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I'm not clear on what the article is arguing for/against with regards to just cars. Yes, we need solid legislation to make these things both secure and to atte

by taeric 3y ago

I'm not clear on what the article is arguing for/against with regards to just cars. Yes, we need solid legislation to make these things both secure and to attempt to control their use. But, this is not necessarily unique to cars? Specifically, phones can almost certainly record all of the stuff we are talking about here, too. Security cameras around shopping places probably record and keep it on file for a time. Your ISP can probably tell more about you than you'd care to know about. Your credit cards can see your purchase histories. What is it that makes cars particularly worse?

AlexandrB 3y ago
Car software seems to be lacking all of the explicit and implicit permissions systems that phones have. Can't disable location services, can't put the car in "airplane mode", and the on/off state of the electronics is unclear because there's always ample power available from the large car battery. Sure these levers could be a fig leaf that does nothing on phones, but some (e.g. airplane mode) are there for regulatory/safety reasons so you can be fairly confident they do what they claim. The other issue is that a remote exploit of a moving car is potentially much more dangerous than remote exploit of a phone. Worst case with a phone is a massive breach of personal data. Worst case with a car is death.
- taeric 3y ago
  Airplane mode is an odd one to me. It only means that the cell receiver is turned off now, right? Wifi and bluetooth are more than welcome to stay on. So, what exactly is it claiming? (Indeed, it is not uncommon to not remember to turn on airplane mode, such that I honestly don't know what it does.) But my point was more for "privacy" reasons. I confess many of the cars with cameras on them probably are worth a bit more looking at specifically. I'd be fine with a "not really allowed to record" things from the outside cameras. Dashcams would need a carve out, I suppose? (And really, any sensor reading that can go to a "blackbox" device is probably ok? That said, physical access is probably best required for those.) I fully agree on the concerns of exploits. Remote control of a car is where my main worry of these would be. Exploits of your phone are probably already pretty scary with passkeys and other similar things growing in use.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - stagger87 3y ago
    Incorrect, you are disabling RF transmissions when you go into airplane mode. GPS usually stays on, since it's receive only.
    - taeric 3y ago
      What RF transmissions, though? I literally just got off a plane where I had in flight wifi. And I was using my bluetooth headphones. Have been doing this for a while, now. So, unless that is somehow magically working without RF transmissions, than the fact that my phone had airplane mode on feels less comprehensive than you are implying.
      - AlexandrB 3y ago
        Not sure about Android, but in iOS you can be in Airplane mode and then explicitly turn Wifi/Bluetooth back on. But I believe the default behavior is for Airplane mode to disable all of them. Edit: It is unfortunate that the iOS Control Center toggles for WiFi/Bluetooth no longer turn the radios off but just prevent "association". AFAIK you can still turn these radios off in "Settings", but it's pretty misleading UI.
        taeric 3y ago
        My understanding is that it is more that the old behavior was for it to turn off things. However, the world moved pretty quickly so that majority cases were such that that just doesn't make sense as the default anymore. Not that there aren't some problems here, of course. My point was more amusement that I doubt I could tell you exactly what "airplane mode" actually does, now. On topic for this article, my question is what makes cars more of a privacy nightmare than the phones and basically every other connection that we have? Note that I'm not trying to say there is no nightmare, per se. I just don't know that I buy the car being a prime mover on that. Now, I will gladly bold and underline the security/safety concerns in cars getting connected. That, I 100% agree with.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Yes, all of those things also are bad and need to me addressed; that doesn't make cars less of a problem. But of the things you've listed, I would tend to say that only phones are as invasive as cars, and there are reasonable mitigations for that. Frankly, if there were a LineageOS for cars I'd be much happier. (Edit) Actually, come to think of it the lack of reasonable solutions is a lot of the difference. I can use cash or a vpn, but I still have to drive to get places.
- taeric 3y ago
  To be clear, my criticism is why do folks think the car, itself, is the "privacy nightmare?" If I was to label anything as a privacy nightmare in the world today, it would almost certainly be the entirety of finance, not my car. Even if my car does start recording all of this. Information about people is something i think deserves a lot of legislation. And I'd expect it to be very cross cutting. I see very little advantage of special casing cars/phones/whatever.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    I honestly can't tell if we're agreeing or disagreeing at this point. I agree that all of those things are problems and I would welcome some reasonable legislation to protect people's privacy regardless of the particular vector. But none of that makes cars not a privacy nightmare, regardless of it not being unique to them.
    - taeric 3y ago
      Yeah, I suspect it sounded like I was asserting that cars are not sources of privacy concerns. My post was not really trying to assert that. I'm only saying that cars are not even close to the worst place that privacy is lost. Your ISP and the general financial institutions know far more about you than the car can help reveal. (Heck, your purchase history alone is probably more than enough to get a good idea of where and how you have traveled throughout the day.) To that end, I can fully get behind efforts to protect how information about people is used and stored. I don't know why "in cars" is particularly important to that discussion. Outside of the fact that cars need to be added to the same list of sources that other items are on. So, yeah, outside of my not seeing cars as a nightmare, we probably fully agree. I don't know what makes the car a nightmare moreso than most anything else out there.

by taeric 3y ago

AlexandrB 3y ago

Car software seems to be lacking all of the explicit and implicit permissions systems that phones have. Can't disable location services, can't put the car in "airplane mode", and the on/off state of the electronics is unclear because there's always ample power available from the large car battery. Sure these levers could be a fig leaf that does nothing on phones, but some (e.g. airplane mode) are there for regulatory/safety reasons so you can be fairly confident they do what they claim. The other issue is that a remote exploit of a moving car is potentially much more dangerous than remote exploit of a phone. Worst case with a phone is a massive breach of personal data. Worst case with a car is death.

taeric 3y ago
Airplane mode is an odd one to me. It only means that the cell receiver is turned off now, right? Wifi and bluetooth are more than welcome to stay on. So, what exactly is it claiming? (Indeed, it is not uncommon to not remember to turn on airplane mode, such that I honestly don't know what it does.) But my point was more for "privacy" reasons. I confess many of the cars with cameras on them probably are worth a bit more looking at specifically. I'd be fine with a "not really allowed to record" things from the outside cameras. Dashcams would need a carve out, I suppose? (And really, any sensor reading that can go to a "blackbox" device is probably ok? That said, physical access is probably best required for those.) I fully agree on the concerns of exploits. Remote control of a car is where my main worry of these would be. Exploits of your phone are probably already pretty scary with passkeys and other similar things growing in use.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- stagger87 3y ago
  Incorrect, you are disabling RF transmissions when you go into airplane mode. GPS usually stays on, since it's receive only.
  - taeric 3y ago
    What RF transmissions, though? I literally just got off a plane where I had in flight wifi. And I was using my bluetooth headphones. Have been doing this for a while, now. So, unless that is somehow magically working without RF transmissions, than the fact that my phone had airplane mode on feels less comprehensive than you are implying.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      Not sure about Android, but in iOS you can be in Airplane mode and then explicitly turn Wifi/Bluetooth back on. But I believe the default behavior is for Airplane mode to disable all of them. Edit: It is unfortunate that the iOS Control Center toggles for WiFi/Bluetooth no longer turn the radios off but just prevent "association". AFAIK you can still turn these radios off in "Settings", but it's pretty misleading UI.
      - taeric 3y ago
        My understanding is that it is more that the old behavior was for it to turn off things. However, the world moved pretty quickly so that majority cases were such that that just doesn't make sense as the default anymore. Not that there aren't some problems here, of course. My point was more amusement that I doubt I could tell you exactly what "airplane mode" actually does, now. On topic for this article, my question is what makes cars more of a privacy nightmare than the phones and basically every other connection that we have? Note that I'm not trying to say there is no nightmare, per se. I just don't know that I buy the car being a prime mover on that. Now, I will gladly bold and underline the security/safety concerns in cars getting connected. That, I 100% agree with.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

Yes, all of those things also are bad and need to me addressed; that doesn't make cars less of a problem. But of the things you've listed, I would tend to say that only phones are as invasive as cars, and there are reasonable mitigations for that. Frankly, if there were a LineageOS for cars I'd be much happier. (Edit) Actually, come to think of it the lack of reasonable solutions is a lot of the difference. I can use cash or a vpn, but I still have to drive to get places.

taeric 3y ago
To be clear, my criticism is why do folks think the car, itself, is the "privacy nightmare?" If I was to label anything as a privacy nightmare in the world today, it would almost certainly be the entirety of finance, not my car. Even if my car does start recording all of this. Information about people is something i think deserves a lot of legislation. And I'd expect it to be very cross cutting. I see very little advantage of special casing cars/phones/whatever.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  I honestly can't tell if we're agreeing or disagreeing at this point. I agree that all of those things are problems and I would welcome some reasonable legislation to protect people's privacy regardless of the particular vector. But none of that makes cars not a privacy nightmare, regardless of it not being unique to them.
  - taeric 3y ago
    Yeah, I suspect it sounded like I was asserting that cars are not sources of privacy concerns. My post was not really trying to assert that. I'm only saying that cars are not even close to the worst place that privacy is lost. Your ISP and the general financial institutions know far more about you than the car can help reveal. (Heck, your purchase history alone is probably more than enough to get a good idea of where and how you have traveled throughout the day.) To that end, I can fully get behind efforts to protect how information about people is used and stored. I don't know why "in cars" is particularly important to that discussion. Outside of the fact that cars need to be added to the same list of sources that other items are on. So, yeah, outside of my not seeing cars as a nightmare, we probably fully agree. I don't know what makes the car a nightmare moreso than most anything else out there.