EU has secret plan for police to 'remote stop' cars | Hacker News Reader

EU has secret plan for police to 'remote stop' cars

telegraph.co.uk

59 pointsangersock57 comments

In order for this to work, there must be some means of communicating with the car at distance. The nature of this (radio, etc) doesn't really matter. There will be a receiver on the car that can and will be identified and removed by criminals, rendering the stated purpose moot. Of course removing the receiver will be made illegal, as if this will accomplish anything.

That leaves two classes of people who will be affected by this. One is people who commit unplanned crimes (e.g. hit a pedestrian, panic and run). The technology will probably help here, but unplanned violent crimes committed in public places almost always end with the suspect in custody, so the marginal benefit is close to zero.

The second class is ordinary people who are not committing any crimes, but who the police may want to stop for other reasons. The police won't even need to be in the area, they can show up later (at their leisure) after your vehicle has been turned off. Ever parked illegally for a few minutes so you could run inside and deliver something? Your car might be off when you come back. Going a little faster than the speed limit? Enjoy your unplanned stop on the side of the road and wait for a policeman to show up with your ticket.

This is yet another reason ubiquitous cameras and universal location awareness on the part of law enforcement is dangerous. Even if you accept that nothing is wrong with the police watching you 24/7, the mere fact that they are enables virtually any abuse they would want to commit.

None of this makes any sense. You don't justify anything nor do you give any solid reasoning.

You just state that this won't help, therefore it's bad. Please actually /support/ your claims. Why would police turn off your car instead of simply issuing a ticket electronically? Why would they stop cars speeding instead of issuing an electronic ticket?

Please take the time to think about and provide plausible examples instead of this nonsense.

From the article:

The technology, scheduled for a six-year development timetable, is aimed at bringing dangerous high-speed car chases to an end and to make redundant current stopping techniques such as spiking a vehicle's tyres.

Right, and the parent poster claims with no support that

a) The technology will be removed by all criminals who plan ahead

b) Criminals that don't plan ahead are almost always caught

c) This technology will be used for minor infractions that are 'ticketable offences'

None of this is realistic or supported at all. I gave an example in another post, run-flat tyres defeat spike strips. Why do criminals rarely fit them?

Because run-flat tires cost a lot more than removing a chip. Or buying a jammer, if they get clever about making the chip hard to remove.

You don't have any support for you claim that a, b, and c were unrealistic. Pot, kettle.

The marginal risk of spike strips relative to the cost of installing and maintaining run-flat tires is minimal compared to the marginal risk of a radio transmitting (likely with GPS) transceiver that can locate and disable a car relative to the cost of disabling, removing, or spoofing said transceiver.

For a longer explanation, spike strips require multiple layers of failure in any criminal activity before they become a concern. You have to be in a car, have alerted police, have not been a good enough driver to elude police, and driven in a consistent direction long enough that they can predict where you'll go and drop spikes. If you're not performing a minor infraction, or you're a criminal who plans ahead, the probability of all these things happening, and you not being able to do anything about any of them is minimal.

If you have a radio transmitting GPS on your car that can disable it you only have to hit the first step - be in a car. You don't even have to have police on alert. You can commit a crime, have gotten away, be driving around the next day, and as they're reviewing tape, they'll note your car, see the license (or ID the make, model, markings, and driver), find you, and then disable you wherever you are. All criminals will remove this as a matter of course.

This doesn't even speak to the pattern recognition and behavioural attacks that this would allow on any criminal organization, enabling things like predictive surveillance (there's a big car pow-wow on 5th and Lake St. every Sat. night), optimal raids (same), or covertly nabbing members (Dino likes to go for a snack at 8:00 every night).

Further, this is easily as bad as the NSA "meta-data" scandal, since the pattern recognition above used against all common citizens is absolutely begging for abuse by middle managers and line-workers (where's my girlfriend going?)

A) is true almost by definition. You could also object that criminals who plan on speeding away from the scene of a crime may forget to put enough gas in their tank and run out of gas before they get away. It's plausible, but crime is a cat and mouse game and if something poses a severe enough threat to criminals, those who do not defend against it will get caught. Those left will learn from their mistakes. Even if all criminals initially neglect to remove the receiver and get caught, you don't expect a world where future criminals are too stupid to learn from the mistakes of others, do you?

B) It might not have been entirely clear from how I worded it, but I was speaking only of crimes that are witnessed ocurring in public. The reasoning behind this exclusion is that the technology in the article is discussed in the context of being combined with police surveillance (either in person or via camera). I couldn't find reliable statistics on the percentage of crimes with cooperative witnesses that lead to charges being filed, but it's common knowledge among law enforcement that cooperative witnesses greatly improve the odds of charges being filed [1]. The point I was making here is that if the crime is witnessed by several people or captured on video the identity of the suspect can usually be determined.

C) Like (A), this is impossible to prove either way since we're talking about what might happen in the future, conditioned on a certain technology seeing widespread adoption. However, rather than speculate ad nauseum, I simply invite you to review the last decade of history in both the US, UK, and Australia (possibly other countries as well) in which the legal restrictions surrounding the use of police force (see: stop-and-frisk, police dogs as probable cause on a leash, etc) have decreased while the technology they have available has increased in power (surplus armored vehicles sold to police, increasingly common license plate readers, etc). The point here, regardless of what would happen if the remote stop technology were adopted, is that police have earned a degree of public distrust and skepticism that has no parallel in recent history, and starting from a position of distrust and moving to trust when the populace is convinced later is much safer than the opposite.

[1] http://www.npr.org/2012/11/13/163242604/in-chicago-violence-...

>The nature of this (radio, etc) doesn't really matter. There will be a receiver on the car that can and will be identified and removed by criminals, rendering the stated purpose moot. Of course removing the receiver will be made illegal, as if this will accomplish anything.

It has been effectively impossible to hotwire a new car for over a decade, because modern cars simply will not start without the say-so of the ECU, which is a highly secure black box. Stealing a modern car means stealing the keys, because highly sophisticated organised criminals have failed totally in developing practical attacks to circumvent immobilisers. Build the remote shutdown facility into the ECU and it will be essentially impossible to disable. Send the remote shutdown instruction over a suitably designed radio link and jamming becomes utterly impractical. I have very little doubt that the motor industry is capable of designing a very effective remote shutdown systems; Relatively crude aftermarket solutions are already being used very effectively by fleet operators.

There are perfectly legitimate civil liberties objections to such a scheme, but the usual hacker trope of "technologies that I don't like can always be circumvented" is just plain wrong. Crime can be prevented or substantially curtailed through the effective use of technology, as we have seen in Europe with IMEI-based blocking of stolen mobile phones. Cash-in-transit robberies are now quite rare, due to design improvements in CiT boxes. Security technology isn't perfect, but that doesn't make it useless.

> Send the remote shutdown instruction over a suitably designed radio link and jamming becomes utterly impractical.

Unless the radio link must be always-on for the vehicle to move, I think you've underestimated what is required to construct an RF link that is impervious to interference.

We still have problems with shmucks using GPS jammers to prevent employers from tracking them halting traffic at major airports: http://www.insidegnss.com/node/3676

"It took the FAA and FCC from March 2009 until April 2011 to locate a GPS jammer operated by another trucker on the New Jersey Turnpike, according to a presentation by John Merrill, Department of Homeland Security program manager for position, timing, and navigation, at the 2012 Telcordia-NIST-ATIS Workshop on Synchronization in Telecommunication Systems."

Don't forget crackers activating other people's maliciously.

Since cars get at least as often updated as routers, what could possibly go wrong? Seriously, with Android entertainment systems, GSM and Bluetooth for convenient wireless attacks and a government mandated connection between these and safety systems, like breaks, we just let fifteen year old script kiddies not only play with web servers but also with heavy, fast moving blocks of steel, that have people inside.

Yep.

> A disgruntled former employee of Texas Auto Center chose a creative way to get back at the Austin-based dealership: He hacked into the company's computers and remotely activated the vehicle-immobilization system, which triggered the horn and disabled the ignition system in more than 100 of the vehicles. The dealership had installed the system in its cars as a way to deal with customers who fell behind on their payments.

I'm not going to get into the benefits of open source for consumer appliances, just that there is quite a bit of research into internal communication within the vehicle's operational systems and it's quite poor.

Giving all cars a 3G connection to the world and having shitty security means we're going to have a bad time. I had hopes with Google showing interest in getting Android into cars, but it's just for "infotainment" which in all likelihood means offloading the development of those shitty DVD players.

Updating the firmware of the various ECUs within your car involves bringing it to a dealership/repair shop, which probably means they're never going to get updated. Let that sink in for a moment -- imagine a plethora of Windows XP boxes having 3G connections and rarely getting updated even by the end-user.

[1] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229919/Car_hacking_R...

Windows XP isn't a realtime operating system. You're not going to find it anything motor control related, and the infotainment system and control stuff are usually on physically seperate buses.

Of course the old adage applies, if you have access to the hardware, all security bets are off.

He meant Windows XP as an analogy, because it's the most widely deployed vulnerable OS right now.

In a well designed system, the connections between the entertainment stuff and the safety systems should be one-way anyways right? Something like "if going over 5 mph turn off the screen".

I don't really know about the state of car entertainment system design, however. Based off of the Toyota breaks article, I should probably get worried though.

Toyota brakes article. FTFY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9311_Toyota_vehicle...

The third and fourth paragraphs of the heading are the most interesting in regards to your parent's comment.

anything they do I hope that nothing can simply "stop" the car, but just gradually slow it down, otherwise it would be a HUGE risk for everyone involved of course

and if something like this really must exist PLEASE at least make it sure that nobody more far than 1km (probably a legitimate police officer at the scene) can turn it on..if you are farther than that location coordinates would be more than enough in my view..

Yes, many things can go wrong. That doesn't change the fact that an 'emergency stop' is a potential life saver. You simply gloss over the existence of things like the DLR.

UK tabloid? Check! Anti-EU sentiment? Check! Vague accusations? Check! UK conservative MEP's heroicly fighting wind mills? Check!

A conversation about the (vague) subject area might interesting. The article most certainly isn't...

To be fair, it isn't a tabloid. It is however The Telegraph, which is essentially a continuous political broadcast on behalf of the Conservative Party. It tends these days to have the technical literacy of a small grapefruit, which is a shame as apparently it was reasonably good on that score back when Jules Verne was around.

The Telegraph is not a tabloid and this alleged leak from documents prepared by the European Network of Law Enforcement Technology Services (Enlets) has been very widely reported. The report was released by Statewatch - a non-profit organization founded in 1991 that monitors the state and civil liberties in the European Union.

Questioning the inclusion of this piece in HN is fair comment though do HN readers need your guidance as in your revealing "check!"s. Would pro-EU sentiment have been acceptable "a brilliant idea to stop criminals in their track"?

To be fair, The Telegraph is still considered a "quality" paper, not a tabloid.

The Telegraph is a broadsheet (NY Times, etc. equivalent).

Don't comment if you don't know.

This is a bad idea even if the technology could be implemented perfectly. The advantage of violence in the context of law enforcement is that it is violent, and hence something which is (in a functioning state) used only as a last-resort measure. This is important since it helps maintain the balance of power.

Remote-shutdown is nonviolent and there is hence a very good opportunity for a slippery-slope situation where this power will be abused. Who would possibly believe that a capability like this will only be used in the situations where spikes would be used to stop a lethal car chase?

Implementing systems like this is yet another step on the road towards the capability to implement the most oppressive police state in world history. Not a good route to take.

>Remote-shutdown is nonviolent and there is hence a very good opportunity for a slippery-slope situation where this power will be abused.

The article mentioned the ability to shut a car down from a remote control room. If they have the ability to shut a specific vehicle down from a remote location then they categorically will have the ability to track the location of any car at any time so long as it contains this technology.

To me at least, that's terrifying.

GPS receivers will allow the same thing...

Receiving GPS is potentially entirely self-contained and requires no upstream interaction. Navigation systems with on-board databases need no external data for geocoding, maps, etc.

"You have one point left on your license. Have a good day." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119116/

Since anyone planning to use their car to get away from the police would disable this device/software, only honest folks would have it enabled. So the only sure way for law enforcement to use it would be to disable the cars of innocent people to act as roadblocks in front of the pursued. And, of course, there would be an incentive for the pursued to figure out how to disable cars behind them. Doesn't seem like a game we should play. I mean, at least in my dystopian imagination.

> Since anyone planning to use their car to get away from the police would disable this device/software, only honest folks would have it enabled

Since anyone planning to use their car to get away from the police would install run-flat tyres, spike strips would only be used against the innocent.

Your logic doesn't seem to work.

This is what you get with self-driving cars; someone else is doing the driving, and that means someone else gets to decide when you stop.

You may also get it with regular cars; but you definitely get it with self-driving cars. So all you self-driving advocates keep that in mind...

I feel like I'll veer off topic here but you should probably weigh the advantages/disadvantages of that sort of opposition.

Unlike what movies might lead us to believe, running away from the police (car chase style) seems to be very useless in terms of your chances of getting your innocence proved or whatever (not like you're going to run off and discover that proof).

This site(http://pursuitsafety.org/mediakit/statistics.html) has a bunch of tidbits on the topic, namely that pursuits are extremely dangerous (most end in car crashes) and are dangerous to bystanders as well.

The role of police aggresivity can also be an issue, but that's why we have the constitution. Searches without warrants are no-gos, so in theory you have no incentive to speed off( There was that recent article about the FBI pulling people over and making up probable cause though...).

I am slightly biased because of some personal reasons, but I am absolutely fine with having your liberty to drive extremely fast and putting everyone around you in danger for self-driving cars. In fact, I'm willing to give up that liberty just for the safety effects. All the logistics bonuses (sharing cars and whatnot) are a great plus, obviously. In any case the police will stop you at one point if they really want to. I think there are probably more fundamental issues to tackle if you want to get into issues with the police force.

If it means I don't have to deal with accidents on the road or the subsequent rubber-necking assholes, I'm fine with that tradeoff.

... and would you be fine if cops were unable to stop thief disabled car and decided to stop yours that was in front of his and therefore using it as a stopping wall "for greater good of pedestrians and drivers around you". Good luck then. Make sure you have a damn good chiropractor and well-written last will.

Just means you have to deal with every skiddie who can install metasploit when the system is inevitably discovered to be massively insecure.

OnStar already does this, I believe. I recall seeing an article about disabling cars using microwaves, as well.

I'm not sure how much I care considering the cops already have the power to make me stop, with force if desired.

Cops already have that power, yes. But random assholes on the internet didn't have that power, until now. That's the problem with this sort of bound-to-be-insecure remote shut-off technology (trolls or criminal abuse).

  > I'm not sure how much I care considering the cops 
  > already have the power to make me stop, with force 
  > if desired.

You should probably care quite a bit. Sure, cops can already make you stop with force, but this requires effort and coordination on their part. A remote disabling system is virtually-effortless.

History has shown that these "conveniences" are abused. Wiretaps were originally pitched as "extreme cases" techniques. Stun guns were pitched as a non err less than lethal weapon for use in cases where deadly force would be required. Now stun guns are routinely used on non-violent people.

This will be misused by law enforcement. This will not be solely used to catch criminals. It will be used against dissidents and activists. It's illogical to think any other way.

On the other hand, high speed chases are expensive, risky, and very dangerous to everyone (not just the suspect, and not just the cops).

That's why cops typically don't engage in high speed chases (at least in the US, unsure about the UK) and instead rely on aerial surveillance (eg. police helicopters) to track the criminal.

It's similar in the UK. Rules change from time to time and sometimes policies have varied between the different regional police forces, but the last time I talked to police friends it seemed like everything was going the same way: only specialist officers would be permitted to engage in high speed pursuit, and even then they would be subject to direction from a control room where someone not tied up in the situation around them could order everyone to abandon the pursuit on safety grounds. Basically, the risk of not bringing the vehicle being chased to a halt as fast as possible would have to outweigh the risk of the pursuit, which it almost never does once you get to crazy speeds.

Anytime police have to use force they expose themselves to risk. This acts as a natural deterrent to some abuses that would otherwise happen. Chasing a speeding vehicle, pulling a large man out of the car, and subduing him is much more difficult than pressing a button and waiting for a dozen more police to arrive before surrounding him.

The point is that, with force, police have to be sure that the suspect is worth it before they act, as even the possibility of this happening has to be considered.

Tangentially: What's the least digital, most user-serviceable car on the market right now? As a non-driver, I haven't been able to make any headway into figuring this out.

If you're referring to new cars (not pre-owned) then generally, the cheapest, smallest engine models tend to have minimal technology. Often cars built in India tend to be quite basic such as Tata. I'm not aware of any mass market vehicle that doesn't at least have an ECU (Engine Control Unit). ECU's tend to regulate everything from emissions, fuel usage, air intake, etc.

New car? nothing. forget about it. they all have 12 tons of extra gizmos built in. Maybe your basic commercial panel van wouldn't have all that stuff built in. You could drive a white panel van. Start a catering business.

Go back about 12 years and prior and you still have an ECU, but it doesn't have a bunch of information logging stuff built in, yet you have the benefits of a modern computer controlled ECU to control fuel injection and ignition timing. It's going to control those things based on some pre-defined maps and the input of several sensors. One to sense airflow at the intake, a sensor for throttle position, a sensor for cam or crank position, and an O2 sensor in the exhaust to tell the computer how complete the combustion is, and to adjust the mix accordingly. Closed loop system. There is probably also a knock sensor in there. maybe a few other failsafes to turn on an idiot light on the dashboard. coolant temperature, oil pressure, fan control, Maybe also a basic anti-lock brake system.

Most basic cars don't have any fancy traction control stuff at that point. After that? They get more complex ever year. steering angle sensors, yaw sensors, traction control, selective braking drive-by-wire throttle instead of a cable connected between your foot and the throttle plate, electric power steering, sensors that apply the brakes so you don't rear-end the guy in front of you, backup cameras, parking assist systems, more stuff offloaded to more powerful car control systems.

EU police is in some ways similar to American. They have no problem to stop the traffic and use civilians in their cars as a live shield.

I wonder how this is going to be implemented. I almost died on my honeymoon because engine, power steering and !breaks! suddenly died on my rented car. We were going downhill from mountains, 1000 foot drop on one side, stone wall on other side.

I would love to see some real statistics how many criminals this will help to catch. GSM jammer is trivial.

Is this really a problem so dire that it needs to be addressed in such a dramatic manner? How often do the authorities know for sure which car it is they need to stop in an emergency situation? And if it's not an emergency situation, this seems like an overkill solution. Also a dangerous one (how do you disable a car safely travelling in traffic?), open to abuse by authorities, not to mention a huge and juicy target for criminal hackers.

It is not secret and it is not even a plan

I don't understand the desire to wire core functionality to any network. As long as police stations are getting their hands on drones, just forget this. It's easier (and more secure) to just follow via drone. It's not like he's going to disappear. Kill switches are security risks.

It's more that fleeing suspects are often involved in crashes, those crashes are occasionally fatal.

This is already being worked on by car manufacturers, as part of the EU's eCall agenda, which will be a requirement for future vehicles. Remote control of vehicles is simply an extension of the telematics system used to introduce and implement this.

Made me think pretty much every government on Earth has fucked up in some ways, maybe things will be better on Mars when we colonize it. Then I remembered Mars vehicles have this feature installed already as well ...

Wait till someone hacked it.

I don't get why it has to be a policeman, an automated system would be better.

Otherwise, bitcoin just found a great new application: sending bribes to policemen.

So does this mean that the original version of The Italian Job is actually the future of getaway vehicles?

Another nasty DRM in the works. What else do they want to remote stop? Surgical implants may be?

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