future the kill switch will also be mandated to be remotely triggerable, we all know it, but by that time the overton window will have shifted far enough, by things like mandating local kill switches, that making it remote as well will slip through easily in however many years.

I will never in my life own a vehicle that can decide, locally or remotely, to refuse to function, or that can decide to slam on the brakes by itself, or that can phone home data about me. Not sure how much longer I can get away with that before older, non-smart cars are declared evil and banned, in the name of climate change or walkable cities or whatever, but we'll see.

It's my car. Who are these people to place restrictions on what I do with it?

Of course, that it won't be disabled by crooks and used for crimes like kidnapping people.

I am not worried about crooks disabling my car. I’m worried about the government doing it.

We need to stop being fearful of each other and start becoming fearful of our overlords.

Government is not going to kidnap me with such underhanded action. They will just arrest me for some made up crime and erase me from history.

The problem is that the private companies tracking you can be compelled (if they don't voluntarily) give up your tracking data to the government.

Stopping government tracking starts with stopping private industry tracking, as the latter is happy to give it away/sell the data or can be forced to by law.

I agree with your premise, but disagree with your conclusion.

Yes, of course data that goes to the corporations gets scooped up by the government.

But we need to stay laser focused on the main goal of maintaining privacy from our government, which may include efforts at privacy from corporations.

In the US, the government has access to 100% of the information the corporations have.

Also, corporations have all sorts of power over us that should be reserved for the government. For instance, they control electronic currency, freedom of association (online), and your ability to distributed and purchase most media.

The government has been able to use onstar to deactivate GMC vehicles at will for over a decade. Of course, GM can do this too.

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