3 ms·
Very much not the same thing. Your car can't interact with the cars of others without physical contact, and when it does interact, via a crash or otherwise, it
by jolmg 7y ago
Very much not the same thing. Your car can't interact with the cars of others without physical contact, and when it does interact, via a crash or otherwise, it would be very obvious to anyone. Even if you were constantly watching the traffic of your phone and other devices, you'll probably miss malicious packets that are sent among the thousands of packets each device sends per minute. It's also not as obvious to recognize what constitutes malicious behavior in your internet device compared to your car.
Also, the operation of the car is simple enough that you can take it to a mechanic for an inspection and they can reliably inspect everything that the car does. There are no hidden behaviors under complex conditions, like crashing into others when there is a full moon or the sky is cloudy. Your devices can do that. If you bring me your phone/laptop/etc and ask me if it's going to send malicious packets to someone somewhen, I can't reliably tell you that it won't. I'm not sure that even if you gathered all software and electronics engineers that supposedly were involved in the construction of your device, they'd be able to provide a reliable answer. I can tell you that it seems like it wouldn't based on initialization files and services, but I can't tell if the function is hidden somehow, like obfuscated in the machine code of the kernel or something. Finding that would require auditing all assembly code running on the machine, which would not be a task for mortals.
- betaby 7y agoI'm liable if my car spontaneously catches fire while parked. Car is just an analogy.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jolmg 7y agoWhat I'm saying is that it's very simple to inspect a car and make sure it's not going to spontaneously catch fire while parked. You can get a reliable answer in a day from a mechanic. You can't get a reliable answer on whether a computing device is programmed to send malicious packets. There's too much code, most is compiled, there's too many ways to hide it. You can probably gather the smartest people in the world and leave them to die of old age before they can arrive at a reliable answer.
- betaby 7y agoWe are in the area of probability in both cases. Oftentimes is obvious if PC/device is infected. Sometimes is really hard to find out, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
- jolmg 7y agoThe question is whether you feel good enough about that probability to be held liable if the malicious code was hidden good enough. Also, some cases might be obvious on Windows PCs, but I don't think that's necessarily the case with phones. Take note that websites can also send malicious packets. When you load a webpage, the code is downloaded and immediately executed. Are you OK with being held liable for visiting a webpage that decided to send malicious packets?
- betaby 7y agoLiability boundary is an important question. There is no simple answer. Couple of years back owner of the abandoned building was declared liable of the death of the kid who entered to the fenced building despite all the signs no trespassing and so on. Neither your example nor mine negates that there should liability for various voluntarily and involuntarily acts, own or third party.
- jolmg 7y ago> Couple of years back owner of the abandoned building was declared liable of the death of the kid who entered to the fenced building despite all the signs no trespassing and so on. Honestly, that doesn't sound right. I hope I'm misjudging because of lack of details.
- Gibbon1 7y agoIn the the US the term is attractive nuisance. It's not a new thing either, case law in the US dates back to the 1870's.