Hey EU, maybe mandate an opt out for all vehicle telemetry?
Then maybe the rest of the world will follow suit.
I know, I know, I am kidding myself.
Then maybe the rest of the world will follow suit.
I know, I know, I am kidding myself.
It was a very clear prompt during initial setup, and it shows me a very unambiguous notification that it's enabled every time I start the car. If I click on that it takes me to the setting.
edit: might even have been opt-in during initial setup, now that I think about it. I do recall it being a very deliberate thing during setup.
Of course I'll have to trust that turning it off actually turns it off, no way for me to verify that.
The reason I keep it on is because my SO is a bit absent minded to where she parks the car, and I value not having to run around in the streets trying to find it when I'm in a hurry over the potential privacy loss.
edit: Renault was found[1][2] to be the "least problematic" with respect to privacy by Mozilla last year.
[1]: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-...
There are very straightforward solutions, depending on the threat model. For example, the app could send VW a private key every day, and VW would send that key to the car. Then the car sends periodic location reports, encrypted to that key. VW can, upon request, send the report to the app, which decrypts it. But VW can’t decrypt the report itself, so they don’t know the location of the car. Also, it’s forward secure in the sense that a leak of VW’s database is entirely useless after a day.
It would also introduce a lot of additional failure modes.
Doable but not exactly trivial.
I realize that modern development has layers and layers of documents and teams and overcomplicated interfaces, but this is the kind of thing that could be done by one developer, using two servers and a load balancer (or a more creative HA scheme with client assistance that can easily survive complete loss of a datacenter or two), that can handle the entire fleet.
My car for example doesn't have reliable connection when it's parked in the garage, which is where I charge it.
Your solution would add a lot of extra edge cases that needs to be considered.
You have to ensure the updated key is reliably transferred to the mothership in a timely fashion, and subsequently that the key is reliably transferred to the car in a timely fashion.
That's the back-end stuff. There's also the front-end stuff, like will my SO understand why her app isn't showing the car's location but mine is?
Not saying it's impossible, but it adds a lot of complexity beyond simply encrypting the location with multiple keys.
Losing connection for extended periods of time can get in the way of "timely" key updates but they won't cause the encryption to fail.
> That's the back-end stuff. There's also the front-end stuff, like will my SO understand why her app isn't showing the car's location but mine is?
Well the reasons I can think of are either things like the server being broken, which can happen without any encryption, or she didn't finish setting up her app and waiting for it to sync which can also happen without encryption. Or she was removed from the list because she didn't open the app for a year... which can also happen without encryption.
To be fair, if the car is offline while a newly installed app logs in, then the app won’t be able to locate the car until the car checks in. Which is not actually the end of the world, and there are ways to mitigate this. (See iMessage and Keybase for a couple of different approaches to this. See Signal for a shockingly poor group of bizarrely mutually incompatible solutions that barely work. I think that Matrix tries, too. MLS should be able to handle it, and piggybacking off an existing standard like MLS might be entirely reasonable albeit dramatically more complex than the simple solution I outlined.)
Where do you work and are you hiring?
Otherwise, if there is no pre-existing private channel, the key (which by the way would have to be the public key, not the private key) could be switched out by VW acting as a man-in-the-middle, allowing it to access all encrypted content going through it.
The same is true for Apple. There are parts of the protocol or the pairing where you have to trust Apple, either their servers, or if the establishment happens locally via bluetooth or similar, their software that runs on the local devices.
I've had cars with both automated speed limit sign readers, GPS+map databases, and more show me two different speed limits and neither one was actually correct for the lane I was in. This is a somewhat common occurrence on the highways around me.
A few examples:
1) drive past the end of town sign in a particular German town, the car thinks it is 30kph, but only during the day because at night it doesn’t see the sign so it thinks it’s 50 where in reality it’s a 100 until the next speed limit,
2) driving between a couple of roundabouts inside of a town in the Netherlands, the car thinks it’s 30kph even though we stay within city limits and there’s no sign so the speed limit remains 50kph,
3) this is the funniest one so far… driving in Antwerpen along the Turhoutsebaan, there’s a massive 30 sign painted on a red painted road surface, the car insists that the speed limit is 50kph.
Those are just three out of a dozen examples happening consistently within 30 square kilometres I normally remain within. And I drive this car for 2.5 weeks. I have seen the future and I don’t like it. Number 2) happens routinely inside of the city limits after right or left turn. Car drops the speed limit to 30 just to realise a 100m down the road that it is 50.
Apologies for the ad hominem, I normally stay away from such tone. I genuinely hope that such pseudo cops like you get a grip. Because it’s my life you’re talking about and I already use speed limiter routinely. Every idiot around me on the road has exactly the same choice as me: curb the ego down and slow down or behave like a douche.
> but it would be even better if all cars' speed were automatically limited to the speed limit of each road
Yeah, you just described the ISA of 2027. This is going to be a tough year for car manufacturers. I forecast a ton of unsold new cars remaining on parking lots because one has to be really technically illiterate to buy something so dangerous willingly. Either full self driving or give full control. Everything in between is a disaster waiting to happen.
By the way, here’s a funny thought. So what is going to happen when that mythical zero casualties is reached and more people will be dying on bicycles than in car accidents? An implant in the brain? Where does it stop?
I don't think anything will need to happen at that point. We wouldn't need to tackle down the top causes of death if the numbers were low, as seems to be the case of bicycle deaths not caused by cars. And when it comes to speeding, it's already against the law, so the technology is only trying to help prevent it. But of course, my enthusiasm is tied to a future where this technology works reliably, so I don't really expect anything like it with all the problems you're describing with current models.
It’s also illegal to participate in the traffic drunk yet I routinely see drunk people riding bicycles and scooters in regular traffic, often ignoring traffic lights, often with their face glued to a phone. That’s half a problem, the other problem is those same people with those same things on the sidewalk. I bet you, a ton of those people do not even have a driving license and/or understanding of traffic rules. Humans will be humans. First they cry for cycling paths, when they get them, they don’t use them. Cannot win stupid.
As a pedestrian in the city I want scooters and bicycles regulated AND enforced. But nobody cares. I stopped counting how many times I have to do acrobatics to walk around scooters and bicycles left in the middle of the sidewalk.
It would also give local governments a power they never had before: To directly control your behavior in the moment, with no judicial control or oversight.
No, thank you.
The only question that matters is would it result in fewer road deaths? I bet the answer is yes.
In the US every single day 100 families are torn apart by a death on the road. I’m sure you don’t want it to be yours.
Neither you nor me live in the US. They have other options to reduce those deaths. There’s no reason to drive a 4 ton EV truck made out of stainless steel doing 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds.
Speed doesn’t kill, it’s the sudden stopping that does.
I live in Europe. Regulations here make Teslas slam on the brakes when the road is curved by more than x degrees, and break off a lane change apruptly if they take longer than x seconds. The intentions behind these rules written by some buerocrat in Brussels surely were as good as those behind the cookie banner.
I’m glad I still get to override those rules with my pedals and steering wheel.
The system can tell you if there was a runaway truck (at your time and location), so an appeal should be easy for that uncommon situation.
- Speed of every car on the road is recorded continuously.
- If you stay within the limit, you pay nothing. For each second that you are faster than the limit, you incur some financial penalty, where the amount is calculated based on both the speed difference and the purpose of the limit (pedestrian safety vs. noise pollution, for example). In extreme cases, you can lose your drivers license.
- Speed data is also made available to your insurance. So drivers know they won’t get away with somebody else paying for any damage they may cause.
As a driver, I very much prefer this not to exist. But I think it would be the right thing from a “veil of ignorance” perspective of justice.
Earlier it said I was on a 30mph road despite being on a 20mph road
What is the speed limit in that field?
Would a car suffer from similar problems? Should it continue at the original rate of speed or slam the brakes?
Did the same with two other phones. Car play takes the location from the car rather than the phone.
Huge privacy violation. I would just close down this business. Unfortunately it's a state cartel, and even part owner. They'll change the constitution to save those criminals
Your license plate already has your name and address associated with it.
I’m a owner of a id.4 (or rather a user of it, since my company owns it)
(I know the EU doesn't mandate annoying cookie banners but unintended consequences etc)
Oh no that'll never happen because VW are a European company and the money is in fining US tech companies!
(I am in Europe for reference, this is not an external perspective)
Also I genuinely think those fines were low.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/VWAGY/volkswagen-a...