Satellites Used to Stop Car Thieves in Pakistan

zymurgy_cat writes "Yahoo has an interesting story about a company in Pakistan that uses satellites and mobile phone networks to monitor and disable stolen cars. Looks like they can also monitor people's driving habits and whether or not they're using the air conditioner. The article comments about how much easier it is for them to do things like disabling cars remotely than in Western countries. (Remind me to never rent a car in Pakistan.)"

Comments

Oh, Come on.

[Davak]

Give me a break slashguys...

Stopping stolen car = good thing
Disabling stolen car = good thing
Monitoring driving habits = good/bad thing

Good if you are an employer and want to make sure your employees are not abusing the company time. Bad if this information is used to harm your personal rights...

Just because this is in a different nation that many of you consider "backwards" doesn't mean that this is a stupid idea... or an upcoming technology here in America.

Davak

Re:Oh, Come on.

[Eccles]

Disabling stolen car = good thing

Unless it's smack-dab in the middle of a highway, or blocking an ambulance, etc. At the very least the car should warn of the imminent disabling and slowly reduce the throttle, so the perpetrator can pull off the road.

Re:Oh, Come on.

[dafoomie]

Good if you are an employer and want to make sure your employees are not abusing the company time.

Bad if you are an employee and don't want to get grief for stopping for coffee at Dunkin Donuts for 5 minutes.

Bad if you are an employee and aren't allowed to use the air conditioning unless a client is with you.

I do agree with your point, it's not the idea or the technology thats "evil" or "stupid", like anything its just a tool that can be used for good things or abused. I think concerns of abuse are legitimate until there are checks and balances in place to prevent it. If my car got stolen, I'd want it disabled and found. But I also don't want the company to monitor what I do and where I go.

Why, it's outrageous!

[HardCase]

The article comments about how much easier it is for them to do things like disabling cars remotely than in Western countries.

Yeah, nobody tell General Motors about this or they might invent OnStar.

-h-

Not a rights issue

[nurb432]

its a RENTAL car.. its not a privately owned vehicle. It was a *choice* that they rented it, and signed the waiver of privacy.

Now when they get to the stage where the police can track and control private cars.. then we can discuss violations..

But then again its their conutry, they can just change the law to make it mandatory, like they are going to do here in the US soon.

Many people believe its not a "right" to drive, our constitution does guarantee that you have basic rights of the pursuit of happiness, which in this day and age REQUIRES private transportation.. So extrapolation means driving a guaranteed right, here at least... .

Re:Not a rights issue

[efflux]

which in this day and age REQUIRES private transportation.. Well, transportation at any rate. Hell, let *no one* except those with special commercial permits drive privately... and finally we'll have a decent public transportatin system.

Re:Overly concerned?

[Rude Turnip]

If that's a problem for car rental companies over there, they should take out the A/C units, but that would be cost effficient and make sense.

Re:This system sounds nice..

[Baron_Yam]

Your dealer's shop manager just proved those logging systems should either be disabled or subject to some legal protection.

The dealership SHOULD have the right to check those logs for information directly related to a problem reported with the vehicle - and maybe for indicators of impending failures. However, walking through the logs to check out your driving habits is a disgusting invasion of privacy, no matter how harmless it seems.

Remind you ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, there is nothing wrong with disabling a stolen car if this is done by just shutting off the engine. Stop whining and get real, some countries have serious car theft problems.

and YOU are paying for the service. it is not like someone from the government is monitoring what you do with your own AC, rather a company doing that with its employees (which explains why they also monitor obvious signs of incompetent driving -- they obviously have a Boston-like situation with drivers in Pakistan ;-), so I see no reason to be concerned.

Yes. Someone could steal those records and track you. But it is probably a secondary concern when what you are worried about is kidnapping, theft, isn't it ?

errr LOJACK

[Archfeld]

has been in use in california for about 10 years now, GPS locator, engine kill switch, road-side assistance, etc...

BTW wether you pay for it or not EVERY CADDILAC has an active monitoring system running. Some friends had a new caddy but opted not to pay for the northstar system, while trying to find parking at a resturant in Vegas they went around the block like 8 times, the northstar operator came on and asked if they needed asistance, she was very helpful and polite but needless to say they were disturbed to find that their location data was being tracked anyways, and further it is being stored as aggregate data, but their unique vehicle id number is associated with this data, and the fact that they are not paying for the service means they have no ability to opt out, and Caddilac stated that the system was tied into the airbags, and anti theft system, so removal or alteration would void warranty, and likely disable airbags and such....

Sometimes tracking is good

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in Pakistan when I was young and my father was in the Foreign Service. It is definitely a place where I would feel safer if there were an RFID/GPS chip in me AND my car. It's just not very safe there for Westerners (or locals, either).

when I was in northern Pakistan...

[danny]

I visited Northern Pakistan in 1999 - and I certainly wouldn't want to go driving anywhere there myself! The roads are often crumbling one-car-wide tracks cut into cliffs or landslides, and when vehicles going opposite ways meet someone has to reverse half a kilometre... I was happy to leave that to the local drivers to negotiate!

This photo shows a place (between the Shandur Pass and Gilgit) where we had to wait three hours while they re-dynamited the road...

Danny.