Cars collect a startling amount of data about you
bbc.com
bbc.com
Older cars may not have cellular data, and some new cars (e.g. the Slate electric car) may be specifically designed without cellular connections or with easily removable chips, but so much can still be inferred from omnipresent roadside surveillance.
It's not enough even to have private cars. The solution must be legislation that limits all of: data collected by cars and cameras, data shared among third parties, and placement of cameras without informed, specific, continuing public consent.
And every time flock-style cameras "could have" done some good, the surveillance state's cheerleaders will beat their drums and bleat their demands.
Let's finish the sentence there. Being spied by corporations 24/7 while we game, watch entertainment, drive, talk with friends, work... it's fucked up.
We live in a hell of our own creation and only new legislation and regulations can get us out of here.
That many of us then end up working for the companies doing it makes for a bad feeling across the industry.
I got into this because I loved solving problems. Now my problem is that the problems at hand are mostly dehumanizing and further the goals of people intent on dehumanizing everyone but them.
I leaned my ladder against the wrong wall and started climbing. It took a lifetime to realize it was the wrong wall.
"The real Roko's Basilisk is the corporate surveillance state we made along the way"
You're asking for new legislation written by governments that a/ want that data to spy on you too and b/ are lobbied by corporations to write the legislation corps want.
It's a closed loop of crap, that goes in one direction only.
For example very rich people in the US receive vanity SSNs. Ghislaine Maxwell has one that spells out "Leet Babe". It's like number plates to show off.
"Ghislaine Maxwell's Social Security Number (133-78-4883) is recorded in U.S. law enforcement documents, such as historical NYPD files, as part of her official identification and background records".
1337 84883 --> LEET BABBE in leetspeak.
It's a stretch, but to be fair, apparently they already had no problem getting visas and other documents with 3-4 variations of their names (to make database lookup more difficult)
Getting visas and documents under different names is not anything other than garden variety use of aliases. All kinds of people who are not mega-wealthy do this, legally and illegally. I am specifically questioning the ability of ultra-wealthy choosing SSNs. I had never previously seen this assertion.
I mean man, I didn't ask you to search for my verbatim quote (it's an one-off llm answer). Search for her SSN. You can google it, it's here on the first page under "'Application Info" for example:
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01653...
Also in meta pages about the documents:
https://github.com/rhowardstone/Epstein-research/blob/main/i...
The vanity SSN thing looks even weirder because someone who I assume was Epstein's great-grandfather was head of US social security administration in the 1920s, a crazy coincidence [Trump family was more department of agriculture]. The 133784883 SSN is clearly a five-eyes meme and one day FOIAs will show what other interesting VIPs have a 1337-range SSN.
Even Donald Trump's officially-curated Wikipedia lists some of his fake identities, and he has some Epstein-related pseudonyms which are not widely known yet which are miraculously also associated with the Kashoggi family name.
The last generation that cared about this in any big way were the Xers (and close to X-er boomers) circa 1990s.
And even them, not enough, and not as a majority. But at least many techies back then did.
From the same goverments that want more state surveillance and even buy the private profile data from data brokers?
Only a new ...revolution would get us out of here...
As alluded to, it doesn't have to :) The French are currently on their fifth iteration of "the government", and we're bound to get a new iteration hopefully soon! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic
When half of American lives paycheck to paycheck they care about putting food in table instead of petty politics or data collections.
Which is to say the vast majority have plenty of time to think about politics. They don't but that is because they choose to do other things, not because they lack time. (even those who do take the time often only think about it superficially)
People have been getting the opposite of what they explicitly vote for, for ages...
Just some recent examples:
In Europe an example is the popular sentiment against further unckecked immigration for example, and people voting politicians promising against that, and getting more.
Or how in the US how people voted someone promising no new wars, talking against foreign interventionist policy and so on, and see what they got.
They still lie to us about the true source of their wealth, but if you dig in the few archives that we can actually access it is clear that the same family names pop up over and over again.
If your family wealth came from feudalism/colonialism and was already safely stored in offshore accounts 100 years ago, you can send your nepo child to silicon valley or Hollywood, have your connections invest into them and tell the whole world what amazing self-made person they are. Some years down the line they go meet the King to get their hereditary Lordship title back for the whole world to know.
All of this is in the national security interest, so your kids are above the law even though they might only be a Hollywood talent scout, CEO of some startup or a real estate mogul focused on black neighborhoods.
For several hundred years being aristocrat was really unpopular, but ultimately they got a grip on it by owning all means of mass propaganda plus building a file on everyone.
Well not "our" creation since only a few oligarchs control most of the companies that engage in this.
> and only new legislation and regulations can get us out of here.
The same oligarchs control nearly all the legislators, so no way out.
Do not excuse the millions upon millions of useful idiots who lent credence to the "rulers" stupid projects at every step of the way. A lot of this problem is in the mirror. Those oligarchs would have infinity less power if a whole bunch of people din't agree with them.
I mean hell, go look at HN comments from before Flock was helping ICE and every idiot in the comments cooing about how to optimize the ALPR dragnet to fine speeders, flag drug dealers and apply jackboot to every other class of petty deviant they thought they could tease out and everyone pushing back was being shat on for not being "pro social" enough or whatever.
A meaningful amount of the problem is viewable in the goddamn mirror.
- B.F. Skinner
They're just looking after their interests and kinks. It's the suckers that accept it, which are hundreds of millions, that allow this hell to be created, and continue to not do anything about it, when they're not even supporting and voting for them.
https://www.gadgetreview.com/federal-surveillance-tech-becom...
I do mind, however, if the data is not immediately discarded, once it does its real-time safety purpose.
tldr; Impairment detection methods are currently too inaccurate to use (both false positive and false negative).
And then if anything is ever accurate enough they'll have to create testable standards that car manufacturers can easily implement.
And NHTSA is concerned with security and privacy issues as well. They'll keep updating congress on progress once a year.
My take is it's very possible the rule may never get made.
[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2026-03/Report-t...
Except in mid to high end luxury cars, automakers will probably design the sensor to be completely self-contained and merely provide a "driver present, attentive" or "driver distracted" or "no driver." In high end cars they'll use it to switch driver profiles, like what Lucid already does.
Both you and that author need to go look at the massive amount of data that has been getting collected in cars, including location data, for close to two decades in any vehicle that even had the option for telematics and GPS navigation.
Also the issue is not so much the camera system, but the "OS" the car is running. A ton of vehicles now have Google's Android OS running on them and that is also a privacy dumpster fire in and of itsel.
Also, a nationwide network of license plate reading cameras is far more of a privacy threat, too.
For me, I will never own a car with any kind of screen on the dash.
You are also turning away a lot of the advances in electric vehicles. Paying for gas in your old car, could be more than payments on a brand new electric car. (that would require a lot of driving.)
I'm pretty sure you haven't run the numbers on this assertion. That would be essentially impossible.
Average new car price in the US is near $50,000:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/10/13/ave...
The absolute cheapest new cars in the US are around $24,000:
https://www.cars.com/articles/here-are-the-10-cheapest-new-c...
$24K buys you an astonishing amount of maintenance! Unless you're talking doing a restoration on a collectible car, it's basically impossible to spend that much.
I like old cars so I know. I drive one car from the 70s, one from the 80s, two from the 90s, one from the 00s and one from 2010s (pre-screen era). All those cars put together I haven't spent $20K in maintenance over the last decade.
If a new car makes you happy and you can afford the depreciation, get one. But if the criteria is saving money, get an old car and maintain it forever.
Just as a random example, you can get a rebuilt automatic transmission for a '69 Ford Mustang for about $350 on ebay. The cheapest transmission (not rebuilt, just taken from a wreck) you'll find for a 2020 Mustang is about $540.
Americans will give away any and all material and immaterial rights to validate their illusion of comfort and security. This will not happen barring a complete audit/revamp of the state
Normal people give it up because they are permanently under assault by misinformation, misdirection, lack of education, artificial threats, all meant to guide them towards a conclusion that was already predetermined for them.
https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-wir-wissen-wo-dein-auto-steht-vo...
Positional data about 800.000 E-cars from Volkswagen.
With mesh networks it is even scarier, I wouldn't be surprised that at some point even if you don't connect a device like a smart lamp, it might still be sending data about its usage using your neighbors hub.
Regarding the importance of legislation versus "just don't buy those", I think this piece [0] seems relevant. To summarize the argument:
1. Consumer choices are never enough to really change things. It's a false promise, one the people making the decisions are happy to let you believe.
2. If you do believe that "voting with your wallet" works, then when things inevitably fail to change it leads you to blame others for "not doing their part" and being insufficiently picky or not denying their own desires.
3. Ultimately this means: (A) No policy change; (B) You spend a lot of time denying yourself nice things; (C) It creates division between people who have the same goals; (D) Your experience is frustrating bickering and purity-tests.
4. Instead you should pursue real politics. While you can't do it alone with a computer, it offers: (A) Real results; (B) No self-sabotage when you truly need a product; (C) You gain allies; (D) You experience comradery and excitement.
[0] https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/21/purity-culture/#stop-fuck...
5. Voting with your wallet hasn't worked so far. Why limit yourself to a tactic that is proven ineffective? Corporations don't limit themselves this way - they lobby and obfuscate and sometimes outright lie [1].
6. Regulation is how citizens organize. Corporations don't rely on employees just voluntarily doing what benefits the corporation - they fire them if they don't. "Vote with your wallet" means to throw away your rights and duties as a citizen, and retain only the meager powers of a consumer.
They don't. And remember, the billionaire has 100% alignment on everything with himself and that gives him huge power when voting with a valet. A collection of "common people" is a true collection of people with very different priorities and needs.
- data your car collects about you
- roadside data collection by flock/etc
- data collection by other vehicles. other vehicles act like roving flock cameras. I think fedex vehicles collect data for example.
I also wonder about data your car collects that is not about you. Might not show up in the privacy policy.
It turns out protesters don't need privacy, either, because of various reasons. Same for women seeking adequate healthcare, I'm sure. Or LGBT people attempting to exist.
Sorry, I am strawmanning a little. Actually, we'll simply have regulations on use. Regulation which will certainly be followed this time by a government with complete disregard for Constitutional rights. Certainly they will never be misused by the police currently stalking their ex-partners with existing surveillance systems despite existing stalking legislation.
I wish the legislation you talked about existed already. I am dismayed by the overwhelming number of people that love being surveilled. Without them, we would have it already.
Once it's possible to monitor your children via networked phone or wristwatch and know at all times where they are, for example, if you do not spy on your own children then other parents who do will look at you askance, seeing you as neglectful. Some will call the authories to complain. Those same complainers will also wonder why so many children are no longer becoming effective, independent adults, with no introspection.
The same philisophical problem emerges independent of surveillance with most, if not all, new technology. Once everyone is genetically engineering children, bringing children into the world naturally will set them up for failure and serfdom (a la Gattaca).
---
Yeah, how dare someone do or say anything that some random crazy asshole could use to threaten that person's personal or professional life or even put them in danger of physical harm. To hell with gay kids growing up in very traditional religious areas in much of the world.
That person who made a racist joke on Discord when they were 13 years old? That should be able to ruin them when they're 30!
Someone confiding to a friend over social media DMs that they're in an abusive relationship with someone violent? Well - she shouldn't be surprised when her partner beats her within an inch of her life when he finds out. If only she did what she was told, right?
And let's not forget the cringiest or most sexual thing you've ever said online - make sure that your every utterance in private would pass scrutiny by your employer's HR department!
Seriously...I don't understand people like you. What a small, listless, and unusually safe world you must live in.
You may as well have asked why can't everyone think and act like you as well as live in your particular region of the world with the same friends, family, romantic, and professional opportunities that you've been provided throughout your life.
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Or society could move on and accept that people progress. Also I am not aware of any instances where 30 year olds were punished for a racist joke they made with 13.
The only instance I remotely know, is of a german politician, who made a deeply racist and neonazi pamphlet when he was 17 - and the result was some public outcry but nothing else.
Still privacy is important, simply because those who do surveillance are not trustworthy either.
Aside from getting her fired from her job, they also tried to destroy her dad's business.
I get that less-than-10 years isn't a ton of time, but it also represented nearly half her life. People tend to grow up a lot in their teens even if it's still common for there to be some immaturity leftover in their early 20's
Lynch mobs usually ain't fair or just or busy with factfinding, but I know there are also a lot of people hiding behind a mask and do not like to get exposed by confronting them with something out of a time when they were not so careful yet.
Personally I just avoid racists (or argue with them) and don't attack their stuff or even family and don't think this is the way, to get to a world without or even less racism.
But like you say, many things which have been crimes were based on unethical laws. It's easy to two sides this issue, less crime would on a whole be a good thing but some level of committing crime and getting away with it is required for society to progress.
In the US it is actually even worse than that.
The government and large corporations (basically the same people owning it all) will spy on you 24x7 for anything that they dislike you doing.
But if your bike (car, etc) is stolen right in front of many cameras providing video evidence, police will not do anything about it.
I know first hand people who have crystal clear video evidence of theft, gave it to the police, and they just don't care to do anything about it.
That’s also true for many states that don’t have the same coverage of CCTV and total lack of privacy.
These are NOT two sides of the same coin.
PRC netizens, and who knows what percentage of them are real but presumably more than 0, will defend this when I talk with them about it. How the surveillance makes them feel safe, how they wouldn't feel safe without it.
Hm, maybe, I'd prefer the person looking over me while I slept to be someone I know, but I guess everyone knows brother Xi. Regardless, the implication seems to be that we need the requisite police state to go with it, when Taiwan and Japan both have basically total CCTV coverage as well, yet are liberal democracies. Both countries are also comparably safe to the PRC. So there certainly seems to be some middle ground. I don't know about Japan, but I've not heard of issues of private companies exploiting the CCTV for profiteering purposes, or like, cops using it to stalk people, or the government using it to engage in civic oppression (post constitutional reforms).
Japan is nowhere near "total CCTV coverage"
Petty crime in China was also "essentially solved" before there were cameras anywhere.
> You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras.
Leaving my bike unlocked in Shanghai 10+ years ago, it was stolen about once every one or two months. That's better than the US, but it's not exactly economical.
The modern solution is that you don't own a bike. You use the rental bikes instead. They're not as good as the bike you'd own, but if they get stolen it's not your problem. (And they have trackers installed, so it's not much of a problem for the rental company either.)
The issue is having to rely on luck and the fact that humans are risk and loss aversive even when the risk is worth it.
I don't understand your argument. Are you suggesting surveillance cameras are somehow less effective in diverse societies? Are you claiming UK has as effective a surveillance network as China?
a more effective one.
>Are you suggesting surveillance cameras are somehow less effective in diverse societies?
I'm suggesting that certain cultures are less risk and conflict averse, to put it in the most politically correct way possible, and are less disincentivized from committing crimes by the possibility of brief imprisonment.
There are cameras inside the car as well.
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson on How Your Data Will Be Used Against You https://open.spotify.com/episode/4FOwAWkB0Bu00EpxmE97qB?si=V...
Plus, if you were allowed to opt-out, the rest of the opt-in data from other people become _slightly_ less useful.
Therefore, all the gov't needs to do is to mandate that car manufacturers offer the option at a reasonable price (where the 10x price is considered reasonable).
They do have better information about maintenance needs of my car. However they are limited to giving that to the dealer who already can guess most of that anyway.
You see this in all sorts of places, for example, stealing an EV charging cable. To a thief, a $500 charging station is just $10 worth of copper waiting to be melted down. They don't care about the $490 deficit they left behind because that’s the victim's problem. Social media platforms, and apparently now car manufacturers, look through the exact same lens.
However if you care only about a one or two markets and cars are often already built inside that market...
Procurement is expected to find ways % in cut costs continuously, every year, forever. Although data-gathering and selling is not part of procurement it is not surprising if car companies are exploring this.
You could properly infer if the phone owner is the driver by determining if they use the phone less than the other car's inhabitants or if they are the only phone detected driving at that speed and location. Or they use the phone more during traffic jams and less during more intense driving.
Then this leaves determining what car is involved. You could potentially see if the phone is connected to the car's entertainment system. That would tell you what car model it is perhaps even with a unique car id though the serial number. Some cars may have bluetooth/wi-fi and the phone could potentially passively scan the largest most consistent signal to get the car's model without ever connecting.
Cross referencing from other data sources (cameras) would give this information though may still be difficult/expensive/unlawful.
So in response to your comment its possible that the chosen surveillance device does actually report acceleration events to LexisNexis and then Progressive. Or this is is a case of overly being paranoid. Either case the possibility exists.
There’s state litigation in Texas and Arkansas at least and a national lawsuit
https://iapp.org/news/a/california-authorities-announce-larg...
GM $20M revenue / $12.75M California fine: Official CA AG press release, May 8, 2026. https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/when-it-comes-data-pr...
Data has value is flatly true statement. So at best we can have system where you can keep your data and pay more, or sell your data and pay less. The rub here though is that the people who have the means to keep their data, also have the most valuable data, and in our current system subsidize the cost of people with less valuable data, who happen to be the people who would want the most to sell their data.
All of that is to say, the solution is not cut and dry.
And that would be fine, but without more rigorous controls on corporate behavior, you'll end up paying more and not keeping your data.
Archives tie Epstein and Maxwell individually to various companies in those areas, and a truckload of familiar family names show up along them. My assessment is that people like Thiel and Musk are not self-made, they are intelligence nepo children leveraging aristocratic/colonial offshore wealth of their families.
What is better than being rich and above the law due to your role in intelligence?
If you are old money you tend towards intelligence roles because they give you diplomatic passport and make you immune to the law. It is much better than owning 5 passports from some banana republic because in the end only military might of the colonial powers counts (e.g. the british crown).
So many of the silicon valley idols we cherish are in fact old money, parents were in intelligence, the child made a tech company, tech was national security relevant, they got funding and daddy handled their competitors through their government institution. Have a look at founders of YC for example. Or Mr. Thiel who officially came from nothing but miraculously has a university named after him and is super-deep into intelligence. Or Musk where unfortunately a lot of archives from South Africa are unavailable for research, but his wealth definitely does not come from repatriating colonial wealth from South Africa to the US.
In terms of realpolitik all is fine but if you start fabricating terrorist attacks to cover up a potential PR scandal for your shitty family you are way out of line. And at that point only the next large-scale attack helps you cover up the scandal. Several tangential names in the Epstein files fall victims to freak terrorist attacks - those are quite convenient because they get rid of idealist defectors and have a new thing to set the public agenda with.
It is how the world works and we have to accept it.
But simply focusing on five-eyes three-letter agencies is too narrow because there are thousands of "inofficial" entities surrounding them. And at least on paper if you are working in intelligence you're an idealistic government servant. History shows that most whistleblowers we read about are these kind of idealists, because they notice that not all five-eyes governments are equal. Some are monarchies, and the crown did many things which are incompatible with democratic values of US citizens and the narrative of the "American dream" they learned from Hollywood.
People always blame CIA and their black budgets, but what if CIA was actually subverted by the British crown and their colonial aristocracy?
The most famous spy in the world is James Bond, 007, not a "yankee". The British broke the Enigma and had extensive experience managing hundreds of colonies and their local populations, supposedly even introducing foreign pathogens as biological warfare on native populations.
Maxwell family was big in software and networking, especially for identity control. Epstein family was blacklisted from Hollywood due to antisemitism and moved into radio stations & broadway. Jeffrey was arrested by Scotland Yard in London and a bit earlier Jarecki was arrested in East Germany and later stationed for a very long time in Heidelberg, which is 1hr away from Thiel's official origin story, and also close to where the Trump family originated from in a different era.
Fred Trump sent youth abroad from NY area with the American Foreign Service (AFS), which during the cold war was at least relevant for national security, because each of the students could be converted into communists by foreign agencies.
When the King visited the white house, Mr. Trump was seemingly out of character and did not speak a bad word.
I have a feeling that black folks living in the Trump-owned low-income areas were the final destination for the weapons-for-drugs trades which also included names such as Epstein and Kashoggi. Germany gets linked into this through Terramar which was used to get machinery and chemical precursor materials to a country of their choice. Famously these deals were paid in cash at the New Jersey offices of German companies - if at all.
I think the casinos were used for drug money laundering, until he got a knock on the door and stopped doing that.
Even before Trump the Epsteins were in the pageants/model industry involved with the "Miss Universe" aimed at foreign aristocrats. Coincidentally another now-famous family name in those credits is "Sweeney".
The car owner is buying a car, using computer to handle complicate hardware I understand, but at what point it make sense to share the data automatically without consent?
Most governments don’t collect this data because they lack the technical capacity to do so. The legal frameworks were put in place long before the infrastructure.
At the point a third party offers $$$ to car company, or a state entity leverages some state power to coerce car company.
For example, when a user suddenly brakes with large delta v, is it really due to this driver's aptitude to not predict the results of their driving decisions? Or is it because they frequently encounter the same reckless drivers?
It seems this could also be detected: for each braking event, consider a disc of sufficient radius and similarily downscore other drivers in this disc, use proper Bayesian inference of course, not naive linear score incrementing decrementing...
Simply downrating the driver of the braking vehicle risks taxing the less reckless chickens vis-a-vis the dare's in chicken or dare scenario's, naive calculations risk taxing specifically those parties that decrease the total kinetic energy in potentially dangerous situations, if the reckless drivers don't flinch even if it would have gotten them into trouble if a chicken had been a reckless dare.
This is why insurance companies also use your zip code to rate you. If you live near roads with more losses, you are more likely to incur losses. Doesn’t matter if you’re a great driver or not — someone might hit you.
Avoiding the ice is a great advice indeed, with or without those tires.
e-bikes are more climate friendly than human-powered bikes.
5 grams CO2 equivalent emissions per mile e-bike, 40 grams per mile for human eating exclusively bananas. Much, much worse for other dietary choices. Embodied carbon emissions in the bike itself are essentially equivalent.
The Carbon Footprint of Everything (2022)
Edit: if you only mean food transportation carbon, it seems impossible bananas are literally optimal per calorie.
The larger point of the book is that specific accounting is messy, but if we proceed anyway we can get to the rough orders of magnitude that are more useful.
That asked, some things I do for myself, and self-propelling is great for my health and longevity.
E-bikes are really power efficient, and food production is very inefficient. Your average American commute probably uses less power per day than a refrigerator.
That said, it’s not really meaningful when comparing to the carbon footprint of driving. Diet and e-bike vs bike just really does not matter compared to the choice of driving an ICE or not driving an ICE. It’s more of just a neat fact.
Bicycles don't have enough power to spare to broadcast data. (but my ebike could and I wouldn't notice the difference)
https://www.bike-parts-honda.com/honda-motorcycle/500-MOTO/R...
My wake up moment was at Walmart self-check out when there was an error and the monitor showed screen shots of me from every angle. "So that's what the back of my head looks like."
That's when you notice they have more cameras than casinos.
Here's some examples I thought aren't for my benefit.
- How long I let the car warmup before driving after every start, - max speed, - acceleration rates, - Lateral acceleration around corners tagged with GPS data, - every GPS datapoint, - destinations and exactly when I set off and arrived
Tangentially related: I wish I could pull data on a used car to check whether the previous owner waited to floor the car until the car is on temperature.
I tried to look this up on my own but my results were always polluted with public transportation, or vehicle accident situations or just this gem "share your concerns with your driver, they can explain the data being collected".
EDIT: Sorry, I meant a legal requirement.
I've yet to encounter a service that has implemented this successfully.
Rivian lets you disable all data collection: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967786)
I don't think consumers care about their cars being connected. Personally, I would just rather use my phone for whatever connected features you would want in a car.
Maybe they’ll bring it back someday, I hope they do, but it’s almost guaranteed that governments will rain down regulation on them for entering too many markets at once—and yes, for building operating systems to which Apple refuses to build a backdoor to the encryption.
You’ll get some shit like one big “agree to all” button and 200 small opt-out buttons that reset weekly.
But i you regress under stress, technology becomes a trap. The very thing allowing us to stay sane and civilized, winds up with destructive potential like a bomb. So, the panopticon is a lesser evil, compared to everyone rushing for the replicators to get a bomb to throw at their fellow man.
Technological utopism is not a ideology, its a diagnosis.
So a panopticon is a good thing, but the center does not hold, government and companies abuse powers. A resistace culture is needed that replaces centralized panopticons with public open source panopticons and feeds power thirsty actors wrowrong information.
Not only did they store sensitive data about me, it also included personal data about 2 random Toyota owners who were incorrectly linked to my email address. I could see their full names, phone numbers, home addresses, details about their cars and every interaction they'd had with their dealers. It is a goldmine for a bad actor.
And this is despite me not signing up for "Connected Services", because Toyota/Lexus's privacy notice says they too may sell your location and driving behavior to third parties including insurance companies if you enable features like Emergency SOS.
Electric car fans keep talking about how you don't have engine and transmission maintenance, which is true. However, those are also self-contained parts that have a lot of spare parts available and plenty of expertise in maintaining and so you can actually rebuild them as needed and it's not too expensive. There's also a lot of automation in rebuilding those parts. However, if it starts seeing all the body parts failing and the frame rusting out, which will happen eventually, it's much more expensive because there's a lot more labor and parts are often less available.
Don't get me wrong. Most people give up on their cars long before they reach the point that new is cheaper.
Unless we see a great push in good public transit such that most people choose not to drive. However that won't happen: Republicans hate transit, and Democrats like transit for non-transportation reasons.
Clearly, the 25 major brands examined by Mozilla collect a ton of data. Allegedly, BYD does so as well.
What about the Slate truck? Was that even released? What about some of the Indian brands? Surely there's some useful car being produced somewhere that's just a car?
More and more we are becoming subjects to be controlled and exploited by whoever has the means to do it, with the state as an accomplice and an interested party. Piece by piece, our agency is being taken away and we are too complacent and learnedly helpless to do anything about it.
Problem solved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_G4OfXTlvs
It has an LCD for the gauges and backup camera, but no modem and no surveillance tech. Bring your own phone/tablet if you want navigation or audio.
> [...]
> The information they harvest can include [...] whether you buckle your seatbelt, drive too fast or brake too hard.
In a way this is good -- I want bad drivers to be incentivized to change their behavior.
Just need to legislate away all the other, actually creepy stuff. Just.
I live in a well-connected, medium sized city in the North East, without a car. My parents live in a very rural town about 300 miles away. I can walk from my apartment to a local train, and then from there get to an Amtrak that will take me to 30 miles from my parents house. While I could technically bike that, that is quite the hike to make after 300 Amtrak miles. Especially fearing for my life sharing the road with distracted drivers.
There is no reason for there to not be regular bus service from the city that I get off Amtrak in to the larger town between my parents and the station, and between my parents smaller town and the larger one. In a modern, developed nation I would be able to make that trip entirely by transit and walking.
And by "modern" I mean as of the 1860s, because back then it was connected by train!
As someone who may occasionally need to stealth camp on road trips I’m curious what you learned, or if it would even be useful
Roslin: I heard you're one of those people. You're actually afraid of computers.
Adama: No, there are many computers on this ship. But they're not networked.
Roslin: A computerized network would simply make it faster and easier for the teachers to be able to teach-
Adama: Let me explain something to you. Many good men and women lost their lives aboard this ship because someone wanted a faster computer to make life easier. I'm sorry that I'm inconveniencing you or the teachers, but I will not allow a networked computerized system to be placed on this ship while I'm in command. Is that clear?
Roslin: Yes, sir.
Adama: Thank you. 'Scuse me.
I wonder if there was a floppy disk virus for CP/M in the 70s.
Refitting is the reverse of removal.
Yes, I have actually already done this.
There's a big custom chip made by GEC Plessey that has a small flash chip beside it, but it's totally undocumented. They also make the custom chips in the door, window switch, and seat outstations. I found some very very general documentation about them but nothing enough to start picking the firmware apart.
Cylons seized the opportunity and despite of the software firewall they managed to periodically disturb this network. In the end all computers were disconnected. IIRC Gaeta later had to wipe drives and install operating systems again, from these fancy octagonal "cds".
Found the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CkDyc1TLrQ
Yeah, it was intended to limit lateral movement from compromised systems.
This is a BBC article. UK public broadcasting, paid with taxpayer money and aggressively collected - one of the first things I got when moving to a new home in the UK was letters from tv licensing.
Yet it's all "In the United States". "Federal Law and state law". The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that, this Maryland researcher for Mozilla there. There are two references to the UK and Europe (lumped together) that vaguely say, "It's a little better for certain classes of data" and "you can request your data". Which effectively means, "GDPR exists and the UK has its version".
> This website is produced by BBC Global News Ltd, a commercial company that is part of BBC Studios, owned by the BBC (and just the BBC). No money from the licence fee was used to create this website.
Visiting the same URL on the .co.uk version gives me a multi-article scroller with different layout and links (including a "What is BBC Future?"), but no trace of that banner. Guessing that you're in the UK from your comment history, my best guess is that they decide whether to serve that banner via geofencing.
Personal inventory:
Suzuki DL-650 V-Strom 650 $3500 1999 SW1 $1500 1998 SL2 $1500 1998 SL2 $1500 2005 Sienna $1000 (!). This one does have a crash "black box" but no phone home bullshit.
I'd take any of them across the country tomorrow.
I want to someday get my family car from my childhood if I can find one. 1994 Pontiac Grand Prix
Now that we've got trillion-dollar computing machines that, at best, output indeterminate results, we've entered the realm where it is clear that even the very best computers are only capable of trying to do things. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they fail -- but they still try anyway.
Therefore, in journalist logic: It's reasonable to expect that lesser computers have been this way all along.
At least in the EU it’s quite illegal and even if a car maker slips something in, GDPR is always there so one can request a copy and have it deleted. Wish the regulation was even stricter though.
A side note, though. This SIM-less emergency calls are blocked in some countries because there were a lot of fake calls. Some other countries put such calls on a less important list of calls. Many countries in EU do allow them, though.
So, car manufacturers could just put in the cellular capabilities without connecting to any network. They just don’t want to.
For some strange reason most companies do not understand the inherent danger of having e.g. location data and behavioural patterns leaked. That's much much worse than you stupid debit card number.
To make it stricter or pack a bigger punch, there needs to be stronger mandate for such legislation. And we live in interesting times… wars, previously democratic allies disintegrating, useless right wing or russia-aligned governments and MEPs, etc…
So yeah, could be better but all you and I can do is talk to our MEPs, help inform people outside tech, vote this way and hope enough people share the concerns
a) Zero trust in the car manufacturers to really respect GDPR
b) Zero repercussions for actually stealing my PII. Okay, maybe VW will pay a minuscule fine, but they won't
On the other hand, Chinese OEMs are very saavy in this area. They know what to do with your data (Mobile phones background helps a lot here) and they're doing everything they can to get an edge over all other OEMs. This is why the industry has been going towards "who has the best tech and apps" instead of "who gives safest chassis and better engines/gearboxes"
Most people use smart phones. Those are generally GPS equipped and can also be triangulated between cell towers down to a few hundred meters. When using a WIFI, that gets a lot better. And they have a few other active radios as well (uwb, bluetooth, nfc, etc.).
And they have active microphones that respond to phrases like "Siri!", "Hey Google!", etc. And they probably have exploitable back doors that shady government agencies might be exploiting. At least popular spy fiction from a quarter century ago suggests that governments might be doing such things. You'd have to assume they are at this point and that there's some level of truth to these Hollywood spy fantasies.
Your car might be reporting its location and listening in on conversations as well but it's not adding a whole lot of new information. Most new cars actually come with induction phone chargers. Drivers put their phone right next to them to charge. Very convenient. And it connects to the car even! Shock horror. Most of the tracking and spying tech in the car is a bit redundant if you consider that. Nice to get a bit clearer audio from some extra microphones and slightly better precision of the user's location.
But the good news is that most car drivers don't car pool and sit in the traffic jam alone mostly not having meetings. They might be taking calls (on their phone). But otherwise, there isn't a lot to spy on that wasn't already well covered for those interested in doing the spying.
If you are worried about being spied on, have your meetings in a Faraday cage or in nature far away from any devices. And don't take your smart phones anywhere near those meetings. Also consider wearing a tin foil hat. And maybe don't hold your secret meetings in cars. You'll be fine. Otherwise, the bad news is that you are probably in reach of a vast network of cameras, active microphones, etc. regardless of what you do with your personal devices (including your car). You have been for the past few decades.
Every bit of surveillance should be prevented, but we shouldn't throw it all away if we can't be perfect.
Surveillance technology is very real and has been for decades. This article naively portrays this as some scandalous escalation when in reality it's a very incremental thing that delivers very new relevant capability to those doing the actual spying. A car is just a phone with wheels. You have probably have one in your pocket.
> Every bit of surveillance should be prevented
Good luck with that. I don't see a grand strategy to make that happen here. Just click bait headlines and people reacting to those.