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Carmakers Promise Not To Abuse Drivers' Privacy
schwit1 provides this excerpt from an Associated Press report: "Nineteen automakers accounting for most of the passenger cars and trucks sold in the U.S. have signed onto a set of principles they say will protect motorists' privacy in an era when computerized cars pass along more information about their drivers than many motorists realize. The principles were delivered in a letter Wednesday to the Federal Trade Commission, which has the authority to force corporations to live up to their promises to consumers. Industry officials say they want to assure their customers that the information that their cars stream back to automakers or that is downloaded from the vehicle's computers won't be handed over to authorities without a court order, sold to insurance companies or used to bombard them with ads for pizza parlors, gas stations or other businesses they drive past, without their permission. The principles also commit automakers to 'implement reasonable measures' to protect personal information from unauthorized access."
Also at the Detroit News. Adds schwit1: "It's a meaningless gesture without being codified into law. A greedy car manufacturer or NSL trumps any 'set of principles'." The letter itself (PDF) isn't riveting, but it's more readable than some such documents, and all the promises it makes are a good reminder of just how much data modern cars can collect, and all the ways that it can be passed on.
Will they take an oath? With they sign in blood? Will they promise their first born if they renege?
A promise from corporations doesn't go very far.
... it's because they've already broken it and are acting on the advice of legal and/or PR spin.
Seriously, when was the last time a corporation promised you anything that they stuck to?
What does "court order" mean? Are they going to require an actual warrant, or will they just cough up your data on any request by a court? Because if a warrant ain't required, I ain't interested.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, unless it has the force of law it's useless. The FTC having the power to strong-arm corporations slightly, maybe get you a settlement for a discount off a future product, doesn't help you if the rules of evidence don't prohibit using that information against you. And unless passing that information is actually illegal, they won't do that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
customer ... Information ... wont be ... all kinds of stuff ... without their permission.
I'm told I gave permission for things that I in no way gave permission for (consciously) far to often to buy that one.
They'll just add permissions to the shrink wrap license on your smart ignition key (or your XM radio, live maps, emergency service, or some other needed/desirable function). Pesky 'privacy' problem solved!
--- Mercutio was right.
Lifetime commitment to this promise, or else I can return the car at anytime and get exactly what I paid for it.
By continuing to use this service, you agree that your information may be provided to law enforcement at our discretion, provided to your insurer, sold to third parties, and used to provide advertising.
See how easily they can change this?
In an age where EULA changes by the issuer have been upheld, and when we're talking about your car (which you likely can't readily replace) ... in a few months they simply change the terms to read that you've given them permission.
This is an entirely empty promise, and since it's software (and therefore licensed) they can change the terms any time they like.
Tell you what, make it a law that you either have to provide a model which doesn't collect this data, or you have to remove the functionality when I take delivery if I ask you to.
Other than that, I don't believe a damned thing you say.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A big company... promising anything... Bwahahahahahaahahaha! Actually it is worth weeping over.
My car, my data. You want it, let me opt in and pay me. The car company does not need to know anything about my vehicle - not where it is, not how fast it is going, not how long since an oil change. Nada, zip, zilch. And I won't buy any car that tries to send data back. They have too much computer crap in them anyway, at least for me. But I just like to drive (I race cars for a hobby) and not do my makeup or watch movies in my car.
Franchised car dealers already violate this promise; and many (most?, all?) independent service garages and body shops do, too. If you take your car to a dealer for servicing, your mileage is reported to CarFax, which then reports your mileage to your car insurance. If you have an accident and do not report it to your insurance, the accident is reported by the body shop that does the repairs. CarFax pays the dealers, garages, and shops for these data; and insurance companies pay CarFax.
What is worse is that erroneous data are difficult to correct. In advance of an insurance policy renewal, I received an E-mail message asking me to use the insurance company's Web site to report my mileage. When I reported 25,065 miles, the entry was rejected with a message indicating I could not report an odometer reading less than the prior reading. On the Web site, there was a link to view the mileage history for my car. The immediately prior entry was for 241,080 miles, reported by CarFax on the date of the last routine servicing of my car. I checked the invoice for that servicing; it indicated 24,108 miles. A zero had been added to the end of the mileage, either by the dealer's service department or by CarFax! Working with both the service manager at the dealer and the local agent for the automobile insurance company, it took several phone calls over a month to obtain a correction.
See http://www.carfax.com/, which will charge you for a report on a specific car. See also http://www.mycarfax.com/, from which you can get a free report.
One of the most basic things every single "computer nerd" learns, is that you never want to buy your hardware and software from the same entity. IBM taught people that lesson in the 1960s, and companies like Apple and Sony (both of whom are very capable of making excellent products but always make sure to poison their offerings) are teaching it to everyone today. Sometimes you get trapped and have to (or are unable to get out of thinking that you have to, which is basically the same thing), but it always sucks. And it always sucks to an extreme, conspicuous degree, far beyond the usual variations out there.
Sometimes the suckage is manifested as basic shoddiness, where it just obviously seems like a shitty product, which doesn't work reliably or whatever. But most often, that's not really how it sucks. The suckage is manifested not as obvious shoddiness, but as the product being subversive, where it is primarily intended to serve other parties' (usually the manufacturer) interests, at the user's expense. Your thing plays dual roles, acting both as a toy/tool, but also as a parasite. It's not so much "shoddy" as "lame" (it can't do obviously-doable things) or has some dark cloud (e.g. DRM or other arbitrary restrictions) over it.
We don't want this in our cars. I don't want carmakers to swear to not be evil. I don't even want someone (government) pointing guns at their heads and pulling triggers whenever they're caught being evil. I want them to lack the capacity. WE, not them, should be controlling our cars. I guarantee you, whatever software comes preloaded in your car, won't be for you. And whatever competitive advantage Ford has over Chevy (or vice versa) won't be so much about how the software appeals to you, but how much money they get from their "partners" for selling you out.
For my part, I'll just continue to disable the car's ability to communicate.
I take their promise as in "we will pretend to protect your privacy while working hard with our legal department to find work around, and when we get caught, then it won't matter because we will have respected the "letter" of our promise even if we broke the spirit of it, and in the mean time we avoid laws which would force us to REALLY respect privacy."
If an industry promise self regulation, you can bet it will be in their interrest, not in the one of the customer.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
I will remove, shield or power down whatever transmitter and antenna you install into my car. No need for the FTC to monitor compliance with that promise.
If they really are committed to this, then let's make consumer privacy black letter criminal law and violation of it a felony offense with mandatory jail time.
My guess is that when they say they are committed to it, they just aren't that committed to it, which means they aren't committed to it at all.
I remember when it was revealed in the trial of a gangster that GM had turned on their OnStar system and recorded hours of conversation for the government. That was a wakeup call. Lots of sites with instructions on how to disable that bit of useless technology.
The car companies see this as a major revenue engine. They do not want to see anything legislated, so they are jumping the gun by showing the government that they are capable of policing themselves.
Its all total bullshit of course....
that the information that their cars stream back to automakers or that is downloaded from the vehicle's computers won't be handed over to authorities without a court order
This is the problem. Record everything and everything becomes discoverable. There is no distance from the man himself standing over your shoulder noting everything you do and everywhere you go.
Use cases for recording all this data are equally pathetic...
"The technology uses a radio signal to continually transmit a vehicle's position, heading, speed and other information. Similarly equipped cars and trucks would receive the same information, and their computers would alert drivers to an impending collision."
If you feel compelled to make drivers safer with computer generated warnings then do so based on observations of the world as it already is. While image/sensor processing is more difficult computationally than recording transmitted signals the supporting hardware costs nothing and software R&D costs maximally benefit from deployment at scale and general interest in image processing across a growing number of domains.
Plus you get capabilities transmitters do not provide such as the ability to react to vehicles or obstructions not transmitting their positions.
"As modern cars not only share the road but will in the not too distant future communicate with one another, vigilance over the privacy of our customers and the security of vehicle systems is an imperative," said John Bozzella, president of Global Automakers, an industry trade association."
Security of vehicle systems will never happen because we have proven ourselves incapable of ever producing a secure anything. There is also a small minor problem of owners of these vehicles themselves not being trustworthy.
Sensors which view the world as it actually is rather than blind assertions of transmitters you have no reason to trust is both more secure and more useful on the context of driving vehicles on paved roads.
The automakers' principles leave open the possibility of deals with advertisers who want to target motorists based on their location and other personal data, but only if customers agree ahead of time that they want to receive such information, industry officials said in a briefing with reporters.
Where have I heard this before? You agree as a condition of purchase or in some fine print most people will never read. Everyone knows the drill by now.
"You just don't want your car spying on you," he said. "That's the practical consequence of a lot of the new technologies that are being built into cars."
Pure bullshit this isn't about technology, the future or in any way leveraging technology to provide additional value to consumers. It is about leveraging technology to provide additional value to manufacturers and their value chain.
You don't need to report your location to view a map of your location. You don't need to report your location to download traffic conditions. You don't need to report your location to calculate the distance to nearest charging stations. You don't need to report your location for safety reasons.
You only need to report your location so others can profit.
Install a simple OFF SWITCH.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........