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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

#31

Post by steelframe »

Zigurd wrote: post #19
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…

It looks like OnStar and other systems are on a dedicated fuse. Pulling that fuse would disable remote access to data. This would not disable onboard logging. Real location privacy on a journey would also require stashing your phone and toll box in a shielded bag and avoiding license plate readers.

You can probably just enable Airplane Mode on your phone and expect that to work fine.

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

#32

Post by worik »

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…

> As far as I know, there is no (legal) way to deactivate OnStar or similar GPS trackers

Naively...

Is it illegal to cut the power to the GPS unit?

I do not see why a car needs a GPS built in. So why can I not simply disable it?

What am I missing?

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

#33

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

zhengiszen wrote: post #6

It will be easier to drone bomb each and every one who is against the US government or its associates. Terrifying

Well, if they were going to do that, there's nothing stopping them from doing it right now when you get home.

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

#34

Post by sidewndr46 »

Xirgil wrote: post #20
CivBase wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But if you own the hardware there's nothing to legally prevent you from severing the power to whatever sensors/hardware onstar is using, no?

the car may not even start, or may disable virtually all functionality until the problem is fixed if you do that

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

#35

Post by Zigurd »

steelframe wrote: post #31
Zigurd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like OnStar and other systems are on a dedicated fuse. Pulling that fuse would disable remote access to data. This would not disable onboard logging. Real location privacy on a journey would also require stashing your phone and toll box in a shielded bag and avoiding license plate readers.

You can probably just enable Airplane Mode on your phone and expect that to work fine.

It's been since 3G that I delved into baseband specs in any depth, but I would not trust a powered up phone not to be commanded to connect to a network.

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

#36

Post by ru552 »

JohnFen wrote: post #10
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…

> 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?

It's not illegal, it's just that it doesn't allow it in the UI. Who do you call to have that service disabled? No one knows. The best you can do is talk to someone and have the auto renewal turned off. That doesn't turn off the existing service until the renewal period hits though.

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

#37

Post by CivBase »

Xirgil wrote: post #20
CivBase wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But if you own the hardware there's nothing to legally prevent you from severing the power to whatever sensors/hardware onstar is using, no?

Sure. As long as the software continues to work despite whatever you broke or disabled. It all depends on how forgiving the software is and how integrated the hardware is.

If manufacturers really want to collect this data, they currently have the power to stop you.

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

#38

Post by sidewndr46 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #27
moduspol wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

well sure, the data is very precise. It's augmented with GPS.

I can also go get an inkjet printer to produce paper that has your tag number on it, slap it over my license plate and get all the ALPR systems to immediately flag my vehicle as your location.

Probably a crime, but also going to quickly poison the entire dataset

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

#39

Post by worik »

alright2565 wrote: post #25
AlgorithmicTime wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The law should either be changed or always enforced,

I understand

But if nobody breaks bad laws they will never change

Vice laws are a case in point

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

#40

Post by patmcc »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #2

My car was stolen a year ago. If it wasn’t for the iPhone app tracker I had I never would have gotten it back. Police didn’t have any way to track it.

Bullshit (what the cops told you, to be clear, not what you're saying. I'm sure they did tell you they don't have a way to track it).

The cops could absolutely track it. License plate readers are built into most cop cars and parking enforcement vehicles, they could call the carmaker, they could view cctv from the area, whatever. If it was something they actually cared about - like one of their cars, or a cop killer, or their promotion was riding on it - they'd track it down. It's just not worth the time for them to do it, probably because there's too many car thefts and not enough time given to them to look into them.

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