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EU Secretly Plans To Put a Back Door In Every Car By 2020
An anonymous reader writes "A secretive EU body has agreed to develop a device to be fitted to all cars allowing police to cut off any engine at will, it emerged today. The device, which could be imposed within a decade, would also allow police to track a vehicle's movements as well as immobilise it. According to The Daily Telegraph a group of senior EU officials, including several Home Office mandarins, have signed off the proposal at a secret meeting in Brussels."
it's what democracy is about!
Because criminals won't immediately disable this shit, right?
$10 million, (finger twist), or every other car on the autobahn comes to a halt at 1pm.
About 5 minutes after this is implemented, the protocols will be cracked. About 5 minutes later some prankster will be broadcasting the "kill" signal to every car in Paris from a lunchbox portable radio from the top of the Eiffel tower.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
And a hatchback door, so I guess you could say there are 3 back doors.
Way to write a headline, editors. How about something a little better like "EU Secretly Plans To Put a Back Door in Every Car ECU by 2020" ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Does that mean only hatchbacks will be permitted in the EU going forward?
(Note to eds: bad titles are bad, and will be mocked.)
Yaz
Call me when they release these "classified documents", name the "mandarins" concerned and find someone who can give a more reasoned opinion than Nijel "why does this man deserve equal coverage on the BBC?" Farage, otherwise I'll just assume this is just more of The Telegraph's usual anti-EU ranting.
Oh, look, the Mail's covering it too.
Fancy that.
For heaven's sake, there's more than enough EU bumbling going on as it is without editors concocting more of their own.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Mandarin
(informal, UK) A senior civil servant.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Because the Daily Mail is like the Onion, only the jokes are by accident.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Lots of the above posts go on and on about hackers, yet I don't hear about this happening to all those OnStar equiped vehicles that have the ability to remotely disable your engine.
and all of London's cars come to a grinding halt...
And this will be different than the M1 or M25 during rush hour how?
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Looks like it's time for a coupe
Where all member states are gathered *as equals* to do what Germany wants.
While that's often true, I'm sure I remember the British government suggesting this some years ago.
What usually seems to happen is that EU governments who want to impose draconian rules but can't get them past their own voters go to the EU, get it passed there, and then say 'sorry, we can't stop it, it's the EU, got to to what they tell us, boy, we're so totally upset about this'.
Dear Slashdot,
You've posted a story from the Dailymail that has the form "EU wants to do outrageous thing!". The Dailymail has a long track record of:
a) Hating the EU.
b) Printing utter falsehoods about supposed plans "the EU" has, at least in their headlines and leading text.
E.g., a previous instance, which I complained to the PCC about (who turn out to be toothless and/or cowards): http://paul.jakma.org/2011/11/... .
Please do not feed the Dailymail troll.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
This story is mostly nonsense.
There's a thing called ENLETS (or European Network of Law Enforcement Technology Services), which is meant to be "the leading European platform that strengthens police cooperation and bridges the gap between the users and providers of law enforcement technology." From what I can tell it is a sort of advisory committee of law enforcement technology experts, working through Europol, who brainstorm how to use technology to help law enforcement stuff. Currently it gets about €600k in funding, mostly from the EU, some from the UK and the Netherlands. They're asking for that to be increased to €915k. Most of that seems to be in hiring some new full-time advisers; from their personnel costs, they want about 8 people working full time; a leader, a policy officer, and admin person and 5 senior advisers. So if they don't get their budget increase, there's a good chance none of this stuff will happen.
This article is based on a "secret" document (which I think is this one), which is a (draft?) work programme for the group for 2014-2020; so what they're supposed to be looking at.
This document stems from a recommendation by the Council of the European Union that ENLETS look into this kind of thing - the instructions etc. can be found here (or if that doesn't work, search for document 12103/13 on their search page). They asked ENLETS to monitor and coordinate the development of new technologies.
The actual "secret" document is listed on the Council's website (do a search for 17365/13) as "Law Enforcement Technology Services (ENLETS) 2014 - 2020 - Work programme", but the document itself isn't accessible. I don't know whether that's because it's such a minor report (and not really an official EU thing) that they haven't bothered uploading it, or if they are claiming it should be withheld; I'm tempted to make a formal request for it to see what they say.
The five short-term goals they have been asked to look at are in some places a bit scary:
All cars with fly-by-wire tech can be turned off remotely, as well as any GM with onstar.
Already done years ago.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Introducing the Chevy Gillette! Now with FIVE, count 'em, 5 back doors for the widest, easiest rear access available on any vehicle on the road today! Getting some junk into your trunk has never been easier!