Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero • Hacker News Board

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#321

Post by rootusrootus » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

bdw5204 wrote: post #109

whimsicalism wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which the government is not obligated to do in the US. Just a talking point - and the US has one of the most extensive criminal justice apparatuses of any country. This article is about Canada - which has largely failed to control its organized crime+ports situation, unlike authorities in the US where most organized crime is organized from abroad and so difficult to disrupt but also less effective.

According to the US Supreme Court, the police have no duty to protect citizens[0], even if they obtain a court-issued protective order. Cars are insecure on purpose because people accidentally lock their keys inside all the time so locksmiths need to be able to get into them. Likewise, locks on homes are insecure on purpose because people lock themselves out. The entire system of locks is based on the assumption that…

> Cars are insecure on purpose because people accidentally lock their keys inside all the time

Can't remember the last time I've had a car that would let me lock the keys inside. Even the low tech ones won't let me lock the doors from inside the car unless the doors are closed. The slightly more advanced ones (which is most, these days) honk the horn when the keys are left inside the car, and unlock the doors.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#322

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

blitzar wrote: post #256

swozey wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never, ever keep a car I care about outside anywhere near the city. I know everyone doesn't have the funds for that, but I'm sorry, we all know how rampant car thefts have gotten since before those 3 Q50s in this video were even purchased. I live in the busiest neighborhood in downtown Denver with which has rampant property theft, cats cut out etc non-stop. I own 2 vehicles and neither of them are ever parked…

> I know everyone doesn't have the funds for that Its actually a fair bit cheaper to buy a $25k car than a $250k car.

[deleted]

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#323

Post by necovek » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 4:58 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

I think you have a great point, but I still subtly disagree. One thing free market dynamics have not established is proper responsibilities for failing to build stuff to specification.

Tools are simply tools, and tools like Flipper Zero are fundamentally usable in legal scenarios.

Other tools like cars come with locks that advertise providing some level of security: if cars fail to meet that, it is manufacturers' responsibility for the theft (nobody would claim that if a truck came by and simply towed the car away).

Now, neither the buyers have effective means to choose secure products themselves (it requires deep knowledge or possibly open protocola and source code for cars), nor do the manufacturers worry enough about it. When markwt does not make things happen, you make it happen with legislation.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#324

Post by glitchc » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 4:59 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #233

ryandrake wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is stealing cars at 12 or 13 years old, they're already well on their way down the path towards irredeemability. Society has to do something or they will turn into a lifelong criminal. A multi-year prison sentence is probably not going to help them, but counseling, a better home and school environment, food in the belly, and so on might. You have to do something besides "catch and release" which has been t…

USA crime is still very low compared to pretty much the entire 20th century, it seems early to proclaim certain approaches as a failure. FWIW, catalytic converter theft was recently a big problem in the US and the classic approach of getting the FBI involved, identifying the high-level fencers and arresting, was incredibly effective and cat thefts have plummeted. I suspect disrupting the organized crime in Canada wou…

Agreed, it really is a paperwork issue. Just have transport and shipping companies require proof of ownership prior to accepting the car, and these thefts will evaporate overnight. Without a channel to market, it eliminates the incentive for thieves to steal your car in the first place.

It's not a tech problem, rather a legislative one. Too bad it won't fly because the current govt. has made it a habit of treating every issue as a wedge issue.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#325

Post by bonestamp2 » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 4:59 PM UTC

nulbyte wrote: post #111

keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

> Instead of discussing how car theft is fundamentally an unethical behavior, the discussion is about preventing some thing from being sold or existing, whether that be insecure vehicles or Flipper Zeroes. There are already laws against theft. They apply to vehicles, secure and insecure alike. A law mandating a minimum level of security, as GP suggests, seems to me to fit the suggestion, that auto manufacturers have…

I like the idea in theory, but I'm not sure if it's practical. There's no such thing as a secure system, there are only systems with no known security issues -- a vehicle that has no known security issues one day, is one discovery away from being completely open the next day. So, it would be hard to legislate the security of a system.

The solution might be to incentivize a quick resolution. For example, if a security issue is found with a vehicle, there could be laws that govern how quickly a fix needs to be available, how it's made available, and how far back it goes in model years. I would suggest that the severity of the issue (life threatening | theft | inconvenience) and the number of vehicles affected, should dictate how much time they have to resolve it.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#326

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 4:59 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #101

ceejayoz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kia and Hyundai saved like $20/car by skimping on a part that all the other major manufacturers include by default, leading to cars that were insecure by design. That's negligent. Punishing people for taking advantage of that vulnerability is certainly warranted, but it's also closing the barn door after the horse has already bolted.

What harm did Kia cause its customer? How are those locks adequate in say, South Korea, where there are 1:20,000 car thefts per capita yearly vs 1:350 in the US. The locks are not the problem. Stealing cars is the problem.

One of these problems is far easier to solve than the other.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#327

Post by kredd » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 4:59 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #226

madeofpalk wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of discussing how car theft is fundamentally an unethical behavior What's to discuss? Is there any ambiguity about whether stealing cars is unethical? What are you bringing to that conversation that moves us forward?

I am pointing out that the response to this problem isn’t, “Hey, there is a cultural problem with society finding this acceptable” and is instead “how can we re-engineer things to prevent this?”

I heavily doubt you can “fix the culture” in a short period of time, especially when it’s causing problems right here and right now. And frankly speaking, I don’t think society finds it acceptable, it’s just not that easy to prevent it unless you start putting draconian measures and hardcore surveillance with enforcement. and even that isn’t really that easy especially in huge countries like US and Canada.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#328

Post by keiferski » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 5:00 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #320

keiferski wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting thought, but I would say instead that I'm in favor of culture being the "first line of defense" and not the law. In other words, I can leave my door unlocked because I am a part of a culture where that sort of thing doesn't happen. Not because there is a law written down somewhere. This has functionally been my experience in a number of spaces, including private workspaces (i.e., you don't expec…

The reason the rule of law exists at the scale it does is precisely because what you describe, has not shown to create functional long term societies that are resilient to exogenous threats. The rule of law is literally humanity’s best attempt so far to explicitly codify human desires into a common set of descriptions. This is why the UN exists and the LON before it etc…

> has not shown to create functional long term societies that are resilient to exogenous threats.

I don't think I agree with this. If anything, it seems more like the reverse: societies have been less-and-less willing to enforce assimilation and a certain set of society-wide cultural behaviors, and therefore they "fall back" to the rule of law as described by you.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#329

Post by verisimi » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 5:00 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #98

Philosophy warning: I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws." Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics ) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pas…

> I don't know if there is a term for it, or if a philosopher/etc. has written about this phenomenon, but: a noticeable trend to me is what I'll call "the replacement of ethical expectations with specific, written down laws."

> Rather than expecting a human being to behave in certain ways intrinsically (i.e., normative ethics) we tend to assume they will behave in the worst way possible, and then pass laws to supposedly prevent that behavior from manifesting.

Imo, this is part of a long-running de-individualisation process imo, in reverse, the 'making people governable' process. One writes rules that cohere with reality, more or less. Then one encourages others to refer to the laws rather to conscience. This enables what I call the 'externalisation of morality' as someone is now deferential to some set of laws that can and are changed to confer advantage to whoever is paying for the rules. (Eg the work done via paid lobbyists.)

In this case, I assume it is easier, cheaper for car companies to 'illegalise' a tool, rather than take responsibility for their fragile product.

Re: Insecure vehicles should be banned, not security tools like the Flipper Zero

#330

Post by LeifCarrotson » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 5:00 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #226

madeofpalk wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of discussing how car theft is fundamentally an unethical behavior What's to discuss? Is there any ambiguity about whether stealing cars is unethical? What are you bringing to that conversation that moves us forward?

I am pointing out that the response to this problem isn’t, “Hey, there is a cultural problem with society finding this acceptable” and is instead “how can we re-engineer things to prevent this?”

I don't think that society finds this acceptable so much as predictable. There's a big difference, especially when you're eeking out the last fractional bits towards a higher quality of life.

Even if 99 out of 100 people will behave ethically around a car with the keys literally sitting on the windshield (and I suspect the ratio is actually much higher), if 1 out of 100 causes you to have a loss of tens of thousands of dollars, you're going to want better protections than "that was unacceptable".

Our political system is currently demonstrating this - in theory, public servants should be altruistically motivated, making informed and wise decisions about how to govern for the good of the people, and elections should select for these individuals. Unfortunately, this system is highly vulnerable to narcissistic, wealthy, greedy, power-hungry famous sociopaths willing to lie and compromise their ethics. We should not be surprised or disappointed when out of a nation of 300 million people, a few of those people emerge to take those positions.

The sensible response is not to throw up our hands and moralize about corruption in politics, it's to design the system so that this perfectly predictable outcome doesn't keep happening.

Also, while the courts are not entirely fair and free of bias, trying to enforce cultural norms about not stealing by public shaming is not likely to be any more fair. I'd rather take my chances with a lawyer, prosecutor, and jury than to have the rumor mill spread falsehoods about an immoral act I may or may not have committed.