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Comment by ComplexSystems | Hacker News Reader

Don't new cars just directly record your location as you drive them?

Do you think that corporate erosion of (or outright hostility to) privacy is somehow a compelling reason to deny rights to those of us who make different choices in an attempt to protect them? Just because some people decided to buy a smartphone on wheels, do I have to suffer and have my freedom of movement narrowed and protection from arbitrary inspection by government agents denied?

You can't beat an alreadist/incrementalist with reason. For them, if you ever start to walk towards a cliff, you must fall from it, because why? Because their half-dimensional logic.

Of course not - it makes no sense to gather that from my post. Were you trying to respond to someone else?

They do, but it is relatively easy to nuke the onboard modem to permanently disconnect your car. Unfortunately, most people don't know or don't care that their cars are actively spying on them.

My guess would be that your car would develop some covert or overt fault if you did that. You might even lose warranty as the manufacturer could claim that the issue they fixed via a software update couldn't be installed on your car - or couldn't monitor some diagnostics which are a prerequisite for in-warranty repair.

Most telco execs would sell their own mothers before offering reasonable data plans - that your car comes with one for free should be very telling

> My guess would be that your car would develop some covert or overt fault if you did that.

I used a bypass harness to avoid losing a speaker and the car hasn't developed any fault. I wouldn't buy a car without knowing in advance that this mod is possible. There are plenty of tutorials on how to do this for popular makes/models. It may be as simple as removing a fuse, or you might need to disassemble part of the dash to physically unplug the modem.

I'm a but skeptical if this is going to be possible in the future - I'd say it's increasingly unlikely that you'll be able to meaningfully change anything in your car.

For example if you look at where Tesla and co. are going, they are looking to reduce the amount and tickness of wiring harnesses - and they did so by creating a proprietary fieldbus that communicates between proprietary controllers that handle multiple functions, so they can multiplex everything under the sun into a single bus.

Subaru ? Been thinking about doing the same. Was it easy to install ?

So does your phone. And the government just buys the data from data brokers.

One wonders if any given tesla is harvesting the plates the other cars it see in traffic as well.

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