Slashdot Mirror
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!"
What's most disturbing is that they only passed this because it prevented the saftey features from working, and not because it was infringing on rights of privacy. Crap, if they have a bug order anyway, can't they just bug the car?
I mean, the cops are listening... so... uh... what's the point of having roadside assistance? If the car breaks down, the FBI or whoever was listening could repsond!
I remember CSIS was slammed some years ago for agents listening in on random phone calls to Canadian citizens, and gossiping about what was going on with other agents, in a kind of Real-Radio type gagfest.
It's a good sign from the states that they are stopping this stuff, but I don't have much faith in that being followed by every cop out there. If they want to know what you're up to, trust me... they will.
Thing is, it might be fun to mess with people who are attempting to use such a system against you. Record the audio from movies where people are conspiring, and play it back when the car is driving. Shield the GPS receiver so that it doesn't receive properly, stuff like that.
Or, just learn how to be relatively self-sufficient on the road, so that they have a much harder time using things against you...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
OnStar seems kind of useless to me. It came free for a year in my new Grand Prix and I never used it.
My boss uses his all the time, they are very friendly. On vacation, hit the button, "Hi, we'd like to stop for dinner at a decent chinese food restaurant in the next hour or so."
They'll search around near where you'll be in 60 minutes based on your speed and direction, call the place, make reservations if needed, explain to you how to get there. They'll even stay on the line with you as you navigate around. They don't usually seem to be in a hurry... nice service.
BTW, according to the article, it wasn't OnStar, it was their competitor being used by the FBI, FWIW.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I'm surprised it wasn't designed in from the first round, but I'm a cynical motherfucker.
Given advances in technology, it raises an interesting question. Why not just install it by default? Given the advantages it would give law enforcement in tracking vehicle theft (and vehicle theft is often a precursor to everything from simple burglary to drug trafficking and yes, terrorism), why not have the government sponsor the Big Three into supplying a LilbroJack as part of the standard model? Big fat pork contracts for the steel belt, sold as "improving safety by eliminating auto theft" to the voter, and the cash-strapped State governments would likely be onboard anyways to save on highway patrol funding. (ie.. Congress wouldn't have to threaten to withhold highway construction $$$)
As I see it, every car that rolls off the assembly line should get at least one, and preferably two, bugs built into it. 99% of the time the primary bug is off. 1% of the time the car is stolen, and the primary but is turned on when the civilian reports the car as stolen. (And 0.1% of the time, pursuant to the needs of law enforcement, the secondary bug only, is turned on for the sheer hell of it, but that's the price you pay for eliminating Grand Theft Auto across the country, with the exception of your PC/console gaming room :)
The existence of the secondary bug should be withheld from the public for as long as practical. Not sure how to easily integrate a Big Secret(tm) such as the secondary bug into an insecure manufacturing process like vehicle design and assembly, mind you. I'm sure people with a Need To Know have good ideas on solving that problem.
Both bugs could also hold a passive RFID chip containing the VIN(primary) and the VIN encrypted with the public half of an Uber Law Enforcement key (secondary) on it. Remove the primary bug, you've removed the VIN, you've automatically marked the car as stolen. Th33f = pwn3d! (And of course, if you so much as breathe the wrong way on the secondary bug, both bugs trip. Law enforcement can tell, by looking at which "VIN" (either VIN or VIN+UberKey) was transmitted at phone-home time, which bug was fscked with. Officer Friendly at your local precinct can track your stolen car with the primary bug, but only Law Enforcement of high enough rank to have access to the private half of the UberKey, however, could do anything with transmissions from the secondary bug.
Back to reality for a bit. It'd be a bit of a kludge, but I bet a dirt-simple variation of the primary/secondary bug trick (albeit one not locked to the VIN, not directly accessible to law enforcement, sans crypto, and ultimately based on security through obscurity, namely the vehicle owner's skill in hiding the second bug) could even be designed and sold as a consumer aftermarket add-on to a commercial system like LoJack.
When I bought a car recently, the finance guy tried to sell me Lo-Jack, which if you don't know is a microwave transmitter that the police can remotely enable and then pick up the signal from their squad car, ostensibly to retrieve your car when it gets stolen.
The relevent part is when he said "... and since it's only turned on when you report your car stolen, it isn't Big Brother-ish like On-Star and the others".
A microwave transmitter in my car that is directly controlled and monitored by the police. And that's not Big Brotherish. Riiiight.
That the guy seemed genuinely startled when I pointed out this obvious problem tells me that we've already lost.
The enemies of Democracy are