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OnStar Considered Harmful
Frisky070802 writes "A few weeks ago Slashdot ran an article on the privacy issues in EzPass. Some of the comments referred to other things Big Brother could do with GPS in cars, and now the New York Times has run a column on what else your car is saying about you (free registration req'd). From the article: 'Aviel D. Rubin, the technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said that every new technology with the potential to invade privacy was introduced with pledges that it would be used responsibly.
But over time, he said, the desire of law enforcement and business to use the data overtook the early promises. "The only way to get real privacy," he said, "is not to collect the information in the first place."'"
"It is impossible to be completely private. This is not a bad thing."
Eh I dunno. Personally, I'm kind of in the middle on the issue. On one hand, I don't really care if the gov't is aware of where I'm driving. (It's not like they don't have me by the balls without that information.) On the other, due process is VERY important to me. Worse, the data they could gather is very out of context. If I'm suspected of a crime, and they don't have a process to find information like this, they could find circumstantial evidence that I was guilty of the crime, as opposed to searching for stronger legitimate evidence that may point at somebody else.
So yeah, I want to be found if my airbag goes off, but I don't want somebody correlating my trip to Lake Oswego with a murder I wasn't involved with. Get a search warrant before looking at my data.
I think there's a middle ground here. Unfortunately, it'll require that the government be more disciplined, and the citizens will have to ditch the attitude that the gov't is out to get them.
"Derp de derp."
You see this all more and more often, our privacy is pushed back to make room for more and more "helpful services." I wouldn't be surprised if OnStar would report you to the police if you just happened to go over the speed limit or some other activity. Pfft, for all we know we could have to submit to random memory scans in the future as a new wave of "drug tests" that can do much more. Where is our privacy now?
FuckTheFuckingFuckers.com - Post your th
You forgot the third option. Where onStar can lock you out of your car because your late on your payment. How about insurance companies viewing the information to see how you drive to determine whether they should jack up your insurance rates. In either case, I think the government in itself is the least of our worries in this case. For some reason, there are always people who believe that the government is out to get us. The problem is that while they are right, they don't realize that they already have us. I mean, we pay taxes. I'd say the government has us right where they want us.
If you don't believe me, recall the TIA project where the government wants to aggregate all avaliable data from public corporations about you.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
In 2002, Nebraska's largest bank robbery took place in Norfolk, Nebraska. 5 people were shot and killed, and the robbers stole a brand new Subaru. They got about 100 miles away and would probably have gotten away with it except that the OnStar system shut the car down and told the police the location of the car (it had been reported hijacked an hour or so earlier).
I don't post this with the intention of saying how "great" OnStar is - infact I am wearing my tinfoil hat right now - but simply to illustrate what the system is capable of.
Of course, there are terrorists out there!
Patriot II and friends are all there because bush now has free reign to do whatever he wants, because he can scare the sheep of the american people just by pointing and yelling "terrorist".
I'm glad I don't live there.
The Only connection from the world from a on* system is simply a watt analog cellular phone. Remember the Old MOTOROLA BAG PHONES.... same tranciever. So if peoiple are truely that paranoid, throw out your cell phones. because it's only when it dials out or in from a on* call centre is that GPS data being trancieved. So anyone trying to track has to get info from the on* people, not the vehicle. Maby from the MTSOs' of some areas if you know the ESN of the tranciever. To wich you can only tell wich towers the vehicle was closest to at the time of any calls, incomming or outgoing from the onstar unit. In fact if one were to plug in a handset into the rj45 connector of the side of the cellular tranciever (to wich I have many) one can even know the number of the call centre. GO back to your PCs G33ks, This 21 year old technie knows the cellular systems well, espically analog AMPS. Have one mounted in my 03 cavalier as a car phone, same tranciever as used the on* system but just as a phone, and a touch older. It's fun to use it to listen to other peoples cellular conversations by using test mode.
My friend bought a brand new Mustang a few weeks ago. He comes into the living room yesterday and told me that his car tracks speeds, seatbelt information and even the way he drives. Also right after that it says that it can be downloaded by ford, the US government and that he can even request the information. I dont want a car that spies on me, thats just a bit much
life sucks, then you die
OnStar commercials remind me of the crime prevention system commercial in the Minority Report. The idea that FBI can tap in and listen to the conversation in your or any car without anybody realizing anything is idiotic.
Now, from the article:
A three-judge panel in San Francisco rejected the request, but not on privacy grounds; the panel said the wiretap would interfere with the operation of the safety services.
Yes, this is true.
OnStar has said that its equipment was not involved in that case.
I don't think so. I got an impression that it was exactly OnStar technology that was involved in that case from this CNet article, saying the following:
The court did not reveal which brand of remote-assistance product was being used but did say it involved "luxury cars" and, in a footnote, mentioned Cadillac, which sells General Motors' OnStar technology in all current models. After learning that the unnamed system could be remotely activated to eavesdrop on conversations after a car was reported stolen, the FBI realized it would be useful for "bugging" a vehicle, Judges Marsha Berzon and John Noonan said.
When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell that their conversations were being monitored.
Now back to NYT article:
As for law enforcement, the company said it released location data about customers only under a court order. "We have no choice but to be responsive to court orders," Ms. Lama said.
Then do not track more information, and not for any longer than it is necessary for you to provide emergency and related services. Also, do not under any circumstances let FBI listen in to people's conversations in their cars via your remotely activated microphone. But that's probably not in your business plan, or PR statement.
"How about insurance companies viewing the information to see how you drive to determine whether they should jack up your insurance rates."
I'm all for that, and so should you be. I drive obeying all posted signs and speed limits. Were it not for the fact that I live in a provice with socialized insurance on my car, I'd be paying about 3-4 grand per year to insure my car (worth about 1500$ CDN), rather than the 720$/year I pay now. Plus, since I have no accidents on record, I get a discount of 1% per each year of no accidents (6 years since I got my licence accident free).
The thing is, I'm a male in my low 20s. Most insurance companies traditionally track what they'd charge based on the age and gender, which (thanks to other drivers my gender and age being retards) would put me in a very shitty spot. Anything that lets insurance companies rape bad drivers while leaving better drivers with lowered rates and protection in case of stupid drivers is fine by me!
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
As they say around here, RTFB (blurb):
"The only way to get real privacy," he said, "is not to collect the information in the first place."'"
That, my friend, is the bottom line of the article summary, and also the bottom line for many of us. Some fights are worth fighting for purely on their merits, and privacy is one of them. Pragmatism has nothing to do with it. I just enjoy my privacy, so do thousands of others here on Slashdot, and it's nice to remind everyone else of that.
The more people sign up for the NYT online, the more acceptable it is for companies to do it. Thanks, but no thanks.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
That is because you have never seen it around here, plenty of wide open roads with hardly anybody on them. Pretty much everyone speeds or they are in the way. You also have to consider that you can be legally blind, mentally retarded, and have frequent seizures and still get a drivers license in this country as long as you have a doctor sign a slip. Roads like that in many other countries don't even have speed limits.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
If you're that paranoid, don't install anything trackable in your car.
Not only are you missing the point, but I believe that you are trying even harder to understand less than that which is obvious.
This "if you don't like it, don't use it" attitude that you and those like you exhibit, encourages companies and gov't agencies to further intrude upon our privacy.
If there is no penalty, and only an incentive for them to snoop, they will.
If preference in gov't contracts is given to those who snoop over those who don't and there is no consumer backlash, guess what happens? Everyone will be falling all over each other to outsnoop the competition.
A few years back when Smith and Wesson made a deal with the Clinton administration to gain immunity from civil lawsuits and preferential treatment in the awarding of government contracts by compromising the rights of gun buyers, do you know what happened?
EVERY concerned 2nd amendment group in the country turned on them. Boycotts are still in place against them because of what they did. That showed the rest of the gun makers that if you betray us, we'll remember.
You can bet dimes to dollars that Glock or Beretta doesn't sell out the way that S&W did.
Apply this to the right to privacy. If companies knew that it was PR suicide to snoop on their customers, no one would do it. If we would make the private sector penalties outweigh the public sector incentives, companies would put an end to this bullshit.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The only company that makes a device (the Vetronix CDR system) to extract the data from it charges thousands of dollars for it--there's a secretive Yahoo group of "accident reconstructionists" that make their living extracting data from these devices and testifying for those willing to pay expert witnesses (e.g. insurance companies).
Those who don't value their privacy will say that people should be held accountable for their actions. Fair enough--but these data are open to interpretation, and only those with the cash will be able to pay one of these people to get the interpretation they want.
I know nothing about the history behind that effort but isn't that the purpose of a gasoline tax? The more you travel, the more gas you buy and therefore pay more taxes? That system leans harder on those that get less MPG but I also read a study referenced on /. many moons ago that showed as weight per axle of a vehicle increased, the damage it does to the asphalt goes up by a much larger factor. In fact, you could infer that same thing based an Oregon state study (Google cache)
With that in mind, a gas tax would seems like the best choice.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
New Saturn Minivan the Relay has Standard Onstar at all trim levels. They throw in a year of emergency service for free.
I'd bet GM will start putting Onstar standard in many new cars since the greater numbers will make it cheaper per unit. You might not even know you have it.
I guess if you are shopping for a car, that's one thing you might want to look out for. I imagine there will be procedures posted on line for disabling the Onstar system, or at least crippling it. I know that's one of the first things I'd do.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
OnStar's not a bad thing. I'd just like to be able to choose to buy a car without purchasing the hardware or service and be absolutely certain that it can't be remotely activated without my knowledge. I don't see that option available on GM cars right now.
OK, so I can buy another brand of car. But what happens to my ability to choose when the cost benefit to insurers or some other party dictates that they all move toward a market equilibrium in which this feature is standard and expected?
I also don't want to permit something like OnStar to allow insurers to track everyone's driving behavior so completely that they can statistically turn insurance rates into a game of 'Operation' -- "Oops, you touched the sides once, your rates will be going up one hundred million percent effective immediately!" Five perfect drivers who never actually drive and who lock up their cars in armed-guarded bank vaults each get to pay $5/year for insurance and the rest of us are treadmilled on a sliding scale with the lowest rate set somewhere in the mid-thousands... Sounds like supermarket loyalty cards and banks who cancel credit cards on customers who pay off their cards each month -- too much power in their hands and not enough in ours.
In my province, registering your car (= making legal to drive) is also insuring it. SGI is the one government body which does the car registration, auto insurance, and licencing for everything in the province.
:)
There's no way you can drive your car without insurance, as everyone has it. If you do decide to drive an unregistered car, it's immediate jail time. The insurance is no fault; if there's an accident, you pay your deductible, and they cut a cheque for the rest. This also makes for the interesting situation where it may be cheaper to swerve into a pedestrian that it would be to let yourself be hit by a car that's out of control, because the no-fault stuff covers any liability in that case.
SGI's also pretty reasonable for an insurance company. I bike all summer, and some guy decided to open his door into me (despite my shouting and his looking back at me). I ended up being fine, but he managed to destroy everything in my pocket (GSM phone, Palm pilot, pen). I got a cheque for $400 after a week and 1 report to SGI.
I like insurance on something like a car. Nowhere else do you typically involve yourself with devices that can easily cause so much personal or property damage. Insurance means you have a small, controlled expense in the event of an accident. That's really the goal of insurance -- everyone pays a small amount so that those who need it aren't fucked. If I hit a 70,000$ BMW, I pay my deductible and walk away fine mostly fine: I will pay more for registration and have points on my licence if I'm at fault, but I won't have to sell everything I own and declare bankruptcy!
Yea, you can argue that you'd be better off sticking that money in a bank account and accumulating interest on it, but insurance is always there with no build up period, plus it requires no discipline on your part beside paying for it -- there's no temptation to run out and buy a new car or home theatre with the money. In that sense, insurance is already escrow.
Saying that auto insurance is an artificial industry is like saying that medical insurance is an artificial industry. The only people who say that are those who haven't yet used it, or incredibly naive people. Everyone wins with these kinds of social agreements -- go take an economics course, and you'll understand why
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
OnStar could be a great aid to terrorists. Plant bombs, and wait until the target drives by to detonate them. Load in a list of targets (politicians, cops, judges, journalists) and the next one to drive by gets it.
Firstly, I've got a 2003 honda civic. In my area they've got boxes on the side of the road that tell you your speed. I've tested it and as far as I can tell my speedometer is spot on. The box says I'm going 40 and my speedometer is right on 40. However, my GPS (Garmin Legend) is always over by about 7mph. Also, I'm not sure how it calculates my max speed, but last time I checked it said something like 242mph. All I can figure is it got corrective data and applied it to recalculated my position and the error went down from 18ft to 6ft and in doing so I moved 12ft really fast (in the eyes of the GPS...)
If your car does have OnStar you can just disconnect the damn thing and use it as a regular GPS ala Tap into Onstar
Granted you won't the "Hello, did your airbag just deploy?" kind of reassurance... however you'll know they aren't tracking your location anymore.
My fear would be that the cop would pull me over and plug a unit into the side of my car and say "I'm giving you a ticket because your car tells me you were doing 157mph in a school zone..."
Think about the local knucklehead cop in your town... they are not trained to question the technology they work with... a radar gun just works. Trying to explain that a radar gun needs to be tuned regularly falls on deaf ears.
Yes there are cops who are not knuckleheads and do understand the short comings of the techonolgy, their just in the minority.
The rest point the radar/laser gun at your car and go "It says your doing 50, your in a 30 zone, you get a ticket".
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.