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Toyota Black Box Data Is More Closed Than Others'
wjr writes "Many cars these days contain black boxes that record information (speed, accelerator position, etc) and can preserve information in the case of an accident. Ford and Chrysler say that they use 'open systems' so anyone can read out the data; General Motors has licensed Bosch to produce a device capable of reading its cars' black boxes. On the other hand, Toyota has only a single laptop in the US capable of reading its cars' black boxes, and generally won't allow the data to be read without a court order. Honda seems to have a similar policy. This is emerging as an issue in the investigation into unintended acceleration."
Wouldn't it be grand if the guys who hacked Ubisoft's latest game took on this challenge instead?
And it would be covered in extra-special awesomesauce to see the code posted to SourceForge.
John
Lol @ the recent mysterious deluge against Toyota.
It seems like it was only yesterday when people were complaining that the black box data was there in the first place. Then came along the complaints on how it was being used against people in courts and in accident investigations. Then the complaint was that only certain people could get the information and you couldn't get it to clear your name or anything- even in one case where I believe the prosecutor got the information and decided it was worthless and tossed it (may be wrong on that).
Now, it seems that everything happening that would have caused a complaint is good and those not allowing it to happen is bad. Go figure.
Why would it be a good idea? I thought slashdot was all gung-ho about protecting people's privacy?
If there really was a case of an accident caused by unintended acceleration then a court order would be piece of cake to get.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Absolutely *no* car manufacturer has your best interest at heart. Not Toyota, not Ford, not GM, not a single one of them.
Who made the SUVs that literally jumped off their tires and turtled at so much as a harsh look? Who made trucks and thought it was a brilliant idea to mount the gas tanks *outside* of the frame? Who made cars that exploded when they were nudged at the backend? Which car manufacturer computes the costs of killing some of their customers vs. spending a bit more to make each vehicle safe?
It's not just Toyota. But, today, with the US government being the largest shareholder in GM, I would bet that life for Toyota is going to get really bad.
I'm not entirely clear on how not having access to one of the computers in a piece of my property, or even knowing exactly what it does, protects my privacy...
Some sort of scheme for compulsory(or even many flavors of "optional") collection of black box data would, indeed, be a huge privacy violation; but that isn't the proposal.
This is a system embedded in the car, to which you need physical access to connect. Anybody who could get to that box could plant a GPS+accelerometer bug on your car considerably more easily. Documentation for reading the black box would give the owner of the system more control and information(and, who knows, maybe even let third party mechanics break the dealer grip on certain services) without notable privacy implications.
"Breaks" is the problem. I prefer brakes.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Chill out, they only need a court order and seems the USA Federal Government is always good at giving these ones away.
No need to "hack" the box or anything like it.
Arguing that corporations are not people since 1886.
You think that is Toyota being protected when a cop tries to 'prove' you were a reckless driver with blackbox data for hitting that drunk guy walking out on the road? Especially when the data is from 5 minutes earlier when you were going slightly above speed limits on a clear road but has no connection to how you were driving at that moment?
A court might not let the prosecution retrieve that information, but won't help you much if they already got it through an usb interface in the dashboard of your car.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Here's how it could work:
1. Using an Ethernet jack provided by the car, you use HTTP to grab an encrypted blob. This contains the data, including a timestamp and the VIN.
2. Upload the blob to Toyota's web site. They decrypt it and store it forever.
3. Download the decrypted blob.
Download can be limited to the uploader by default, with other people only able to see that it exists. If you want a copy and you didn't perform the upload, simply get a court order.
I'm guessing that Flight Data Recorders are mandated by law for commercial aircraft. I would say that the information that they have provided over the years has been very helpful in improving the safety of air travel.
How many people were killed last year in aircraft accidents? Hundreds would be my guesstimate. How many in car accidents? Tens of thousands would be my guess. If there are a lot of people being injured in car accidents then it would seem very useful (from an economic retrun on investment perspective) to start making data recorders both mandatory and have them record specific information in a published standard format, with the goal being to better understand accident causes and improve auto safety.
...namely that million-dollar reward for finding the cause of unwanted acceleration is probably fairly safe if nobody will reveal their source code.
It would be interesting if this flushed a few Real Programmers out of the woodwork, but most of them are in retirement, fly-fishing for salmon by now.
got a crashed Prius to hack? If we can break DRM in a day.....
So now Toyoa is being "accused" for using propietary software. It wasn't a long time ago when I read about some US association to declare open software "communism" and "hazardous to capitalism".
I would love to see a court case where Toyota will sue National Highway Traffic Safety Administration due violating DMCA when trying to pry the data out from the Toyota black boxes.
That'd be irony.
BTW: My sympathies are on victims' and their families' side. I am sorry for their loss.
BTW2: And in my opinion there should be an international law for making black boxes both obligatory and open format (not even tied to single company solutions like Bosch).
It's a recording device in the car intended for accident diagnosis, nothing else. Like the cockpit voice recorder in an airplane. If the car was equipped with a required-by-law voice recorder, and my spouse or teenager drives the car, I wouldn't be entitled to listen to their recorded conversations after the fact. This telemetry recording thing doesn't record conversations but it's still considered private data. It's accessible through a court order if necessary, and that's good enough.
> But, today, with the US government being the largest shareholder in GM, I would bet that life for Toyota is going to get really bad.
Let's be honest. The elephant in the room during the GM buyout was the production capacity. The United States cannot afford to lose the production capacity of GM, because in the event of a full scale sustained conventional war we would need its production capacity. The government buyout wasn't only about keeping money in Detroit or helping other GM stockholders or even the fact that the government often buys GM--it was absolutely necessary from the standpoint of defense. That it was done without bringing GM into the military-industrial complex is a good thing.
On a related issue, we should be treating Detroit like it got hit with Katrina. It's probably in worse shape than New Orleans at this point.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!