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Cars are mobile spies

(17 posts)

Started 7 months ago by neddie
Latest reply from chdot

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cars data privacy harvesting spy spying tech gathering

neddie
Member

Modern cars are a privacy nightmare.

Car makers have been bragging about their cars being "computers on wheels" for years to promote their advanced features. However, the conversation about what driving a computer means for its occupants' privacy hasn’t really caught up. While we worried that our doorbells and watches that connect to the internet might be spying on us, car brands quietly entered the data business by turning their vehicles into powerful data-gobbling machines. Machines that, because of their all those brag-worthy bells and whistles, have an unmatched power to watch, listen, and collect information about what you do and where you go in your car.

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/

Posted 7 months ago #
neddie
Member

[Cars] can collect super intimate information about you -- from your medical information, your genetic information, to your "sex life" (seriously), to how fast you drive, where you drive, and what songs you play in your car -- in huge quantities

Posted 7 months ago #
neddie
Member

A surprising number (56%) also say they can share your information with the government or law enforcement in response to a “request.” Not a high bar court order, but something as easy as an “informal request.” Yikes -- that’s a very low bar!

Minority Report, anyone?

Posted 7 months ago #
Baldcyclist
Member

I'm not excusing cars, but practically everything you touch today is tracking you. Data is king.

Posted 7 months ago #
neddie
Member

I won't buy a internet connected fridge, bike, boiler, doorbell or washing machine for that reason. And if they stop making non-connected ones, forcing people to buy data-gathering ones, I'll make do with repairing old/existing ones.

I don't mind limiting any tracking to a PC at home and locking down a smartphone as much as possible (that you can at least leave at home if you don't want tracked). But when every device is doing it, you've essentially lost control and become trapped / at the mercy of big tech and potentially hostile governments / organisations (who we've seen will quite happily stop support after 2 years, disabling what you already paid for)

I know that shops are now also tracking people, as well as illegally capturing biometric data on children (via face recognition cameras on the self-service checkouts)

Posted 7 months ago #
stiltskin
Member

Hmmm. So your car company may say it is allowed to collect information on your sex life, Nissan in the USA, but I’m not aware of there being any explanation of how they might do this. As far as I can see this is largely about the wording of the terms & conditions.

Posted 7 months ago #
neddie
Member

You don't think "your car" could work out that you are travelling to a mistress or postman on the "way home from work" or "going to that meeting", based on social media profiles, locations, etc...?

The car might have images or sound recordings of prostitutes that are picked up, anything... ! Plus the connection to your mobile and the mobile of the mistress/prostitute/other-contact-of-choice while in the car may allow additional motion/sound/health/fitness-tracker data from the phone to be collected as well as all their social media profiles.

Naive to think otherwise

Posted 7 months ago #
stiltskin
Member

Sorry, but I think this is tinfoil hat stuff.

Posted 7 months ago #
Yodhrin
Member

Yeah sure tinfoil hats. Just like videogame DRM wasn't installing kernel-level rootkits on your PC a few years ago. Just like there totally wasn't a massive international "swapsies" agreement to allow agencies who're explicitly forbidden from spying on their own citizenry to do exactly that by simply having another Five Eyes agency do it for them in an explicit quid pro quo. Just like police weren't accessing Ring doorbell footage and audio without warrants because Amazon were just handing it over(they had a standard form and everything), and would hand over every bit of data you'd ever accumulated on the platform *including Alexa recordings supposedly only kept in anonymised format for "training purposes" of the AI* with even the broadest warrant.

You can keep sticking your head in the sand if you like, cheap devices and convenient features are a helluva drug afterall, but pretending concern about this stuff is crackpottery when the biggest privacy advocacy organisations in the world are the ones sounding the alarm is tantamount to sticking your fingers in your hears and humming really loud.

Posted 7 months ago #
chdot
Admin

Whatever ‘the facts’ re ‘surveillance’/data collection and use, I wonder whether there is really too much data for anyone to actually make much sense of it.

As we all know, Google sells info to advertisers, which is why people get bombarded with adverts for things they have just bought…

The ads I get fed on Twitter currently are for the sort of ‘interesting’ gadgets that in the olden days were collected into mini catalogues that came free with Sunday (newspaper) supplements.

Cars aren’t even ‘smart’ enough to use geodata to prevent speeding - or pass info to ‘the authorities’.

I don’t think I’m unduly complacent, maybe I have less to be concerned about than some people. I suppose I’m just being naive and will regret it when I’m prevented from leaving my house for more than 20 minutes or find all my money has disappeared to pay for things I never ordered…

I resent all the time I waste refusing cookies, but have no idea whether any business/organization actually complies with my ‘choices’.

Of course I’ve been brainwashed into believing that ‘the UK is different’ and backs the rule of law and protects citizens rights…

Just can’t bring myself to believe there is a deep state/international conspiracy/etc organised enough to have a ‘plan’.

The main conspiracy is around the ‘impossibility’ of stopping the mega-rich getting richer at everyone else’s expense.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/07/councils-schools-nhs-tax-labour-public-services-wealth-tax

Posted 7 months ago #
chdot
Admin

Not like the British State has much idea of how to run anything -

But maybe that’s a deliberate ‘bamboozle the masses’ tactic?

Posted 7 months ago #
neddie
Member

Why does an internet-connected washing machine need to know your date of birth? - because they do ask for it!

Cars are perfectly “smart” enough to use geodata to prevent speeding. It’s just that manufacturers won’t implement it until forced because it might spoil their customers’ fun. It might also make them realise that cars are pretty useless in cities when limited to actual safe speeds and prevented from being driven on pavements and so on

Posted 7 months ago #
Yodhrin
Member

@chdot the mistake people make is assuming there has to be a grand overarching conspiracy with a single architect in order for privacy to matter. If systems are open to abuse, eventually someone will abuse them even if the form of that abuse isn't the plot of a Hollywood thriller.

There doesn't have to be a conspiracy for some cop to put in an unjustifiably broad warrant(good luck proving that after the fact and getting recompense/justice) to Amazon and having someone listening to your private conversations, maybe even getting access to information that isn't illegal but might be "compromising" in some social or professional way they can hold over you. Or you know, just listening to you have sex - some people are into that, personally I'd be a bit unnerved by the idea. Period tracking apps being used against women who've had miscarriages in anti-abortion US states, health tracking apps and supermarkets sharing data with medical insurance companies(hope you didn't buy too much junk food/miss too many days of cardio just before your renewal comes up...), creeps in positions of authority using overly-broad anti-terror laws to access location data(and right now you're imagining some Jason Bourne OTT nonsense and dismissing it out of hand, but recall that there was a period not that long ago when *local council officers* were able to access UK anti-terror systems to a degree) - the ways in which people's data can be gathered, shared without their knowledge, and potentially used against them are manifold but whether because they don't understand the scope of the issue or it's just easier to ignore the problem than confront it most people seem to be defaulting to wilful complacency.

Posted 7 months ago #
neddie
Member

I never said anything about any government/state/international conspiracy. This is about big tech companies collecting intrusive and more than necessary data on individuals. Data that is then generally used for advertising, marketing and perpetuating consumerism. Data that can also be used by big tech to profile individuals which may prejudice and discriminate (in ways that are not obvious) when people apply for jobs, bank accounts, insurance, whatever. For example, black people might be served up job adverts for more menial tasks compared to their peers. Literally racism and digital colonialism all rolled into one.

By its very nature, profiling pigeonholes people, and biases in the system then become self-fulfilling prophecies

But as Yodhrin points out, data can also fall into the “wrong hands” eg governments, police etc

Posted 7 months ago #
MediumDave
Member

Indeed the government try and set conditions to ensure that useful data will fall into their hands:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/britain-admits-defeat-in-online-safety-bill-encryption

Don't believe that this wheeze was ever about nonces. Now that encryption is everywhere various 3 letter agencies (and any other authority listed in RIPA for that matter) were doubtless missing their ready access to all that delicious SIGINT...

Posted 7 months ago #
neddie
Member

The trouble with banning encryption is that anyone can do encryption. Even if it’s just giving out page numbers and word count from the top of the page of a book (the key) which both parties have a copy of. School boy stuff

Posted 7 months ago #
chdot
Admin

“I never said anything about any government/state/international conspiracy. This is about big tech companies collecting intrusive and more than necessary data on individuals. Data that is then generally used for advertising, marketing and perpetuating consumerism. Data that can also be used by big tech to profile individuals which may prejudice and discriminate (in ways that are not obvious)…”

All true.

The irony being that many who see ‘conspiracies everywhere’ seem to imagine it’s all people like Bill Gates fronting some opaque organisation that is a new form of ‘world government’ and ignoring the fact that a lot of it is about people - often NOT working together - wanting even more than they already have!

List will include people that most of the world’s population have never heard of plus heads of oil states, Musk,Putin, Bezos etc.

Collectively they may well destroy the planet and get minimal personal benefits after all.

Posted 7 months ago #

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