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The Grid, Our Cars, and the Net
Wired is running a piece on the big idea of Robin Chase — the founder of Zipcar — that we need to build our smart power grid on open standards and include cars as nodes in a mesh network. "'Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers and tanks and airplanes are running around using mesh networks,' said Chase. 'It works, it's secure, it's robust. If a node or device disappears, the network just reroutes the data.' And, perhaps most important, it's in motion. ... Build a smart electrical grid that uses Internet protocols and puts a mesh network device in every structure that has an electric meter. Sweep out the half dozen networks in our cars and replace them with an open, Internet-based platform. Add a mesh router. A nationwide mesh cloud will form, linking vehicles that can connect with one another and with the rest of the network. It's cooperative gain gone national, gone mobile, gone open."
I hate to break it to you, but this far everything everyone's ever penned on this particular subject because... are you following along with this at home? The technology doesn't exist yet. We don't know. It's an unknown, and anything could happen up to and including nothing at all.
All I'm doing is putting forth a possibility tainted by my own opinion. I'm straightforward enough to be honest about that. Why are you so hell bent on turning speculative opinion into some kind of bullshit personal affront?
While we're on that topic, though, let's look at the track record of our illustrious elected officials. It is already mandated that all cell phones sold in the US come with GPS chipsets capable of transmitting your phone's location. In most cases this can be disabled excepting 911 calls, but the technology is there. Your position can already be triangulated fairly accurately just via cell towers. This is a proven fact. Warrantless wiretapping and general spying on US citizens without cause by the Federal government is so well documented that there's already been massive outcry and a million and one headlines about it. This is a proven fact. OBD2 compliant automobiles sold in the USA are required by the DOT to have black boxes (for lack of a better term) that record vehicle speed, brake status, RPM's, and the other assortment of telemetry available in a modern engine for the sole purpose of the police using it against you in post-crash investigations. This is a proven fact. Traffic cameras are already in place in many locations throughout the country and are not only used to hand out speeding tickets as well as track individual vehicle movement when the police so desire, as has made headlines more than once. This is a proven fact.
None of the above is speculation. People who live off your tax dollars want to know where you are and what you're doing at all times, and the demonstration of this desire is made clear again and again and again. How many stories are posted to Slashdot to the effect of "company developing X technology to recognize faces/scan fingerprints/track crowd movements/snoop on cell or internet conversations?" Count them. How many of them go on to say they're doing it with government funding or for homeland security purposes, and all those other buzzwords? There's a reason Slashdot has a "Your Rights Online" section. There's a reason stories like these are of so much interest.
What is speculation is what will happen if a widespread vehicle based network of no concrete design or aim is put into service. My speculation is that bad things will happen if it is, especially given the track record of the US government both Federal and local in passing mandates involving automotive technology. If you don't agree with my speculation, that's fine. But if you want to blow it out of proportion and turn it into some kind of affront that's all you.
It is true. Phones are NEVER off, they are in sleep mode.
If by "sleep mode" you mean:
The most important bit there, of course, is "radio turned off". If the radio weren't off, your battery would go dead in a matter of days even when the phone is off, just as it does when the phone is on. It might last a couple days longer off than on, but that's all.
Since that doesn't happen -- turn the phone off with a full battery and turn it on a month later and you'll still have most of a full charge -- that means the radio is off. And if the radio is off, then the FBI can't send your phone any signals telling it to turn anything on.
The CPU being off and the RAM refresh off, by the way, are the reasons that when you turn your phone on it takes anywhere from 20 to 60 seconds to become functional. It's gotta boot.
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