- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
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And when all the used cars are gone and I’m forced to buy one of these I’ll promptly be destroying the radio transmitters and everything related to this surveillance.
Straight to jail.
Right away.
Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 local currency units.
Is it actually illegal or is that a joke?
the “surveillance” seems to happen on the car locally. Kind of an expansion of current driver attention systems to include impairment detection.
It’ll be like the 70s in the US again. Rip out all the bullshit smog stuff and put on a new carb. Because a v8 mustang shouldn’t be making 130hp.
Why are govts like this suddenly? All in a arms race against privacy?
This was mandated by the 2021 infrastructure bill. I was hoping it got scrapped but apparently not.
The commodification of life itself.
Once you understand that we are just livestock to those in charge, a lot of their behavior starts to make more sense.
Control, why else?
There are valid concerns about crazy surveillance bills, but this specific one is overreaction.
Basically the 2021 infrastructure bill asks NHTSA to come with a standard to detect impaired driving (it doesn’t say how it should be implemented, the camera watching us is author’s imagination how it would be implemented) and if there is no technology available then they should publish a yearly report describing current state of things.
Because of the yearly report requirement I’ve been reading similar article saying that this will happen in 2026. That’s how I learned about first.
You can find the reports here: https://www.nhtsa.gov/reports-to-congress
I think those overreacting articles are doing disservice because they distract us from actually dangerous things like for example bills like the one trying to incorporate age verification into OS requiring for example Microsoft verifying our identity before we can use their OS.
Not many people realized that bill like this already sneaked and was signed into law in California for example. It mandates this starting 2027.
Because the people vote for such governments.
Well in part it’s just being perceived that way. The car will decide if you’re drunk somehow becomes government surveillance. The App Store will ask for proof of age: government surveillance. And so on.
I’m not saying that this is a false interpretation but certainly it’s leaned on extremely hard in the way people report on and talk about these things. Hence why you get the sense that everyone everywhere is suddenly completely about government surveillance.
I think we could have a whole conversation about drunk driving and the efficacy and fairness of this kind of measure without even cracking the lid on government surveillance. But no one wants that. Nope, if it isn’t a direct descent straight into Fascism, it doesn’t get clicked on.
It’s almost like dozens of major companies are going on a blitz of heavy public surveillance projects that are very publicly selling that data directly to the government… So when yet another of those companies already doing those things Congress up with a new surveillance method, people can do the math
They will really do anything before investing in public transit
Automobile-centric infrastructure was such a colossal societal fuck-up.
Bad for personal health, physical safety, household finances, and the environment. Automobiles are not a symbol of freedom, they are a symbol of dependence.
While I agree about automobile centric structure, when rural living automobiles are absolutely the ticket to freedom. It’s a shame more populace areas get designed around maintaining dependence on cars.
I think the point is choice. Even those living in suburban and urban areas have a difficult time opting out of car-dependence.
If you choose to live rural, I would say that automobiles are part and parcel to that decision. It’s just the nature of low population density.
Except for the thousands of years that humanity was able to exist in low population density towns and villages completely fine without the need for personal vehicles.
That statement just isn’t true in the slightest. It’s only part of rural living because that’s how it has been designed in roughly the last century of human society.
There is no materially restrictive reason it has to be this way. It is entirely a problem that is artificially created.
Except for the thousands of years that humanity was able to exist in low population density towns and villages completely fine without the need for personal vehicles.
Should we go back to the horse and buggy?
Love the quote, not the context. It’s a legitimate question. We got ride of horses in rural areas due to cars. In North America and Canada in particular the distances are so vast that rural public transportation is not really feasible
It’s only a ticket to freedom because rural living is structured like ass. It’s a bandaid on a bigger, festering issue of poor city planning.
This is true in many cases, but for very rural living (eg people living on farms) there’s not much you can do about car-centric design
Except this is entirely false of a claim. Human society worked for thousands of years before the car. European countries prove it is possible as well with their rural public transit services. It is absolutely not a necessity. There is no reason to design our cities and towns around personal vehicles being the primary method of transportation.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that car centric urban design is a bad thing. Truly, I do. But in very rural places in North America, you either need a car or a horse and buggy, or something, and the car seems like an obvious upgrade. Just because they can do public transit in rural areas in Europe does not mean we can do it here. Because the size comparisons aren’t even close. European countries with good rural transportation are dealing with significantly less landmass than North American rural communities are.
To put things in perspective, Denmark is 42,947km2, and Canada is 9,984,670 km2. That means that you could fit almost 232 and a half Denmarks in Canada. Despite this about half of the population of Canada in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, which is only 1,150 km-long, and about 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border. That means that the vast majority of Canada is totally rural, and there are often vast distances between towns and First Nations. It is simply not economically feasible to build rail lines to connect all these places, let along sending out regular train services to these places.
To really hammer the point home, consider Nunavut, a territory in Canada. It is 2,093,190 km2. For perspective, Ukraine (the second-largest country in Europe after Russia) is 603,549km2. That means you could almost put three and a half Ukraine’s in Nunavut (and again, Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe!). And Nunavut is extremely rural, with a population of 36,858 (and Ukraine has 32283000 people, meaning that Nunavut has 875.87 times fewer people than Ukraine). The largest population centre in Nunavut is Iqaluit, which has only 7,429 people.
So putting aside, for a second, the extreme logistical challenges with creating railways in Nunavut (due to terrain, ice, etc), how can we possibly build public transit to connect the entire territory? When we are dealing with places this vast, and this rural, we simply not economically feasible to build rural public transit. Even reality wealthy countries like Canada cannot afford to fund megaprojects like that. And again, this is just Nunavut, 1 of 13 provinces / territories. When you look at the entirety of Canada, it is simply not realistic to have rural public transit servicing the entire country. I’m sure it’s possible in small countries like Denmark, but not here.
But that doesn’t change the fact that, within cities at least, we should of course do our best to get rid of car centric design.
Only because we have made society this way. There is ZERO material necessities that stipulate that it must be this way. None, absolutely nadda.
Other countries have done it. The size argument is bullshit, China is able to do it and has equivalent landmass. No excuses. The entire point of trains was to traverse these vast expanses. Trains are what drove the Westward expansion of American society. So arguing that trains can’t handle those distances is absurd.
Also, public transit is more than just trains, it’s also walkability and bus services. Cars can exist in society without them being the primary method of transportation.
“Economically feasible” is a bullshit excuse because we create the economy. If the economy can’t meet the needs of people then the economy is what needs to change, not force people to go without BASIC SERVICES. Money is not a materially limiting factor.
Humanity existed without cars (or a horse and buggy since someone made that flippant response) for hundreds of years and we absolutely can restructure our societies to go back to being pedestrian centric in both urban AND rural locations. It is entirely possible and there is no legitimate excuse not to. Economically feasible as stated is not a legitimate excuse.
Except there is absolutely no reason it has to be like that in rural areas. Period. At all. Even a little. Look at China (or if you still believe the NED puts out legitimate stories, Denmark or Sweden or Norway) which has public transit to nearly all rural areas at least a couple times a week, and inter-village public transit in pretty much all villages that have more than a dozen people.
Busses are more efficient than independent vehicle ownership in all settings. All of them.
Yup, drunkards in a tram are annoying but they almost never kill people and cause tens of thousands in damage.
Reminder that this requires all vehicles be SOLD with the tech. It says nothing about what happens to it after purchase.
Just pull the fuse for the onstar radio. It can log all it wants locally.
They prevented that from working years ago. Now it’s usually on a critical circuit that you can’t just disable.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Every technical hurdle they put up, is defeatable.
Every time they make the wall higher, we make the ladder longer.
There will come a time where there will be a privacy-conscious choice and that might require flashing the infotainment system.
We’re getting closer to one of Cory Doctrows stories. I can’t find a direct link, but its on this page under the name “Plausible Deniability”
Thanks for sharing this, the fiction is astoundingly horrifying yet vital in timeliness.
My bolt euv doesn’t transmit after I pulled the fuse.
Happy for you, but onstar shares the infotainment circuit on my vehicle. The only way to disable it is to dismantle the dash, remove the whole infotainment unit, and remove the circuit board for onstar. Which likely has some warranty implications, as well.
Hope to get to it soon, but what a hassle.
If there’s enough demand, I imagine that there will be shops that will do it without individuals having to research it.
If the manufacturer designs it so that I have to disassemble the entire engine just to replace the spark plugs, I’m still going to be irritated even if I can just pay some people a ton of money to replace them for me.
I mean, yeah, just saying that if lots of people want it done, it’s probably gonna be more-efficient to take that route. Like tinting windows or other popular aftermarket modifications.
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I’m trying to figure out of this is just the distracted driving safety feature that’s been on every car I’ve bought in the last 6 years. If so it can be disabled and really isn’t that big of a deal when it’s enabled. Just sends you an alert when it detects you weaving within the lane a little too much. I can’t help but think this article might be a little sensationalistic.
These things aren’t going to just give you an alert. They’re going to disable the car if it thinks you’re impaired.
The car manufacturers even warned the government about false positives that they can’t prevent and Congress moved ahead anyway.
The surveillance-in-a-car framing sounds dramatic until you realize that most new vehicles from Subaru, General Motors, Ford, and several European brands already ship with driver monitoring systems built in.
Your link actually answers my question. They’re already in most cars, mine included. The data isn’t being transmitted to the government. The manufacturer would be able to access it, sure, but that’s nothing now. It also doesn’t mean that every car is going to have eye monitoring equipment - most of the cars that already have it don’t.
Look I’m not saying I support this law but the articles posted here are very sensationalistic.
Removing “safety features” from a car is illegal, btw
And when they call the infotanmint crap a “safety feature” and no one lynched a lawmaker over it we know that as a people we have given up.
Unjust laws are not to be followed.
I am never buying a car built after 2016
Why 2016 specifically?
It depends on the make but that’s when I feel cars tipped the scale to becoming appliances
2018 makes more sense, that’s when backup cameras were mandatory so since they were putting in a screen manufacturers made every car have an ‘infotainment’ center and with all of that processing power comes logging and other privacy invading features.
Really I don’t go past 2008 myself. That was a cliff car manufactures went off after the sub prime mortgage fun fun time.
Naaaaah, my 2016 RAV4 Hybrid is balling. Back up camera, 360 sensors, remote start, heated seats, medium screen with buttons and knobs instead of touch, push start, stick shift, and the best part: no wifi on-board (through my phone only). Cars peaked right here.
I have a 2016 outback. No android auto… But I’m in the same boat. Backup camera. Sensors self driving no wifi no forced updates. Etc.
I don’t need anything more.
Praying for our cars to survive at least another 15 years, bud 🙏
I daily a 1985, how boned do you think I am?
Yeah agreed. One of the great things about the outback is there’s a DIY group around it. So there’s a lot of YouTube videos out there on car maintenance and upgrades etc So that kind of where I’m at with it these days too
Oh, your going to fix that yourself? Or pay someone to do it?
Hm. Well I certainly agree that privacy invasive stuff is absolutely unwelcome but I’m also a pretty big fan of backup cameras. I bought a 2023 and while it does have the “infotainment” and backup can, outside of that it’s all quite dum and everything outside of like bluetooth paring and general infotainment stuff is all physical buttons.
So really my point is while it is unusual, even brand new vehicles can manage to avoid the privacy nightmare.
Oh yeah, I like backup cameras too and they’re probably saving a lot of people from injury or death. Very much worth requiring, IMO.
It’s just the fact that many of these companies saw the opportunity to monetize the hardware that regulations were forcing them to install so we started seeing a lot more “data harvesting”.
If you were going to pick a year to avoid, 2018 makes logical sense from that perspective.
We need to scrap the entire US government and start over.
How about limiting the insanely bright headlights first?
Is it the bright headlights or the abundance of trucks raised so high that the headlights beam directly into your eyeballs…
Both. It’s both.
The day the vehicle I paid for doesn’t work because a goddamn sensor thinks I’m not fit to drive is the day I break my foot off in someone’s ass.
Fuck this dystopian shit show we’re creating for ourselves.
Vote better.
And ride a bike
I think it’s better to wait for the collapse, then we can try to build everything as normal without capitalism. But I’m afraid that it will be again - I wanted the best, but it turned out as always.
“I dont want a chinese car because it would just spy on me”
I only like it when the us government and completely unregulated corporations spy on me. It’s the American way
2027, year of Linux car, or bicycle.
A linux bicycle sounds like a cool project! I’ve been wanting to add a mini a pc to my bike, to track trips and display important navigational information, but to connect to my local home server rather than some black box service.
What the fuck? When did Congress pass this, and why wasn’t there a huge public outcry against it?
2021
https://www.gadgetreview.com/federal-surveillance-tech-becomes-mandatory-in-new-cars-by-2027
Can we post the original sources and not middle men?
It’s 1984 and no one cares
I do believe a lot of people care it’s just the ones that care have no power to do anything about it because the ones that have power are making too much money off of us not being able to do anything about it
Most people are pathetic weaklings to do something, as I noticed, only americans can somehow resist this fascism along with some other peoples, and the rest of the world is ready to accept any dystopia, and believe in the fairy tales that are told to them, justifying themselves: what could I change?
Every technology is eventually used against you by the state
It’s so difficult to get excited about new tech anymore.
Big tech is the problem. Indie tech is still cool as shit.
The used car market looks mighty good right about now.
