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Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

texasattorneygeneral.gov

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Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#151

Post by vel0city »

bobthepanda wrote: post #146
devman0 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take: maybe that is actually desirable? If insurance has a plethora of good actuarial information and risk modeling, and one's insurance costs are high, that's the market telling that person that they probably shouldn't be driving. If high insurance costs promote alternate means of transportation for highly risky drivers, that's a net win for everyone on the road.

the point of insurance is to make sure if you get into a crash with somebody else and they are at fault, that they even have the means to pay you in the first place. if forced to, people make the decision to drive uninsured because it is nigh impossible to travel around this country otherwise, and then it's worse when they do get into an accident and cannot pay the other driver's costs. you can't squeeze blood from a…

Sounds like we need better enforcement of insurance requirements. Driving a car uninsured should have some extremely stiff penalties. Once again, maybe if the penalties are high enough and the costs expensive enough for more people, there'd actually be more of a push to re-think overly car dependent life.

It will optimize society overall to have risky, uninsurable drivers not driving.

It's not like healthcare. There will always be healthcare costs. We don't have to have everyone drive all the time, we choose to.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#152

Post by ericmay »

stainablesteel wrote: post #101
subsubzero wrote: post #41

Fun fact, as a owner of a GMC auto I got a innocent looking email about the discontinuation of the Onstar Smart driver service which was the service in question that violated many US laws and sent data to insurance companies without customers authorization. I hope this hits GM really hard as this type of behavior will never cease until massive amounts of money is extracted from the perpetrators(GM etc).

its not just that i don't want electronics built into cars i don't want data coming from my car i don't need a phone to be built into my car i don't need navigation to be built into my car they need to stay in their lane we need anti-enshittification laws

The best way to combat this is walking and bike lanes. With no alternative to cars for most people you will see this kind of behavior continue.

Trying to pit automakers against each other on this topic and others is the misdirection. They want to distract you from wanting alternatives so that you don’t even need to have a spying car in the first place.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#153

Post by akira2501 »

digging wrote: post #110
akira2501 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Paxton is a crook, but in this case he's fighting the good fight. The Texas Attorney General is an entire office of people. It's always nice to know that while you want to judge the book by it's cover you're willing to put that aside. It is always odd to me that people feel the need to announce this.

Paxton is a crook though, abuses the power of his office, and generally would prefer to act in ways that hurt his political opponents rather than ways that server the public. He works against the public interest and should be called out for it. So, it's genuinely shocking for the TAG under his direction to be protecting consumers from these kinds of abuses.

> He works against the public interest and should be called out for it

It's an elected position in Texas. I understand that most of the people who frequent Hacker News wouldn't share his politics, but it's pretty undemocratic to "call him out" incessantly, even when it adds nothing to the situation being discussed, and in particular when he's been elected by a vote.

It's mindless preaching to the choir to show that, yes, you are on the "proper" side of the false political divide. It's tiring. So, _I_ call _this_ out.

The attitude, to me, boils down to, "I refuse to acknowledge anything good without reminding myself of everything bad." What value does this have? Maybe I just don't "get it."

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#154

Post by dontlikeyoueith »

jajko wrote: post #122
vel0city wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the computer doesn't know if you accelerate and brake hard because you're an aggressive driver, or if your circumstances require it Preface: I'm not strongly for these hyper monitoring systems of driving patterns for insurance. Often being in a situation where you have to slam on your brakes means even if you're a good driver you're in a lot more riskier environments than a driver who doesn't often have to. A good…

Yeah but if you really optimize it to ad absurdum, everybody will pay according to damages they will cause, negating whole point of 'socialized' spread-across-variable-population insurance. End users shouldn't generally want insurance to run over-optimally, that benefits just shareholders of given insurance and not population overall. That I consider myself above-average driver changes absolutely nothing in this. And…

> if you really optimize it to ad absurdum, everybody will pay according to damages they will cause, negating whole point of 'socialized' spread-across-variable-population insurance

Except spread out over time, which is still a net-benefit.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#155

Post by digging »

akira2501 wrote: post #153
digging wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paxton is a crook though, abuses the power of his office, and generally would prefer to act in ways that hurt his political opponents rather than ways that server the public. He works against the public interest and should be called out for it. So, it's genuinely shocking for the TAG under his direction to be protecting consumers from these kinds of abuses.

> He works against the public interest and should be called out for it It's an elected position in Texas. I understand that most of the people who frequent Hacker News wouldn't share his politics, but it's pretty undemocratic to "call him out" incessantly, even when it adds nothing to the situation being discussed, and in particular when he's been elected by a vote. It's mindless preaching to the choir to show that,…

> What value does this have?

I'm literally trying to get him voted out because he gets rich harming people I care about.

If you think an elected official working against the interests of the constituency is just going to naturally get voted out of office, I don't have the energy for the depth this conversation requires.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#156

Post by bobthepanda »

vel0city wrote: post #151
bobthepanda wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the point of insurance is to make sure if you get into a crash with somebody else and they are at fault, that they even have the means to pay you in the first place. if forced to, people make the decision to drive uninsured because it is nigh impossible to travel around this country otherwise, and then it's worse when they do get into an accident and cannot pay the other driver's costs. you can't squeeze blood from a…

Sounds like we need better enforcement of insurance requirements. Driving a car uninsured should have some extremely stiff penalties. Once again, maybe if the penalties are high enough and the costs expensive enough for more people, there'd actually be more of a push to re-think overly car dependent life. It will optimize society overall to have risky, uninsurable drivers not driving . It's not like healthcare. There…

Realistically, the other person ends up in jail and then you still can’t get compensated for car repairs. It’s not super clear why that would be better than the pooling of risk that happens today that results in compensation.

American society has chosen to create a built environment that is inhospitable to anything else except driving, so I don’t think this is actually a real choice. The people who are getting into crashes all the time are not the ones pushing for that built environment.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#157

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mrcsharp wrote: post #145
trhway wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You want to hurt the company and it's owners No. What you'd really want if you really wanted to fix things is to hurt the top and mid-managers who decided to commit those offenses. Unfortunately it almost never happens.

Don't forget the board. Top managers are made to break the law due to demands of infinite growth.

> Top managers are made to break the law due to demands of infinite growth

No, they’re not.

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#158

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Terr_ wrote: post #133
jordanb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, the entire port of insurance is to spread risk. If the the market for insurance is "too efficient" at determining who is high-risk and who is not, then it is no longer fulfilling its social function. Secondly, you seem to be implying that only aggressive drivers are getting flagged by the data. But the computer doesn't know if you accelerate and brake hard because you're an aggressive driver, or if your circ…

> Firstly, the entire port of insurance is to spread risk. I think that definition is incomplete: Insurance is to spread risk equitably . That means accounting for disparate probabilities and disparate impacts. For example, consider "house burns down" insurance, where premiums depend on whether the house is/isn't near a wooded area, and whether it is a cheap/expensive house... And yes, also whether or not the homeown…

> Insurance is to spread risk equitably. That means accounting for disparate probabilities

Everyone defines equitably according to their whims. Does it mean the riskier pay more? Those can afford it pay more? The unsympathetic pay more? Et cetera

Re: Texas sues GM for unlaw­ful­ly collecting and selling dri­vers' pri­vate data [pdf]

#159

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kmeisthax wrote: post #65
api wrote: post #59

Dangerously invasive data like location should be subject to HIPAA-like regulations. Leak or sell without authorization? That'll be $100k per data point of unauthorized location data per user. This would convert data like that into a liability rather than an asset, which would pretty much fix the problem.

Say it with me now: "Transpose EU GDPR into US law yesterday !"

We can learn from GDPR’s mistakes and do better.

A single national regime and enforcer. No obligation for every complaint to result in an investigation. Fines based on gains and damages, not revenue. Liability that can be privately enforced. And a trebling of damages where noncompliance is shown to be willful.

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