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There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

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Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#21

Post by lsllc »

geophile wrote: post #3

The only thing holding me back from a yes vote is the availability of detailed location data to 3rd parties. Can a mechanic sell this data? Can it be subpoenaed by police?

I'm not really sure I understand what location data has to do with right to repair?

Do you mean because now some OnStar type API must be documented "for repair"? (if so, I'd argue that security through obscurity is little to no security at all and I'd hope that your API is properly secured. For example just because the Google email API is documented doesn't mean people suddenly can read my email!)

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#22

Post by throwaway0a5e »

While I support right to repair and will be voting accordingly as a born and raised Masshole the whole "centralized platform for service info" thing is a massive red flag to me.

Having to go through the government (the proposal as I understand it) to get service literature is only better than having to go through an uncooperative manufacturer. They could have just revoked the exemption for telemetry data without any of this platform nonsense. I don't want to get too off in the weeds here but I have zero expectation that the legislature doesn't have more nefarious things in the works for later. Cracking down on the backyard mechanics who keep the shitboxes of the greater Boston area running and forcing the poors onto the T would be their wet dream. If the goal is to give owners and manufacturers more access then why not just mandate that the OEMs provide the access, why go through the trouble of a platform if it's not part of a bigger picture that you don't want to tell people about just yet?

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#23

Post by nerdponx »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #22

While I support right to repair and will be voting accordingly as a born and raised Masshole the whole "centralized platform for service info" thing is a massive red flag to me. Having to go through the government (the proposal as I understand it) to get service literature is only better than having to go through an uncooperative manufacturer. They could have just revoked the exemption for telemetry data without any…

Pardon my ignorance: what centralized platform? As far as I can tell, the proposal requires direct two-way communication between the vehicle and end user.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#24

Post by JoshTriplett »

Retric wrote: post #18
kibwen wrote: post #13

The other ballot option in MA this year, Question 2, would enable ranked choice voting for state and federal elections. There was a bit of a thread about this the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24561551 What's weird is that before moving to MA I had never even heard of ballot options. As far as I can tell they just don't exist in PA, so social studies curricula just don't teach them. I'm increasingly…

It’s a double edged escape hatch. In practice the vast majority of voters know little to nothing about what’s being decided. On the other hand many third rail political views have a great deal of popular support. So, IMO the trick is to require a very large number of signatures to get on the ballot.

> It’s a double edged escape hatch. In practice the vast majority of voters know little to nothing about what’s being decided.

Neither does the legislature, in many cases. On balance I'd rather have direct democracy for the majority of things. It has worked quite well in Oregon, which has an initiative system.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#25

Post by ISL »

Retric wrote: post #18
kibwen wrote: post #13

The other ballot option in MA this year, Question 2, would enable ranked choice voting for state and federal elections. There was a bit of a thread about this the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24561551 What's weird is that before moving to MA I had never even heard of ballot options. As far as I can tell they just don't exist in PA, so social studies curricula just don't teach them. I'm increasingly…

It’s a double edged escape hatch. In practice the vast majority of voters know little to nothing about what’s being decided. On the other hand many third rail political views have a great deal of popular support. So, IMO the trick is to require a very large number of signatures to get on the ballot.

Agreed. It is useful to pass things that a legislature may never pass, like term-limits for legislators.

In Washington State, the initiatives frequently yield legislation that has conflicts/dependency problems with the existing law, something that happens far less-often with bills from within the legislature.

Also agreed that a high signature-number bar is one of the simplest/expedient ways to limit ballot-initiative spam. We have a person who has successfully made it their personal mission/job/source-of-notoriety to place some sort of small-government initiative on the ballot every year.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#26

Post by hprotagonist »

geophile wrote: post #10
hprotagonist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you prefer that only centralized data warehouses like Officially Sanctioned Dealerships have access to this data instead? That seems worse.

I prefer that they don't have it either, but that's not a choice. But if every garage in the state has access to this data, it seems like a much bigger risk.

centralized warehousing is a security threat, not a bonus.

It just paints a big fat target on Toyota that screams "compromise us, we have so much PII it's almost embarrasing"

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#27

Post by mangoman »

geophile wrote: post #10
hprotagonist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you prefer that only centralized data warehouses like Officially Sanctioned Dealerships have access to this data instead? That seems worse.

I prefer that they don't have it either, but that's not a choice. But if every garage in the state has access to this data, it seems like a much bigger risk.

There's not a database of location data that all garage's can access. It's mainly about making it so that car manufacturers can't design car computers in a way that in a way that impedes independent shops from doing repairs without paying the manufacturers for access (think like custom data access protocols, or obfuscation that's only readable after paying Honda a monthly massive fee). This is the battle that farmers are fighting against john deere.

Actually, if the data is only accessible to a few authorized shops, that's when the data is especially likely to be sold. Data is really only valuable in aggregate - if more shops can service cars, then each shop really gets less access to aggregated car data. More choice means less centralization of the data which means it's more difficult to collect enough data for it to be sold.

I think the car manufacturers are the ones who are hoping to monetize the data, and that's why they're trying to restrict access.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#28

Post by sfkdjf9j3j »

ptero wrote: post #17
jghn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're incredibly scummy but a super thin veneer. I don't know how anyone buys their BS. On one hand they feature grease monkeys talking about people hacking your car, I'm not sure people should be using their local mechanic for cybersecurity advice. More important, the fine print at the end makes it clear that it's the auto manufacturers sponsoring those ads, and their bias is obvious. I'll lose some faith in human…

I think it will pass,but I am pretty sure that such ballot initiatives are not binding. It might pass only to be quickly forgotten.

There are procedural ways certain bodies can drag their feet but it is binding. Marijuana was legalized for recreational use through the same process.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#29

Post by mindslight »

hprotagonist wrote: post #26
geophile wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer that they don't have it either, but that's not a choice. But if every garage in the state has access to this data, it seems like a much bigger risk.

centralized warehousing is a security threat, not a bonus. It just paints a big fat target on Toyota that screams "compromise us, we have so much PII it's almost embarrasing"

I don't know that centralized warehousing is relevant here, given that the systems seemingly rely on centralized silos regardless. But keeping the system dealership-only will encourage security by obscurity (eg one master login per dealership that can then access any car), whereas opening it up will force automakers to design their system for fine grained security.

Re: There's another right to repair fight brewing in Massachusetts

#30

Post by kelnos »

kibwen wrote: post #13

The other ballot option in MA this year, Question 2, would enable ranked choice voting for state and federal elections. There was a bit of a thread about this the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24561551 What's weird is that before moving to MA I had never even heard of ballot options. As far as I can tell they just don't exist in PA, so social studies curricula just don't teach them. I'm increasingly…

We have them in CA as well. I think in general they're a good workaround for getting things passed that the legislature for some reason doesn't have the political will to work on.

On the downside, repealing these things usually takes another ballot measure (the legislature can't touch most of these), so if one passes that turns out to be a bad idea, it'll be harder to remove it. Unfortunately we do have a few persistent ballot measures that have been on the books for years that are detrimental, but there's no will to get rid of them (Prop 13, I'm looking at you).

Occasionally I'll vote "no" on a proposition that I agree with, simply because I believe it's something that the legislature should take up, and doing it through the ballot measure process will end up being too inflexible.

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