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Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

bbc.com

111–120 of 307 posts

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#111

Machines don't spy. People and governments do. Alarmist articles like this make good click baity head lines. But from a technical point of view there isn't a whole lot of new information here. Most people use smart phones. Those are generally GPS equipped and can also be triangulated between cell towers down to a few hundred meters. When using a WIFI, that gets a lot better. And they have a few other active radios as…

You are basically saying, "I'm spied on at school, therefore I'm paranoid if I don't want to be spied on at home in my bedroom." Every bit of surveillance should be prevented, but we shouldn't throw it all away if we can't be perfect.

No, you are putting words in my mouth. I'm saying that you can be upset or paranoid about cars doing whatever. But you are ignoring the reality that this is already happening on your phone right now and it doesn't really materially change anything in the level of spying that was already possible.

Surveillance technology is very real and has been for decades. This article naively portrays this as some scandalous escalation when in reality it's a very incremental thing that delivers very new relevant capability to those doing the actual spying. A car is just a phone with wheels. You have probably have one in your pocket.

> Every bit of surveillance should be prevented

Good luck with that. I don't see a grand strategy to make that happen here. Just click bait headlines and people reacting to those.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#114
post #25

It was totally predictable, unfortunately. At least in the EU it’s quite illegal and even if a car maker slips something in, GDPR is always there so one can request a copy and have it deleted. Wish the regulation was even stricter though.

At the same time, EU mandates that new cars must have a system able to call help if it detects a crash with the driver not responding... And I suspect most manufacturers will argue that telemetry data are not PIIs until taken to court, so since they have to put a cellular connection anyway, why not use it?

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#115
post #14
post #3

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I do wonder about the tradeoff between convenience and the various negative externalities. Example: trains are better for the environment than planes. I need to get from Copenhagen to London for a wedding next month. The train schedule is roughly 20 hours long, starts at 6am, several transfers, and something in the range of 250USD. On Skyscanner there's flights from Copenhagen to London essentially every 20 minutes,…

Very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. No I am not a bot, I'm for reals.

My two cents with the EU tinted glasses. I completely agree with failures of governance that you mention. Especially the plane/train cost comparisons are infuriating. My personal view is though that the slippery slope of "security" -> "control" -> exploitation. I heard the phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely" in history class and time and time again, authoritarian systems have exploited the masses more effectively. All it takes is one bad ruler to turn thing around and syphon more than is "acceptable". Not that the western world is looking that great right now in terms of class divide, but the laundry at least is open for everyone to see. Freedom > Security for me.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#116
post #94
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also think about your use of AI in posts? It's such a tradeoff. On the one hand - no one wants to read, on the other no one wants you to submit AI content. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What evidence do you have to support your accusation? Emdash usage? You have an emdash in your post, do you use LLMs? Go look at my blog. Any LLM use there? I care about writing, I use LLMs to write code but never let it touch my prose, hence why I'm on a no ai webring. I'm very annoyed by your drive-by accusation.

not the accuser but I have seen even AI to drop its usage of the emdash... thankfully! (Whats wrong with brackets?)

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#117
post #75

> Some of it may even raise your insurance costs. > [...] > The information they harvest can include [...] whether you buckle your seatbelt, drive too fast or brake too hard. In a way this is good -- I want bad drivers to be incentivized to change their behavior. Just need to legislate away all the other, actually creepy stuff. Just .

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Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#118

It is fascinating that we still haven’t have a law that forbid the car company from automatically share the data. The car owner is buying a car, using computer to handle complicate hardware I understand, but at what point it make sense to share the data automatically without consent?

I think GDPR should already covers this. What I’m unsure about is whether accepting one of the items in the menu on purchase of the car then allows it again because of “giving consent”.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#119

Every corporation is trying to spy on you. Why wouldn't they? There is no real punishment, and large reward. As long as that is true, superficial regulations around tracking will always be circumvented or hollowed out. We need fundamental change in the way corporations interact with society, and in what is expected of them.

Those that can race tot he bottom and get away with it are usually the ones the have a better chance of survival. I don't like it one bit but that is a good summary of business nowadays.

Re: Cars collect a startling amount of data about you

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, with their ethnic minorities being about as different from the Han majority as the Czechs are different from the Slovaks. if China was to experience Western levels of diversity, inclusion, and cultural enrichment, then no amount of surveillance could possibly help prevent crimes, petty and otherwise. just look at the UK.

"then no amount of surveillance could possibly help prevent crimes, petty and otherwise. just look at the UK." I don't understand your argument. Are you suggesting surveillance cameras are somehow less effective in diverse societies? Are you claiming UK has as effective a surveillance network as China?

>Are you claiming UK has as effective a surveillance network as China?

a more effective one.

>Are you suggesting surveillance cameras are somehow less effective in diverse societies?

I'm suggesting that certain cultures are less risk and conflict averse, to put it in the most politically correct way possible, and are less disincentivized from committing crimes by the possibility of brief imprisonment.

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