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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.
I have been pwned because my
Most technology can be used to violate your privacy.
.
OnStar is a good system, and can even save your life in the event of an accident.
Or, the government can use it to track you down and assassinate you because of your contributions to
Which one of these two situations are you more likely to be in?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Also, don't drive anywhere. Someone could be following you and know where you are and when! Invasion of privacy!
If you read the article, that now includes tires. So start driving on your rims when you're wearing your foil helmet.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Maybe if the Beagle 2 had onstar they would have an idea where it is now. privacy be damned.
Onstar: "Onstar operator here. I see that your airbags have deployed do you need assitance?"
Beagle 2: "Uh, no, everythings fine here."
Onstar: " We are concerend that you have fallen in a crator, can you confirm?"
Beagle 2 : " Look can I get some privacy here! I am in the crator taking a wicked piss. You would to if you had to travel that far without a potty break! I'll be in contact when I am done."
See mystery solved and an example of when to much privacy causes confussion.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
Google link here
If you're that paranoid, don't install anything trackable in your car.
Does that include a license plate?
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."'"
From the New York Times' mandatory registration page: "We'll keep your information private. The following fields are required. NYTimes.com respects your privacy, so we will never share any personal information without your consent."
What's on the front page tomorrow, an in-depth report on the pot and the kettle?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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
wears a tinfoil hat.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
does anyone else see the irony in a registration required article preaching against the invasion of privacy of another device that can track people?
The only way to get real privacy is not to give them the information in the first place.
As with most things in life, this is an easy problem when approached from a cost/benefit viewpoint.
In this case, we have:
(risk of being spied OnStar)*(loss of privacy) +
(risk of being stranded)*(result of being stranded) +
(added price of OnStar and service)
(<,=,>?)
(risk of being spied on with a cell phone)*(loss of privacy) +
(risk of being stranded w/ cell phone)*(result of being stranded) +
(added price of cell phone and service)
If you've already got a cell phone, and you always have it with you, that side of the question is pretty small.
My little formula ignores the gee-whiz-me-too value of having a built-in car phone and other trivial factors.
sigs, as if you care.
... can it also STOP your car and LOCK your doors?
This Car Can Talk. What It Says May Cause Concern. By JOHN SCHWARTZ Published: December 29, 2003 Last year, Curt Dunnam bought a Chevrolet Blazer with one of the most popular new features in high-end cars: the OnStar personal security system. The heavily advertised communications and tracking feature is used nationwide by more than two million drivers, who simply push a button to connect, via a built-in cellphone, to a member of the OnStar staff. A Global Positioning System, or G.P.S., helps the employee give verbal directions to the driver or locate the car after an accident. The company can even send a signal to unlock car doors for locked-out owners, or blink the car's lights and honk the horn to help people find their cars in an endless plain of parking spaces. A big selling point for the system is its use in thwarting car thieves. Once an owner reports to the police that a car has been stolen, the company, which was started by General Motors, can track it to help intercept the thieves, a service it performs about 400 times each month. But for Mr. Dunnam, the more he learned about his car's security features, the less secure he felt. A research support specialist at Cornell University, he is concerned about privacy. He has enough technical knowledge to worry that someone else - say, law enforcement officers, or even hackers - could listen in on his phone calls, or gain control over his automotive systems without his knowledge or consent. Any gadget that can track a carjacker, he reasons, can just as readily be used to track him. "While I don't believe G.M. intentionally designed this system to facilitate Orwellian activities, they sure have made it easy," he said. OnStar is one of a growing number of automated eyes and ears that enhance driving safety and convenience but that also increase the potential for surveillance. Privacy advocates say that the rise of the automotive technologies, including electronic toll areas, location-tracking devices, "black box" data recorders like those found on airplanes and even tiny radio ID tags in tires, are changing the nature of Americans' relationship with their cars. Beth Givens, founder of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said the car had long been a symbol of Kerouac-flavored freedom, and a haven. "You can talk to yourself in your car, you can scream at yourself in your car, you can go there to be alone, you can ponder the heavens, you can think deep thoughts all alone, you can sing," she said. With the growing number of monitoring systems, she said, "Now, the car is Big Brother." James E. Hall, a transportation lawyer and former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the monitoring systems presented a subtle blend of benefit and risk. "We are moving toward a kind of automobile that nobody's ever known," he said. "It's mostly good news, but there are negative things that we will have to work through." Mr. Dunnam said he had become even more concerned because of a federal appeals court case involving a criminal investigation in Nevada, in which federal authorities had demanded that a company attach a wiretap to tracking services like those installed in his car. The suit did not reveal which company was involved. 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. OnStar has said that its equipment was not involved in that case. An OnStar spokeswoman, Geri Lama, suggested that Mr. Dunnam's worries were overblown. The signals that the company sends to unlock car doors or track location-based information can be triggered only with a secure exchange of specific identifying data, which ought to deter all but the most determined hackers, she said. 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. Other information systems being added to cars can be used for tracking as well. Electronic toll systems ar
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
This company is promoting a 24/7 GPS service that enables you to track your vehicle and it will keep you informed if there is any maintenance needed.
I've heard the commercials on the radio, and they spend about 20 seconds describing the technology, then the other 40 seconds are spent on a female voice reading what at first sound like legal disclaimers. But then she says something like "Network Car may not be used to track your husband, find out how lost he got on the way to the grocery store, and then call him to make fun of him." Pretty funny stuff, actually.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
It seems like it's relevant to ask in a privacy related thread, so please share with us all of you who don't register for the nytimes.com silliness, why do you avoid this formality? The cost seems very slight for some of the best journalism (IMHO), especially compared to salon.com which makes you watch click-through ads.
This may sound like flamebait, but take a moment to think about the complaints about the registration vs. the information that the ny times provides, then if you still think i'm a jerk for asking, mod me down.
Yawn.
I think slashdot hashing id so that we can't vote twice, yet nobody can look up our id/address as associated with an action (except by brute force). Wait, just had a thought. If my address is adam@somedomain.com and the law was interested in whether I said something, they could just subpeona your hashes and the key and see if mine was the right one. So, it's like a brute force with a very, very good guess. Hmmmm.
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.
I think that's a general rule with information that's often not taken very seriously.
When I look at my (non-US) government and a large number (not all) of organisations that I give personal information to, I generally trust them. Within certain bounds, it's not very likely that most people will abuse the trust that you put in them. They ask for information because they think it might be useful for what they're doing for you, and that's initially its primary use. There are obviously some exceptions with marketing motivations -- I don't trust spammers with my email address and never gave them permission to use it. Partly that's where privacy policies and legislation should come in where possible.
The problem, though, is that times change, organisations change, the people running them change, societial views change, and ethics change. Data that you've given to an organisation, on the other hand, doesn't change on its own. It stays right there to be interpreted and used in whichever ways the current powers see fit.
Consider how many organisations and governments have changed over the last 50 years. Then consider that most of the information collected 50 years ago is probably still on record. Just because you trusted the people heading an organisation or a committee or a council or a government at a particular time does not mean that those people won't change later on.
Information collected today will almost certainly be on record 50 years from now. In fact, it's likely that much more of it will remain on record than from the past 50 years until now, because digital information is so easy and cheap to manage and manipulate compared with paper.
For the same reasons when I was a membership secretary for a small-medium organisation I felt an ethical obligation to destroy at least the digital membership records of former members a year after they left, unless there was a good reason to keep them. I wasn't going to do anything deceptive with them, but I couldn't guarantee who would be on the committee in five or ten years' time. This isn't the norm with most organisations, though.
Realistically I do trust the majority of people and organisations when they tell me that they wouldn't abuse information that I give them. It means a lot more to me though if they'll commit to destroying it after they no longer need it.
I don't know if this is a problem that can easily be fixed. Realistically information about people is what the world runs on -- it's a fuzzy boundary and matter of opinion that determines how much is too much or what constitutes misuse. If it suits you then you could get all paranoid and not give out any personal information to anyone, but that's not an option for most people and in some situations it's not legal for arguably reasonable reasons.
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
Get it straight, I could care less if a computer decided it wanted to catalouge and profile my life to help me out. Most people feel this way. I'd love to have a PDA that was intellegent enough to tell me what restuarants served food with my preferences (such as no msg, no feedlotted beef, no tap water, etc) or that'd give me directions in my car when I got lost, or could call up emergency services if I get stranded in the desert. But I have HUGE problems with the US goverment, companies and buisnesses, or even my neighbors having that information. The potential for abuse is to great for me to allow myself to be invaded like that.
Why? Because the information people have about you is power they have over you, and I don't trust anyone accept family with that information. I DO NOT trust the US goverment as much as I trust my parents or siblings and that's how it's supposed to be. I DO NOT trust sony to know what my buying preferences or toxic waste distributors like coca cola to know I don't like drinking their toxic waste. Infact, the very fact that most of us are scared shitless at the US goverment or corperations or buisnesses prying is proof enough that something's wrong and something needs to be done before a real civil war takes place and people begin shooting and dieing and nuking.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
"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!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
True, but that isn't the crux of the matter. What happens when abstinence is no longer permitted?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You only pay to use the services - AFAIK all GM cars that have the option have the hardware installed.
There is a way round this. In the UK the Data Protection Act (Here) Specifies that data is kept no longer than required.
I'm not sure how enforcable this is, but the legislation is there.
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.
One question for you: How long will it be until an OnStar-like system is required in every vehicle?
Think about it. OnStar saves the lives of so many grannies on their way to bingo, or some diabetics who went into insulin shock, or... whatever. Then, using their typical logic, Congress decrees that, since it's helped some people, everyone now has to have it if they want a new car. They did it with on-board defib units in planes, they did it with GPS in cell phones, they even did it with closed-captioning in televisions.
To update an old saying, when having privacy is outlawed, then only outlaws will have privacy.
Everyone on Slashdot gets laid.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
So you post it to Slashdot? Really ARE concerned about your privacy, eh?
OK, who are the dipshit mods who marked this thing as 'interesting'?
Parent is a complete bullshit troll. NOT ONE WORD HE SAYS CAN BE CONSIDERED RELIABLE.
You might just be able to pull of the next Frank Abagnale, Jr.!
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Slightly off-topic, but it's interesting to note that when Google News or other links send me to "registration required" sites, the username/password of password/password usually works.
;)
I first learned of that for the NYT links here on slashdot, but it seems to be everywhere.
It'd be pretty interesting to see the stats on this "password" person.
$0.02 (CDN)
You know the old chestnut:
... ... ... ...
"What'd you pull me over for, Officer"
"Yer headlight's out"
"Not its not"
{smash, tinkle}
"Yes it is"
Here's the future of OnStar...
"Sir? This is OnStar. Your car has reached a recommended service interval. Would you like to book an appointment now?"
"No, thank you."
"OnStar, how may I help you?"
"My car will only do 5 miles an hour."
"That's correct sir. As a courtesy to OnStar members, GM offers their GOFAST, GM Online Failure Avoidance Safety Tracking System free of charge. For your safety and convenience, your car will continue to operate at this safe speed until the safety systems have been verified by a GM-ceritified engineer."
"I heard that, sir."
"OnStar, how may I help you?"
"The hood won't open"
"The system indicates that you are not at an authorized GM service center."
(somebody else can finish the story...)
Well...my guage of how much something infringes on my privacy is to ask myself, "Could this same information be collected by a cop sitting on public property?" For example, say it reports if you're speeding. That's nothing a motorcycle cop with a radar gun couldn't see.
You get tracked driving to your terrorist buddy's place to buy some illegal weapons. Nothing the FBI couldn't see by tailing you.
btw what's wrong with defibs in planes? And frankly I *want* GPS in my phone when I call 911. I did that once for a fire in the middle of nowhere and it took a good few miles before I hit an exit and could tell the dispatcher where I was (this was in California where they don't believe in mile markers...) And once again when there was an "incident" when I couldn't stay on the line long enough to say where I was. The situation diffused itself, but it *really* would've helped to have gotten a cop there.
Closed captioning pisses me off, but just because I don't feel like I should have to pay for it...
I think everyone that collects information starts out with the best intentions. But, sooner or later, any information resource that can be abused will be. So the more persistent information becomes the greater the abuses that will occur. I think there has to be a reaction at some point. Can't help thinking people will wake up one day and it will hit them how invasive information gathering has become and push back. Then I go to some public place and look around and realize...these people are fucking idiots.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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 hope we all enjoy living our squeaky clean lifestyles free of petty crime or peccadilloes.
Folks - this isn't about speeding. OnStar is everything : GPS, location tracking, speed, locking and unlocking your car doors, disabling the engine, knowing how many people are in the car (determined by how many seat belts are latched), and the real kicker : real time audio surveillance.
You read that right - they can open the phone connection on your in-dash phone and listen to everything said and done in the vehicle. In theory they should announce themselves, but don't kid yourself.
Think you are being entirely too cool taking your secretary out in your new Mercedes Benz for a ride in the country and a romp in the back seat? Not only do they know where you picked her up, where you went, where you stopped in the country to tap a little ass, they can listen in on the juicy parts.
If you think they are not already doing it, think again. Watch the movie Enemy of the State and remember it is about 5 years old. That's about 28 in computer years.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
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.
Subaru with an Onstar? Nice. What did they do, steal the onstar system out of a GM car and wire it into the Suby before driving it away?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Wrong, natural Aspiration means no turbo or supercharger -- or in some purists belief's N2O.
All Diesels are injected, most are turbo charged (not N/A). Be it mechanical or electronic injection, it's still injection -- without the above mentioned forced air inducers though, it's a N/A vehicle.
It would appear that you have absolutely zero experience in local politics, nor what they would do if they could get their hands on such information.
And forget anything dealing with state, or above... just imagine what the "known to associate with" spins would look like once a few GPS coordinates are correlated. Think the commie witch hunt of the 50s was philosophically gross? It's nothing compared to what we could do with a system like this, today. And God Help You(tm) if you discovered, say, an intentional flaw & abuse of some new nationwide electronic voting system.
Secondly, you illustrate the other basic lie regarding this concept... it'll do *nothing* to stem any intentionally illegal behaviors of "real" criminals, it'll only be used against the average public who only manages to break, on average, about 3 or 4 laws per day (speeding, not completely stopping at a stop sign, failing to signal a lane change, tailgating). All it eventually equates to is another tax on the middle classes (through fines), and more money for the insurance lobby. No benefit to the public, only more behavioral micromanagement by an invisible watcher. A watcher, by the way, with no accountability.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
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
--
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.
The government dosent pay for the roads! YOU DO! Dont EVER forget that. The whole point of an elected government is that they spend YOUR money only at YOUR sufferance. This may be a little off-topic but I think it needs to be said. People need to stop thinking that the government can do whatever they want with no oversite from the citizens that they serve. Now the FBI, CIA, MI5 etc.. thats a different story. We dont get to elect them, we give them broad ranging powers and they dont have to report what they do to the electorate, or even the government. They are the people I am worried about getting hold of too much personal information. If you want to see how bad it can get go and visit the old Stazi headquaters in Berlin, they have bottled scent samples of their citizens for gods sake!
-- If you think my attitude stinks, you should smell my fingers.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790 (This sentence was much used in the Revolutionary period. It occurs even so early as November, 1755, in an answer by the Assembly of Pennsylvania to the Governor, and forms the motto of Franklin's 'Historical Review,' 1759, appearing also in the body of the work.--Frothingham: Rise of the Republic of the United States, p. 413.))
Two Words: GPS Jammers. They already exist. As usual criminals will learn how to resist any technology because it is in their best interest to and they have resources, will and money to. The everyday citizen will just have to explain to his employer why he said he was sick while his car was going somewhere ; nobody will believe his wife took his car.
And if somebody is thinking about insurance premium cuts if you install the tracking device: as soon as it becomes standards, there will be no premium for installing it ; therefore the insurance companies will need to find some other way to do money if they have to keep the price low because of Onstar or other tracking stuff. Remember insurance companies as any other company are in the business for -profit- not for helping you.
Your best evidence for this government intrusion into our lives is a 5 year old Will Smith movie? Are you planning on pointing to Independence Day next as evidence for how dangerous computer virus' are?
.. to a thread about the New York Times complaining about privacy when their site requires you to register and log in, thus tracking what you read.
... but I once had a customer on the phone ordering satellite TV. Having given me her name, date of birth, maiden name, and credit card details, I asked for her address.
Her - "Oh, I never give my address out over the 'phone, you just don't know do you?"
Me - "Erm, you do know that we need to send someone to your house to fit the dish?"
Her - "Yes, but I won't give out my address on the phone"
I hung up on her.
Your personal safety is your personal responsibility. Big Brother / Big Nanny schemes are not necessary, nor are they as effective as personal vigilance.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I was in Lincoln, NE when it happened. Listened to it all on the radio. What actually happened was that after the killers (they took no money) hijacked the car (took the keys from the owner at gunpoint). The police were tracking them using the onstar system when the radio/TV companies started broadcasting their theories and asking the police if they were using the onstar to track them. The police, of course, were 'no comment'. This caused the killers to ditch the SUV and the police finally caught them in an stolen old pickup some distance away from the abandoned SUV.
Many people were upset with the media there because they felt that the killers heard about the onstar on the radio and ditched the SUV because of it.
I don't read AC A human right
Why do i care 'they' know that i do a legal activity?
Beacuse ifs none of their damned business where i go or what i purchase.
Me get a grip? No, you wake up.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Subaru has offered OnStar since 2001
Clear, Dark Skies