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Carmakers Will Give Your Location to Police Without a Warrant, Senators Say

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Re: Carmakers Will Give Your Location to Police Without a Warrant, Senators Say

#21

Post by [deleted] »

kotaKat wrote: post #14
akouri wrote: post #5

We're entering the age where having private, personal space is becoming almost impossible. If you have a conversation around your phone, you best believe that government actors can tap that mic. If you have a conversation at home, either your "smart" TV, fridge, or Google Home / Alexa is listening. Now, cars are just becoming tablets on wheels. In my Tesla, I am quite literally, being watched every time I drive. Ther…

> I have to assume that my vehicle will collect data that could be used against me in court. They always have, for a long time. Exploring event data recorders is an interesting art to get into and put together how crashes play out, sensor-by-sensor. To play along at home: https://crashdatagroup.com/ -- amusingly, one of the referrals mentioned on the page was essentially "Someone hit my parked car and then claimed I…

[deleted]

Re: Carmakers Will Give Your Location to Police Without a Warrant, Senators Say

#22

Post by wil421 »

mikece wrote: post #4

There is a growing number of cases where the salesperson will activate OnStar (or a non-GM equivalent) without asking or telling the buyer about it. As far as I know, there is no (legal) way to deactivate OnStar or similar GPS trackers built into cars. Of course if you're driving in a city the proliferation of ALPRs is so pervasive that your movements are being tracked in real-time even if you're driving a 1958 Ford…

Next you’ll need to cover your license plate from all the Flock cameras tracking every time you leave your city/county/state.

Re: Carmakers Will Give Your Location to Police Without a Warrant, Senators Say

#23

Post by mc32 »

akouri wrote: post #5

We're entering the age where having private, personal space is becoming almost impossible. If you have a conversation around your phone, you best believe that government actors can tap that mic. If you have a conversation at home, either your "smart" TV, fridge, or Google Home / Alexa is listening. Now, cars are just becoming tablets on wheels. In my Tesla, I am quite literally, being watched every time I drive. Ther…

One option that’s not great, is to follow the Amish —though the feds like irritating them from time to time. Maybe another is Indian lands, but who knows, they will likely find ways around that too.

Re: Carmakers Will Give Your Location to Police Without a Warrant, Senators Say

#25

Post by alright2565 »

AlgorithmicTime wrote: post #13
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #9

Your location isn't that big a deal. They can easily get that from License Plate Readers. What will be interesting, is if they ever use the data to give you tickets. I know that there was a discussion of a plan to use the New Jersey Turnpike tollbooths/EZ-Pass to judge speed between two points, and mail you a ticket. I don't think it ever made it out of the starting gate.

Literally the entire population of New Jersey would revolt. Everyone's doing a minimum of 10 over unless there's traffic.

I don't think this sort of casual lawbreaking is good for society. The law should either be changed or always enforced, rather than creating issues with (especially racially) selective enforcement and normalizing this 10-over behavior for city streets where it can easily be life-and-death for folks outside of cars.

Re: Carmakers Will Give Your Location to Police Without a Warrant, Senators Say

#27

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

moduspol wrote: post #16
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #9

Your location isn't that big a deal. They can easily get that from License Plate Readers. What will be interesting, is if they ever use the data to give you tickets. I know that there was a discussion of a plan to use the New Jersey Turnpike tollbooths/EZ-Pass to judge speed between two points, and mail you a ticket. I don't think it ever made it out of the starting gate.

It's a lot more precise data, and getting it from private companies without a warrant makes the bar potentially quite low. My concern is more that it's ripe for parallel construction in cases that otherwise wouldn't make it out of the gate.

From what I understand, LPRs are very precise; especially the car-mounted ones that I see around here.

The biggest issue with LPRs, is the private corporations that run the infrastructure, sell the data to non-law enforcement people.

Basically, license plates were designed to give authorities the ability to match the car with an owner, and are designed to be public, but the matching data is supposed to be behind a lock. LPRs simply supercharge the collection of the data, but they have contracted out the matching, and those contractors seem to be using what is supposedly a “locked” ability, to make money.

Re: Carmakers Will Give Your Location to Police Without a Warrant, Senators Say

#28

Post by eichin »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #9

Your location isn't that big a deal. They can easily get that from License Plate Readers. What will be interesting, is if they ever use the data to give you tickets. I know that there was a discussion of a plan to use the New Jersey Turnpike tollbooths/EZ-Pass to judge speed between two points, and mail you a ticket. I don't think it ever made it out of the starting gate.

With MA ez-pass, the enabling legislation specifically forbade the use of it for speed patrolling. (This may have been limited to i-90 which was the only thing that used it at the time.)

Re: Carmakers Will Give Your Location to Police Without a Warrant, Senators Say

#30

Post by JohnFen »

CivBase wrote: post #15
JohnFen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I know, there is no (legal) way to deactivate OnStar or similar GPS trackers built into cars. I'm not aware of any law (in the US) that prohibits you from disabling these things in a vehicle you own. Is it actually illegal?

You own the hardware. But in the modern world we do not own the software that allows us to make use of the hardware. If deactivating OnStar requires a modification to the car's software, I can definitely see how it could effectively be illegal to deactivate. In the world of modern tech, the concept of ownership is practically dead. But I don't know if a modification to the software is actually necessary or if that's…

No need to mess with the software to deactivate these things. Just yank a fuse, disconnect the antenna, or -- worst case -- physically break the support circuitry.
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