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A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

theintercept.com

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Re: A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

#191

Post by m463 »

Animats wrote: post #14

“Your phone died, you’re gonna get in the car, plug it in, and there’s going to be this nice convenient USB port for you. When you plug it into this USB port, it’s going to charge your phone, absolutely. And as soon as it powers up, it’s going to start sucking all your data down into the car.” That used to be just something seen in hostile devices. Now it's standard equipment.

> That used to be just something seen in hostile devices. Now it's standard equipment.

Remember when going around mapping wifi access points to location was "wardriving"? Well, then it became a business model. Although google was slapped on the wrist for doing it with their google maps cars early on, now all smartphones apple and google populate the database.

Re: A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

#192

Post by nanis »

second--shift wrote: post #137
jmnicolas wrote: post #54

So do I have to ride horses to get my privacy back now? I would totally buy a brand new car without all the "visible" electronics (by visible I mean all the screens and doodads. I don't mind ABS and other "invisible" electronics as long as they are reliable which is not a given nowadays). I don't get the point of turning the interior of a car into a smartphone experience. I watched a YT video of a Mercedess class S r…

> So do I have to ride horses to get my privacy back now? You say this in jest, but depending on your locale and transport needs, you could consider a motorcycle or bicycle. The interface is a bit like riding a horse, just more 21st century (obviously). Modern bikes come with ABS and fuel injection, and tires these days are great. Motorcycles don't come with any of the annoying road-car nanny-state stuff. Riding a bi…

> ... motorcycle or bicycle. The interface is a bit like riding a horse,

There is no truth to this: First, riding a horse is a _cooperative_ enterprise. You have to communicate with another living being and convince it to do what you want. It is not just a matter of pull one way to go in that direction. Second, the horse has a survival instinct. With good communication that instinct is lined up with your desires. A motorcycle, on the other hand, does not care whether it or you survive anything.

I am far from being a competent rider, but I'd rather be on a horse.

Re: A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

#193

Post by nanis »

kroltan wrote: post #176
silicon2401 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I lived in the countryside (which I wouldn't mind) I would consider this, but otherwise I personally couldn't justify the risk. I forget where I read it, but the phrase "right of weight, not right of way" comes to mind. It's also why I love that my hometown allows riding bikes on sidewalks.

> It's also why I love that my hometown allows riding bikes on sidewalks. This would be a dream. I live in a reasonably deserted/seasonal neighbourhood, so it has a neat 2-lane divided avenue down the middle, but it is usually very empty (a car maybe every minute). This doesn't mean I can ride anywhere but the very edge of the asphalt, almost tripping my pedals on the sidewalk rise (I forget the word in English), sin…

>> It's also why I love that my hometown allows riding bikes on sidewalks.

> This would be a dream.

Or the kind of urban nightmare where motorcycles (sorry, battery assisted bicycles) are rushing down sidewalks at 20 mph, barely missing baby carriages, dogs, and other humans.

Re: A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

#194

Post by crocodiletears »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #117
13of40 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you could at least do something petty, like swap the +12v and GND pins with the Bus+ and Bus- pins on your OBDII connector so it would fry their fancy tool when they tried to read your data.

Smog check will be a problem.

That's mostly a Cali and large city thing.

Re: A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

#195

Post by nanis »

pa7ch wrote: post #172
wyager wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely insane. I wonder how much cheaper and better a modern car could be if I didn't have to pay for legally-mandated safety features that A) are probably not utilitarian B) I don't even use. For example, I am 100% certain that the benefit of having an airbag between my legs does not outweigh the monetary cost plus the comfort cost of not having an AC vent under the steering wheel.

I understand the sentiment. However, are you saying that you think AC between your legs is a worthwhile feature but airbags are not?

>are you saying that you think AC between your legs is a worthwhile feature but airbags are not?

Why should people not be allowed to make that choice?

Keep in mind that the only reason we have airbags is because Naderites did not believe that one could rely on people using seatbelts so there needed to be technology that did not require cooperation from humans.

Fast-forward a couple of decades. Oooops. Airbags have no use without seatbelts and provide only a small amount of additional protection in most cases (thanks to crumple zones and improvements in shaping the interior of the car).

Re: A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

#196

Post by crocodiletears »

harikb wrote: post #33
marcod wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ondatashop.com/ive-vehicle-system-forensics/ says "iVe currently supports BMW, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Ford, GMC Hummer, Jeep, Lincoln, Maserati, Mercury, Pontiac, Ram, Saturn, Seat, Skoda, SRT, Toyota and Volkswagen vehicles generally as far back as 2008 models" - so older might be better :)

Used cars are already selling like hot cakes! now this!

Admin's talking about bringing back cash for clunkers. Just strap yourself into the matrix so your social credit score doesn't flag you for resisting.

Re: A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

#197

Post by 1123581321 »

sagarm wrote: post #149
kingsuper20 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that insurance coverage is going to require strong telemetry at some point. Obviously a person could pick a car of a given year/model that meets their needs and rebuild it forever, at least until the government or (once again) the insurance companies regulate you out of it. It's for the children after all.

I actually already use Metromile, an insurance company that charges per mile and uses GPS tracking to measure that mileage. I'm very happy with it. I no longer have to subsidize heavy drivers, and my rates are much lower as a result. I can always check the location of my car (in case of theft or forgetfulness) and there are other smaller benefits like diagnostics being pushed to my phone. As a bonus, they allow you t…

Metromile, and other similar programs, are neat. You are still subsidizing heavier drivers because your premium doesn't decrease proportionately to the reduced risk due to the data you provide and the agreements you make. But they certainly can save money.

Re: A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

#198

Post by throwaway0a5e »

ashtonkem wrote: post #135
paaakthecaaa wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, modern regulations forbid manufacturers from easily making a "dumb car". For example, backup cameras are required in new cars. It's the same deal with avoiding wire insulation that rodents enjoy eating. Your only option is to buy a car from before 2000-ish. I'd actually like to find a DIY subculture of taking old car frames and swapping in newer features a bit at a time. People do it with electric moto…

And buying a pre-2000 car involves giving up a lot of safety. That’s before regulators started looking at partial offset crashes, so older cars perform poorly if you clip a pole or oncoming vehicle with one of the headlamps.

You gain basically nothing in safety from the adoption of airbags in the early 90s to the improvements in roof strength and passenger cabins in the mid-00s (many models had their improvements in the early 00s because the regulations were known in advance). From there nothing changes until the proliferation of side curtain airbags.

Re: A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

#199

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

virtue3 wrote: post #122
Loughla wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, non-tactile buttons on a car seems ridiculous. You HAVE to look away from the road to do anything. Tactile buttons let you feel around to do things if you need to. That change has made zero sense to me.

Especially with the shit microcontrollers they put into the toyota mid range cars and their lack of responsiveness. Really forces you to look at the screen when you fidget with it.

Those shit micros in the infotainment system are still running at least in the hundreds of MHz. PCs from 25 years ago with equivalent performance were responsive. It's poor software development practices that makes good enough hardware crawl at a snail's pace.

Re: A CBP contract shows the risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone

#200

Post by a1369209993 »

yardie wrote: post #67
mywittyname wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely. Based on the article, it sounds like the data they are "vacuuming" up is telemetry data captured and stored by the car itself. Every manufacture is different, but they all are storing at least some information. I suspect there are regulatory requirements to keep such information for the purposes of public safety (see: analysis of Toyota unintended acceleration situations) This information has been captured,…

Car telemetry, until recently, is still kind of basic and from a surveillance standpoint not that interesting. It's usually just speed, angles, performance, and electricity. It can tell you when the car was started and how long it ran, but not where it went. On the other hand, the MIB or stereo, has a lot more interesting stuff: contact lists, GPS data, media, bluetooth devices, and even Wifi. The clock is GPS synced…

> It's usually just speed, angles, performance, and electricity. It can tell you when the car was started and how long it ran, but not where it went.

Assuming that includes wheel speed (and possibly tire pressure) and steering wheel angles, yes, that can be used to compromise where you went (via dead reckoning from your driveway or parking spot).

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