I can’t. I just can’t.
As it references the NTSA I think that this is a USA only issue.
You think car manufacturers are not going to do the same for non-US markets? Cars have miles and KM on most models even for non-US markets, and the US is the only significant country that uses the imperial system still.
The only difference is the order. Metric countries (everywhere) have KM more prominent than miles.
Of course. But this article is USA specific.
And when all the used cars are gone and I’m forced to buy one of these I’ll promptly be destroying the radio transmitters and everything related to this surveillance.
Straight to jail.
Right away.
Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 local currency units.
Is it actually illegal or is that a joke?
the “surveillance” seems to happen on the car locally. Kind of an expansion of current driver attention systems to include impairment detection.
“Local” surveillance happening on the same car computer that’s attached to a SIM card.
Yeah seems safe
It’s local right until the law enforcement gets into Bluetooth range with the right encryption keys to download all of the data for the past year.
Bold of you to assume any of this will be encrypted.
I remember when we discovered that militants in Afghanistan were monitoring Predator video feeds because apparently nobody had ever put in a requirement that the video stream be encrypted.
Militants in Iraq and Afghanistan have intercepted live video feeds from unmanned U.S. Predator drones using $26 off the shelf software made by a Russian company, says a report in the Wall Street Journal.
IIRC that was because the Predator video feeds were intended to be viewed in-theatre by officers right there on the front, and military protocol around encryption keys would have made it so no one at the front would have been able to decrypt the feed.
Considering they were designed in the early 90s, i.e. before public-key cryptography took off with SSL, that explanation always seemed plausible to me.
SSH keys for remote access.
Local storage encryption would be pointless because the keys would be local as well.
It’ll be like the 70s in the US again. Rip out all the bullshit smog stuff and put on a new carb. Because a v8 mustang shouldn’t be making 130hp.
Why are govts like this suddenly? All in a arms race against privacy?
This was mandated by the 2021 infrastructure bill. I was hoping it got scrapped but apparently not.
Not suddenly. It’s been going on at least as far back as 2001. Probably more. It’s generally not the gov’t either as the gov’t is mostly driven by moneyed private interests like large corporations. They always push in different ways to get more power to make profit. Get rid of a regulation, make new regulation, get a subsidy, limit rights to resist some abuse, etc. Sometimes it’s just more obvious that others in general, or it’s in an are we personally pay attention to, and we’re like WTAF.
They’re scared of the likes of Luigi and paper Mario. More and more people are getting fed up
Control, why else?
Its been like this my entire life. When I was in high school in the 90s one of my teachers said the greatest battle your generation will fight will be for privacy. Little did they know there would be no fight. The general public doesn’t seem interested in caring about things and voting with their wallet. Now we’ve reached this point where the game is up and companies have realized the masses will buy their products because people perceive that they “need” them and can’t do without which gives them free reign to do whatever they want.
voting with their wallet I’m onboard with your argument but I really don’t think voting with your wallet works in cases like this. When there are so few players in a system and they’re all colluding to make things worse, there is no vote.
I am deeply frustrated that people aren’t getting more involved. I link them to groups, I show them the consumer rights wiki, I talk to people about getting involved politically at the local level… So few people care. Things are going to have to get much worse before they take action, best thing we can do is have the framework in place for when they finally wake up.
Because the people vote for such governments.
Well in part it’s just being perceived that way. The car will decide if you’re drunk somehow becomes government surveillance. The App Store will ask for proof of age: government surveillance. And so on.
I’m not saying that this is a false interpretation but certainly it’s leaned on extremely hard in the way people report on and talk about these things. Hence why you get the sense that everyone everywhere is suddenly completely about government surveillance.
I think we could have a whole conversation about drunk driving and the efficacy and fairness of this kind of measure without even cracking the lid on government surveillance. But no one wants that. Nope, if it isn’t a direct descent straight into Fascism, it doesn’t get clicked on.
It’s almost like dozens of major companies are going on a blitz of heavy public surveillance projects that are very publicly selling that data directly to the government… So when yet another of those companies already doing those things Congress up with a new surveillance method, people can do the math
as someone who has dealt with over 20 years of pulling victims, alive and dead, from crashes caused by drunks (am firefighter not terrible driver…) I can say this won’t help shit. Just give more data (profit) to corporations and be used in rights violating ways.
It’s never actually about safety
Yup, same old “think of the children” excuse. It’s a carrot on a string so you don’t look at the stick.
Nothing is perfect, but the GSR2 for example has undoubtedly saved many lives. The problem isn’t with the technology, but that you don’t have any real privacy laws in the US.
Like the EU is any better. Last I checked, France is passing the same kind of bullshit over and over, too.
There actually is a problem with the technology in this case. It sounds like what they’re proposing is eye tracking, which is not reliable with some eye shapes, eye makeup, dry eye, etc. and any markers they use to try to detect drunkenness would also trip for people with legitimate eye problems. Anecdotally, I once drove a Tesla and it locked me out of cruise control because the tracker thought I was falling asleep. Imagine if the car refused to start at all!
Why do you think this will not help?
because drunks find a way to make trouble. they’ll get around the tech glitches in the imperfect deployments. they’ll be alert enough to trick it. etc. they’ll drink while driving and the system won’t see that and the impairment won’t be recognized till its too late. (i’m focused on system concerns because I am also a software engineer and know the realities of large scale tech like this.)
to counter the tech I think the punishments for impaired driving (including cell phone use) should be harsh and without kindness, if you cause another person harm. Federally. With no return of your privileges once convicted.
While I am very much anti-government, if I am not going to be allowed to “follow up” with someone who drank and ran over a family member, etc… then we might as well push the lawmakers to do their jobs with the laws we already have. Not make new ones that are clearly there to profit tech and not save lives.
It is readily proven that punishment does not work as a deterrent mechanism against criminal behavior, including drunk driving. Most crime is done on impulse, with no consideration of future consequences, regardless of how impactful those consequences may be.
The solution is proper public transit and urban design going back to focusing on pedestrian-centric instead of being car-centric. But that’s a much larger societal issue and unfortunately people don’t like the effort that it requires so they incessantly search for a quick fix “solution” that just puts a bandaid over the problem instead of solving it.
The law is doing its job, the law wasn’t created to help people, but to serve the interests of the ruling class. Naive to think these new policies aren’t the law doing what it was always intended to do.
while this is a set of fair points, my thoughts were not on punishment as a deterrent; it was on punishment to simply remove them from the road permanently.
i agree safety tech is good. seat belts to drowsy eye tech … all good. what I don’t see is the tech for drink driving specifically being tenable in a for profit nightmare world we live in. Subscription for the interlocking lapse? car is offline. Etc.
If they could make it offline, serviceable and calibrated as simply as an oil change, and buy once tech… cool.
Removing them from the road is a complicated issue with the stated issues of public transit access being limited. Limiting someone permanently from driving in some places might as well be a death sentence depending on their finances, which is also a big issue with punishment as a deterrent. The point of punishment is inherently to coerce people’s actions by way of threatening them with socially harmful consequences enforced by the state to deter them from acting in specific ways as dictated by law. Revoking their license and removing them from the road is the threat that is supposed to deter people from drunk driving. Yet, removing an offender does nothing to prevent more drunk driving from happening, thus not solving the issue at hand, as drunk driving is an impulse decision made in the moment (usually being a result of how convenient and accessible alternative means of traveling to the intended destination are) and not an action that is made out of habit or direct choice, though there are exceptions to this but those are also much larger issues usually, like mental health and such.
That’s all a much larger discussion, though, and let’s not digress.
The issue at hand is with privacy and data collection with cameras that are recording in modern cars with onboard computers connected to cellular networks via SIM cards. I would not put it past modern, capitalist driven companies to not utilize this for those ends under the guise of it being for “public safety”.
They can claim it is offline but so long as the vehicle computer that it is recording to is connected, which most modern ones are, then it is a privacy vulnerability risk that I absolutely believe modern companies will abuse; the most probable excuse being “analytics data collection for improving the device operations”. There are ways around it, like disabling the modem, but that puts unnecessary burden on the consumer which may void warranties and the like.
With no return of your privileges once convicted.
All that does is create the problem of driving unlicensed, so now you imprison nonviolent offenders (assuming they aren’t convicted of vehicular homicide type of charges).
I understand the sentiment, but the law of unintended consequences rears its ugly head here very quickly.
what’s nonviolent about having harmed someone while choosing to drive impaired?
also i 100% agree public transportation should be improved too.
but it’s disgusting how many times I see folks who have multiple accidents causing harm to others and are still allowed to drive.
Last year I drove my parent’s car which is equipped with one of these cameras that determine if the driver is distracted or dozing. And I can say for certain that it works. I honestly wish that my car had this sort of a system.
I view this tech like a padlock. Sure some people will do whatever they can to get around it, but it keeps honest people honest. If it can reduce deaths on the road from drunk and tired drivers even by a little bit then isn’t that worth it?
I’m not sure what you mean by not being able to follow up… Driving drunk and killing someone is already punished harshly, and you can even follow up civilly; it’s called a wrongful death suit.
Honest people don’t need the government to spy on them to not drive drunk though?
What about their proposed solution requires any of this data to leave the vehicle?
The law says nothing about keeping the data in the vehicle, so it will 100% be sent outside the vehicle. Most modern cars already transmit your data so why would they change anything?
You are right. Because the law says nothing about the requirements. They haven’t decided on them yet. Come back when they propose something.
It doesn’t work on everyone. These systems have trouble with certain eye shapes, eye makeup, etc.
I think the NHTSA is more looking at detecting alcohol on the driver’s breath passively. But yes, there will always be cases where technology does not work optimally.
I am not willing to trade a modicum of safety for one of the greatest privacy and ownership violations of all time.
Last year I drove my parent’s car which is equipped with one of these cameras that determine if the driver is distracted or dozing. And I can say for certain that it works.
I rented two different modern (2015-2016) Mercedes SUVs. They both had systems that detected tired/inattentive driving. I was neither but after several hours on the road both vehicles would alert that it was time to take a break with a nice little coffee icon. I was conversing with a passenger, driving fine, not wandering between lanes/etc… The first time I kind of doubted myself but subsequent notifications both the passenger and myself were agreeing that we had no idea what it was upset about.
The newer car had another sensor that would get upset if your grip on the steering wheel got too light. That was kind of neat to see how much leeway it’d give you before it got antsy.
Probably because you were driving for a few hours. That makes sense. You may not feel it but driving is an active task that takes more effort than just sitting in a chair.
I would much rather have this system have false positives rather than not have it at all.
They will really do anything before investing in public transit
Reminder that this requires all vehicles be SOLD with the tech. It says nothing about what happens to it after purchase.
Just pull the fuse for the onstar radio. It can log all it wants locally.
They prevented that from working years ago. Now it’s usually on a critical circuit that you can’t just disable.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Every technical hurdle they put up, is defeatable.
Every time they make the wall higher, we make the ladder longer.
There will come a time where there will be a privacy-conscious choice and that might require flashing the infotainment system.
We’re getting closer to one of Cory Doctrows stories. I can’t find a direct link, but its on this page under the name “Plausible Deniability”
Funny, that is the opposite take that Cory has had recently. His argument has basically morphed to the opinion that, while individual action is cool, this stuff pretty much can only be defeated by collective action. You can’t shop (or hack) your way out of living in the surveillance state. If everyone else is being surveiled, you get pulled in by association.
I don’t quite agree, and think we will always have to exercise some individual choice to protect ourselves. I am not sure that disabling a radio is enough though, if every other car on the road is covered in cameras and streaming data constantly.
You can do both? Push for collective action and defeat the devices that are being put in front of you.
The difference is, there are now tariffs: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115819402267996681
There’s also a recording of his talk, it’s quite good IMO.
Thanks for sharing this, the fiction is astoundingly horrifying yet vital in timeliness.
To be perfectly blunt, no not every hurdle is defeatable. To even consider that to be true is fucking retarded. There is a point where your option is to deal with it or use something else.
Modifications can be made illegal, hardware can be made unobtainable legally outside of vendor contracts, real time motion data to insurance can be mandated, etc.
Even if you go out of your way to bypass everything you can The simple fact is, at some point you WILL be pulled over or get into an accident. And at that point if the powers that be decide what you did breaks a law then your still fucked. Or that you broke your insurance contract with your modifications.
Just because you can do something doesnt mean you can get away with it if caught. And everyone’s caught at some point. You either end up in jail or uninsurable and monetarily fucked.
You should read the short story.
That’s the whole point of the story.
But yes, it will always be possible to remove this sludge. You may have to fight for your rights to do so. That fighting might involve setting things on fire.
I work peripheral to data science. I am starting to think the defense is never to be a hole in the data. AI is incredible at filling in missing data.
What you want to do is poison the data about you. AI is absolutely terrible at weeding out bad or especially intentionally misleading data. You can even protect others if you do it right.
My bolt euv doesn’t transmit after I pulled the fuse.
Happy for you, but onstar shares the infotainment circuit on my vehicle. The only way to disable it is to dismantle the dash, remove the whole infotainment unit, and remove the circuit board for onstar. Which likely has some warranty implications, as well.
Hope to get to it soon, but what a hassle.
If there’s enough demand, I imagine that there will be shops that will do it without individuals having to research it.
If the manufacturer designs it so that I have to disassemble the entire engine just to replace the spark plugs, I’m still going to be irritated even if I can just pay some people a ton of money to replace them for me.
I mean, yeah, just saying that if lots of people want it done, it’s probably gonna be more-efficient to take that route. Like tinting windows or other popular aftermarket modifications.
I’m trying to figure out of this is just the distracted driving safety feature that’s been on every car I’ve bought in the last 6 years. If so it can be disabled and really isn’t that big of a deal when it’s enabled. Just sends you an alert when it detects you weaving within the lane a little too much. I can’t help but think this article might be a little sensationalistic.
These things aren’t going to just give you an alert. They’re going to disable the car if it thinks you’re impaired.
The car manufacturers even warned the government about false positives that they can’t prevent and Congress moved ahead anyway.
The surveillance-in-a-car framing sounds dramatic until you realize that most new vehicles from Subaru, General Motors, Ford, and several European brands already ship with driver monitoring systems built in.
Your link actually answers my question. They’re already in most cars, mine included. The data isn’t being transmitted to the government. The manufacturer would be able to access it, sure, but that’s nothing now. It also doesn’t mean that every car is going to have eye monitoring equipment - most of the cars that already have it don’t.
Look I’m not saying I support this law but the articles posted here are very sensationalistic.
Removing “safety features” from a car is illegal, btw
And when they call the infotanmint crap a “safety feature” and no one lynched a lawmaker over it we know that as a people we have given up.
Unjust laws are not to be followed.
I am never buying a car built after 2016
Why 2016 specifically?
It depends on the make but that’s when I feel cars tipped the scale to becoming appliances
2018 makes more sense, that’s when backup cameras were mandatory so since they were putting in a screen manufacturers made every car have an ‘infotainment’ center and with all of that processing power comes logging and other privacy invading features.
Really I don’t go past 2008 myself. That was a cliff car manufactures went off after the sub prime mortgage fun fun time.
Naaaaah, my 2016 RAV4 Hybrid is balling. Back up camera, 360 sensors, remote start, heated seats, medium screen with buttons and knobs instead of touch, push start, stick shift, and the best part: no wifi on-board (through my phone only). Cars peaked right here.
Oh, your going to fix that yourself? Or pay someone to do it?
honestly i haven’t been able to fix anything myself since my 1989 three horsepower crapstack. not enough room in the engine compartment. I’ve got a good mechanic tho, so it’s not too much of a problem.
I like fixing my own crap and used to fix laptops and the like in my old job. I am fairly comfortable working on anything 2008 and before, basicly as long as the car is not using fucking canbus or serialized parts. Had enough canbus in my life from the damned German cash recyclers.
Hm. Well I certainly agree that privacy invasive stuff is absolutely unwelcome but I’m also a pretty big fan of backup cameras. I bought a 2023 and while it does have the “infotainment” and backup can, outside of that it’s all quite dum and everything outside of like bluetooth paring and general infotainment stuff is all physical buttons.
So really my point is while it is unusual, even brand new vehicles can manage to avoid the privacy nightmare.
Oh yeah, I like backup cameras too and they’re probably saving a lot of people from injury or death. Very much worth requiring, IMO.
It’s just the fact that many of these companies saw the opportunity to monetize the hardware that regulations were forcing them to install so we started seeing a lot more “data harvesting”.
If you were going to pick a year to avoid, 2018 makes logical sense from that perspective.
How about limiting the insanely bright headlights first?
Is it the bright headlights or the abundance of trucks raised so high that the headlights beam directly into your eyeballs…
Both. It’s both.
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You can do that yourself, those insanely bright headlights are just LED lights. The old halogen bulbs have a warmer light and are less blinding. I agree that LED bulbs should be illegal because they’re dangerous, but it has nothing to do with cars being newer or older, its the bulbs themselves.
The people that are smart enough to adjust their headlights aren’t the problem. The majority of people aren’t and they drive with those stadium lights everywhere.
Which is why I said they should be illegal. No idea why I’m being downvoted for telling the truth but whatever…
Those fuckers of all types are mounted 4 plus feet off the damn ground, there is zero adjustment you or anyone can make to stop them blinding me because THEY ARE ABOVE MY WHOLE ASS CAR!
Are you saying I can break every single vehicle’s headlights as they pass by and blind me? Because that doesn’t sound like a feasible solution to the problem as it stands
Of course it is just the headlights but they’ve become more commonplace. I don’t remember them being as ubiquitous as they are now. The newer LED ones are the worst because they aren’t dispersed and are like pinpoint sources.
2027, year of Linux car, or bicycle.
A linux bicycle sounds like a cool project! I’ve been wanting to add a mini a pc to my bike, to track trips and display important navigational information, but to connect to my local home server rather than some black box service.
Dynamo lighting has gotten really efficient. It wouldn’t be cheap, but would be so cool to make a fully human-powered Linux bike. https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/buyers-guides/bike-dynamos
my ebike definitely doesn’t have a modem.
pretty sure it doesn’t have a modem.
fuck i’m gonna go have a paranoid freakout and wrap that fucker in wire mesh be back in a week
We need to scrap the entire US government and start over.
Liquidation and composting would be more environmentally friendly than scrapping.
Every technology is eventually used against you by the state
https://www.gadgetreview.com/federal-surveillance-tech-becomes-mandatory-in-new-cars-by-2027
Can we post the original sources and not middle men?
“I dont want a chinese car because it would just spy on me”
I only like it when the us government and completely unregulated corporations spy on me. It’s the American way
What the fuck? When did Congress pass this, and why wasn’t there a huge public outcry against it?
2021
This shit is why biden didnt arrest trump. Democrats need him to drive voters their way. To use the trdump as a club to hit any one who has a independent thought.
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