Court rules automakers can record and intercept owner text messages
therecord.media
therecord.media
> An Annapolis, Maryland-based company, Berla Corporation, provides the technology to some car manufacturers but does not offer it to the general public, the lawsuit said. Once messages are downloaded, Berla’s software makes it impossible for vehicle owners to access their communications and call logs but does provide law enforcement with access, the lawsuit said.
Ugh. Another reason to keep driving my old car.
Any insight into how they're uploading these messages? Kinda messed up if they're exfiltrating your stuff over a potentially-metered connection. That's not something you necessarily consent to...
Searching through your text messages in order to tune your search results is not traditionally the province of the government.
Wrong. It's that kind of shitty, just roll over, thinking that let everything get as bad as it has. The "Just let a 3rd party do it" loophole needs to be closed.
This sounds like the correct ruling. What we need is (a) evidence of harm and (b) legislation defining certain absolute rights to privacy, without an injury requirement. Given these data are provided to law enforcement, finding (a) shouldn’t be impossible.
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24133084-22-35448
“On appeal, Plaintiffs claim that a violation of the [Washington Privacy Act] itself is an invasion of privacy that constitutes remediable injury. But the statutory text does not support their interpretation.” [1]
So the ruling seems correct but also highlights what may be a flaw in the WPA.
[1]https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/22....
When corporate servers get hacked, 'harm' is simply assumed, even if the hack only copied information. Yet when that same kind of hack is perpetrated by corporations against consumers, via backdoor access they have hidden onto our devices, the courts pretend everything is fine.
I wonder if they would be as lenient if I sold phones I had backdoored to spy on calls and texts for me, out of my own backyard.
We’re not talking about a hack, but surreptitious recording. The legal owner of the conversation isn’t clear based on statute or case law within the context of relevant agreements. This is a case of the law needing to be tightened up.
Or my prior example of selling secretly backdoored phones from my yard - the only difference is the scale of the operation.
If you attached a long user agreement that discloses the back door, you’d be in roughly the same place under this statute.
Speaking of which, if a person had a mental illness and then started 'seeing ads' everywhere for the illness, could that exacerbate the illness? How would you prove evidence of harm?
At least on iOS, the other apps would need permission to integrate with the necessary API to integrate with MAP. I’m not sure if this is even available with the public APIs.