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Roadside Assistance System Used for Eavesdropping
pegr writes "El Reg has a story about how a US appeals court has 'put the brakes on an FBI surveillance technique that turns an automobile driver's on-board vehicle navigation system into a covert eavesdropping device, after finding that the spying effectively disables the system's emergency and roadside assistance features.' Seems the right to get the service you pay for trumps the 'right' of the FBI to spy on you, using your own vehicle's systems!"
No, go ahead and read the article. It's ok, I'll wait...
Here, I'll do the heavy lifting for you...
"Under federal law, the FBI can obtain court orders compelling telecommunications companies, ISPs, landlords and others to assist the Bureau in spying on customers. But the law requires that surveillance in such cases be conducted "unobtrusively and with a minimum of interference with the services" provided by the company."
There. You want to try again?
If the car breaks down, the FBI or whoever was listening could repsond!
Actually, in the majority opinion, they addressed that: "The FBI, however well-intentioned, is not in the business of providing emergency
road services and might well have better things to do when listening in than respond with such services to the electronic signal sent over the line."
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Under federal law, the FBI can obtain court orders compelling telecommunications companies, ISPs, landlords and others to assist the Bureau in spying on customers. But the law requires that surveillance in such cases be conducted "unobtrusively and with a minimum of interference with the services" provided by the company.
How is it infringing on their "right" to privacy if the FBI had obtained a warrant to listen in on the service? For starters, there is no "right to privacy". The Bill of Rights enumerates a number of rights that, taken in summary, give what amounts to a "right" of privacy, but no specific right to privacy itself. But those rights compel a law enforcement agency to obtain a warrant if it wants to listen in on your private conversations. And that's what the FBI did here. They appear to have done everything by the book. Now, if you want to blame somebody for doing it wrong, blame the judge for not coming to the same conclusion that the appeals judge came to, that is, that the FBI is not in the business of responding to emergencies (assuming that the agents would even know what the tone coming through the speaker meant).
Really, the only difference between a wiretap or a bug is that the FBI used different technology in this case. Nothing has changed. The FBI identified a suspect in a crime, got a warrant for a wiretap and executed the warrant. I don't find it disturbing. Now, if they had just hijacked the signal without going through the legal hoops, THAT would be disturbing news.
Nothing to see here, move along.
I won't say it as a matter of fact, but I suspect that you didn't read the article.
-h-
Ok, to start, you will notice that first in order for this surveilence to be activated, they need a cout order. IOW they need a warrant. That makes this surveilence no different than a wire tap or sitting outside your house with a mic aimed at your window. If they hae the warrant, they can monitor.
This was true _before_ the patriot act. Not any more. All they have to do is "suspect" you may be a terrorist, and all your 4th amendment rights are set aside.
-How is it infringing on their "right" to privacy if the FBI had obtained a warrant to listen in on the service? For starters, there is no "right to privacy".).
yes, there IS a "right to privacy". the supreme court has interpreted the constitution as such, many times over the years.
-The Bill of Rights enumerates a number of rights that, taken in summary, give what amounts to a "right" of privacy, but no specific right to privacy itself. ).
Amendment IX- The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
in other words, just because they don't spell it out certain rights, it doesn't mean you don't have them.
Stop listening to Scalia, and go reread the 9th Amendment. In fact, I'll go on cut and paste it, as it's very short and clear: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Any questions?
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Have been developing systems like this for years.
A few telematics systems lets you silently call upp the vehicle and eavesdrop using the handsfree functionality, but most don't. Some of the protocols supports it, while the vehicle implementation of it does not.
What a call center operator can always do, however, is silently track your car. It usually works by calling up the vehicle over Verizon's WIN4 net, transmit authentication codes and a request to track the car's progress. Every five-fifteen minutes thereafter, the car will call up and transmit a GPS log to the call center.
Remote door unlock is often also a trivial matter.
No, you cannot call up and hijack the vehicle from the ordinary phone network since all WIN4 subscriptions have an areacode of 500, rending them unreachable from any ordinary phone. Calling out to them is a long and tedious process. On top of this, every vehicle usually have a unique passcode generated when the car is built. A list of these passcodes are then sent directly to the call center who uses them to access the cars.
No, you cannot reprogram the 800 number dialled by the vehicle in case of a crash or other event. The number is setup in the WIN4 network. No matter what number you are trying to get to from the handset, you will end up at the same DNIS.
My $.05
While this is less necessary for Time division based systems such as "TDMA" (IS-136) and GSM, almost any radio transmitter can be triangulated if someone wants to be really creepy. That said, the only information about location routinely collected by GSM base station equipment (and presumably IS-136 stuff too) is distance from the nearest GSM base station, and that's fairly rough. (It's used to prevent adjacent packets from two different handsets from overlapping when they arrive at the base station due to distances and the speed of light. IIRC the distance is measured in something like miles rather than feet though, it's not massively accurate.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
For starters, there is no "right to privacy". The Bill of Rights enumerates a number of rights that, taken in summary, give what amounts to a "right" of privacy, but no specific right to privacy itself.
For starters, the "right to privacy" DOESN'T HAVE TO BE SPECIFICALLY ENUMERATED(see Amendment IX).
In addition, any rights or requirements NOT SPECIFICALLY GRANTED THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT are specifically retained by the states and the individual (see Amendment X).
Really, the only difference between [this and] a wiretap or a bug is that the FBI used different technology in this case. Nothing has changed. The FBI identified a suspect in a crime, got a warrant for a wiretap and executed the warrant.
No. In a wiretap or bug, the service is not interupted, it is monitored. In this case, the FBI HIJACKED the service for their own purposes and use, which meant the people who were paying for a specific service were not able to use that service.
If the FBI got a warrent for a wire tap of your telephone, but instead of just listening in they interupted your telephone service so that you could not call anyone, but they could always hear your conversations as though you had called them and then put the handset down without disconnecting the call then I think it would be more like what they were doing in this case.
Nothing has changed.
Yes, it has. It has been possible for a long time to bug a telephone - either a microphone on the instrument itself, or by taping into the line somewhere outside of the premises - but the telephone could still be used for its primary and intended purpose. The issue in the article is that the FBI used the technology in such a way that it could not also be used for its' intended purpose. I like your use of the word hijacked, as that is exactly what they did.
Now, if they had just hijacked the signal without going through the legal hoops, THAT would be disturbing news.
I think just the going from passive listening to actively "hijacking the signal" is an alarming developement.
US Bill of Rights
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Try again, you still need a warrant. Might I suggest reading the PATRIOT act at some point?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
In contrast to your peeing example, I might point out that we ALSO do not have an ennumerated "Right to Breathe." Does that mean an "air tax" would be legal and reasonable? Under Scalia's definition of the Constitution it would be.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
I asked the dealership where the onstar equipment was, and they said it was buried deep in the dash somewhere, totally inaccessible. I had the vehicle home and 5 minutes later found it underneath the passenger rear seat. It's not labelled "ONSTAR UNIT", but it was pretty obvious. You pull the cover back and there is a nice motorola built case with two data cables going into it and a 3rd coax connection (for the antenna).
The Onstar stats say they recover 500 vehicles a month. Thieves really are idiots. All you have to do is disconnect the onstar box, or, at the very least pull out the antenna cable.
I was considering disconnecting the unit after my year was up, but then my wife's cousin who consults for onstar was telling me that they will perform 'public safety' services even if you don't have an active account. He said if you're even in a bad neighborhood, just hit the button and say "I don't feel safe", and they'll guide you out.
Interestingly, the onstar documentation doesn't come right out and say it, but it implies that they can use the onstar system (with built in gps) for reasons other than helping you. I can envision a situation where one parent might 'kidnap' their own kid and the other parent could get a court to use the Onstar system to locate the vehicle (or something like that).
A good friend will help you move. A really good friend will help you move a body.
They don't have to leave their seats to use onspy. Besides, the warrent requirement is a complete non issue. With roving wiretaps the FBI can ask for a warrent in their favorite jurisdiction and it follows you everywhere. And under the patriot act, they don't even have to be investigating a crime, but only have guess that maybe they might hear something that could be relevant to a terrorism investigation. So what does this mean? It means that the fbi could readily get a warrent on your iranian doctor friend who's been sending money back home to a charitable organization who (unbeknownst to him) is suspected of having questionable ties. Since roving wiretaps follow him around, and say, you play cards with him on tuesday night they can tap your phone without getting another warrent. This is absolutely insane people.
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The fun part is that with how unsecure the FBI hooks into the phone system are (the eavesdropping equipment installed into switches are Sun boxes hooked to the internet) it's quite possible organised and not so organised crime are also listening to OnStar subscribers as well.
No, I don't think so. I work in the mobile phone industry. For GSM, you can browse the standards at www.3gpp.org. Document 07.07 specifies inter alia a way of setting up a network-initiated GPRS connection (i.e. a data connection), but I've never come across a way of setting up a network-initiated voice connection and I'm virtually certain it doesn't exist.