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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 [slashdot.org] took on this challenge instead?
It would be nice, but it's impossible. They'd have to be some sort of elite uber-hacker to even attempt such a challenge.
Absolutely impossible.
Not a hope in hell.
Can't be done.
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.
The status quo is a powerful thing. Once something Just Is people start treating it as a baseline.
More specifically, though, is complaining about information asymmetry at all unreasonable? If the black box is present, why shouldn't I object to the fact that I, the owner of the vehicle, have no access to its contents; but those who have more power than I do do? There are substantial virtues to privacy and substantial virtues to transparency(in certain contexts); but asymmetric transparency is basically the worst of both worlds.
It's not as inconsistent as you'd think- if the owner of car wants the blackbox data, she should get it, no problem. If anybody else wants the data, let 'em either ask the owner to voluntarily go along with it, or ask a judge for a court order (with appropriate legal conditionals so the judge can't just rubberstamp it).
I am not a sig.
The only hack I'm interested in is one that disables the system. I consider these "black boxes" a massive invasion of privacy and in no way benefit me personally. Yes I know the argument would be what if I'm the victim in an accident wouldn't I want the courts to access the other guy's black box? The same argument can be made for recording phone calls and other invasions of privacy. You'd have to accept all privacy is bad. I don't wish to live under a microscope. I'm tired of people giving away my freedom because they think it makes them safer. all it does is make you less free. I should be able to drive to the store without a record of it being kept in my car. Already most of my purchases are tracked so now my location is tracked as well? I know so far the information is hard to access but the government is pushing for more and more access to the information. Eventually the info will be provided for things like divorce court. Do I have something to hide? That isn't the point the point is do we all want to live where we have to second guess how our actions will be interpreted later?
and the pinto?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Just wait - soon it will be a legal requirement to log a lot of parameters in a format that can be read.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Will Toyota stop at nothing?!
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
I don't disagree actual scene data isn't essential, but the example you picked is a highly useful supplement to that data. If the speed suddenly increases from 40 to 80, obviously that happened at the instant the tire lifted off the road, since it is physically impossible for the car to accelerate from 40 to 80 suddenly.
So, from the black box data we now have a record of exactly when the tire left the road, plus we have the speed of the car just before the accident happened (which would be more accurate than a skid mark estimate, esp. if the road was icy or slippery), and we have the fact that the driver's foot (or in Toyota's case possibly the computer) was pressing the accelerator since otherwise it wouldn't have sped up to 80. So what was the driver trying to do at the instant of the accident, and why were both the brake (skid mark) and accelerator (sudden tire speed up) being pressed simultaneously, etc.?
Combining black box data with the scene data could provide a far more accurate reconstruction of the accident than scene data alone. Of course it doesn't replace the accident scene data - no one is saying that the scene data should be ignored, as your straw man argument seems to imply. .
No, no. That is not the relevant quote. This is:
some Mercedes drivers found that their seats moved if they pushed a certain button; the problem was that the button was supposed to operate the navigation system.
If the systems aren't isolated, it doesn't matter what the code is supposed to control. For example, if the internal light control just sends control signals across a CAN bus which is also connected to the ECU, the software (say via a memory overflow error) could write the wrong address onto the bus and send throttle information by mistake.
Jesus. That scares the shit out of me.