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> Calling the police on security researchers...I honestly cannot believe this is considered acceptable behavior. But putting many lives in danger is considered

> Calling the police on security researchers...I honestly cannot believe this is considered acceptable behavior. But putting many lives in danger is considered acceptable behavior by security researchers? Does it actually matter that it was security researchers? Do security researchers working on banking software need to steal a million dollars in order to prove that they've found an issue? Would calling the police be acceptable in that situation? Actual outrage is acceptable when there's actual danger. Calling the cops on a loud neighbor might not be acceptable, but calling the cops on a neighbor firing a gun in the general direction of your house certainly would be.

geofft 11y ago
> But putting many lives in danger is considered acceptable behavior by security researchers? We don't know, for sure, what happened. There might be some creative license in the journalism. There might be some omission of them talking to authorities (even if someone called the highway patrol and they said "oh, we don't know about this," all it proves is there's bureaucracy at the highway patrol). etc. Calling the cops is invoking a powerful and hard-to-control force. Unless you think that the cops and the legal system are capable of talking to people fairly and understanding security research and making sense of tech journalism and reaching a reliably just outcome, there are better ways to exert your outrage. For instance, the researchers are very well known in the security community. They're not rogues or mobsters or fugitives. If they recklessly endangered lives, we can pressure them to turn themselves in to the legal system. I happen to have more faith in the ability of the hacker community to fairly figure out what happened than the legal system to fairly figure out what happened. If I shouldn't, then we have a serious problem as a community.
- zaitcev 11y ago
  After Alice Goffman, a publication with this kind of journalist involvement has to be seen with a certain suspicion.
- edanm 11y ago
  Your post basically boils down to: 1. You don't trust the police/legal system. 2. You trust our own community more. Not saying I agree or disagree, but there are a LOT of people who would really disagree with this, and a lot more who would think that someone saying "why involved the actual people the public has chosen to deal with this, we can deal with it ourselves" would be very wrong.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    It's hard to imagine how anyone familiar with any part of the police/legal system's pattern of clueless, ham-handed, hierarchy-ridden interaction with technology over the last 30 years could find justification to continue extending them trust.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      So what are we supposed to do instead? Rely on self policing by the individuals or the industry? The the police or judicial system is off track, you attempt to correct them, not ignore them and route around them. That may unfortunately end up with injustice for some while the correction is ongoing, but that's the normal state. There's always correction that needs to happen, and there's always injustice, that's the normal state, the point is to try to minimize the injustice as much as possible. Ignoring the built in mechanisms for steering the government in the right direction doesn't yield a better situation in the end.
      - marssaxman 11y ago
        If an angry bear is terrorizing your campground, then yes, call fish & wildlife so they can shoot it with a tranq dart and haul it off somewhere safe. In the meantime, though, do you go about your life as though nothing is wrong? Hell no, you get the fuck away from the angry bear! And tossing chocolate bars into your neighbor's campsite in hopes that the angry bear will wreck their stuff is just not cool.
        kbenson 11y ago
- laumars 11y ago
  If there's been journalistic licence employed then they should be able to demonstrate that to the authorities since the entire footage was recorded. So there isn't an issue. It also should be noted (since nobody else has raised this point) that some people within the police force likely read Wired anyway. So complaining about the police involvement for a piece posted to a popular news site is like moaning that your boss reads your Twitter feed.
- kbenson 11y ago
  If only there was some agency or agencies responsible for investigating possible illegal activity, we could have contacted them instead, and then they could investigate the matter with the input of the judicial system, interview the people involved, and come to the appropriate response.
facetube 11y ago
Slowing down and eventually driving off on to a grass shoulder wouldn't even crack the bottom 1% of crazy shit I've seen people do on highways, on purpose. IMO, the danger to the public caused by the researchers somewhat-controlled exploit is utterly dwarfed by the danger Jeep/uConnect is causing by directly connecting its cars to the internet. If the researchers are successful in getting car manufacturers to remove features like this entirely, the net result will ultimately save lives.
- pyre 11y ago
  > Slowing down and eventually driving off on to a grass shoulder wouldn't even crack the bottom 1% of crazy shit I've seen people do on highways, on purpose. The article claims that the transmission was cut on a section of the freeway with no shoulder, so I'm curious how being stuck in the middle of the freeway translates to "slowing down and eventually driving off onto a grass shoulder." (And just because something "isn't the craziest thing I've seen" doesn't mean it isn't dangerous)
  - facetube 11y ago
    Grass shoulder: http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/IMG_0724-1024x768.jpg http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/IMG_0724-102... I agree that it probably presented some level of danger to the public, but I maintain that (i) the added danger was small relative to the normal everyday danger of driving with humans; and (ii) the media exposure they've achieved by doing this on a public road has the potential to pressure Chrysler to remove tens of thousands of hazards (read: vulnerable Jeep Cherokees) from the road, which could ultimately reduce danger and save lives. It's not clear-cut when you're dealing with a vendor who chooses to ignore and/or litigate upon an initial disclosure instead of fix their product.
    - pyre 11y ago
      > the danger was small relative to the normal everyday danger of driving with humans The danger of a car having its transmission crap out on the freeway is non-zero, yes. On the other hand, they explicitly cut a vehicle's transmission on the freeway. The danger for the people in the immediate area of this vehicle was increased because the situation (a cut transmission) went from "maybe it will happen" to "it is definitely happening." At that point, whether or not an accident happened depended entirely on the skill and attention of the drivers around this vehicle something completely out of the control of the researchers.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

geofft 11y ago

> But putting many lives in danger is considered acceptable behavior by security researchers? We don't know, for sure, what happened. There might be some creative license in the journalism. There might be some omission of them talking to authorities (even if someone called the highway patrol and they said "oh, we don't know about this," all it proves is there's bureaucracy at the highway patrol). etc. Calling the cops is invoking a powerful and hard-to-control force. Unless you think that the cops and the legal system are capable of talking to people fairly and understanding security research and making sense of tech journalism and reaching a reliably just outcome, there are better ways to exert your outrage. For instance, the researchers are very well known in the security community. They're not rogues or mobsters or fugitives. If they recklessly endangered lives, we can pressure them to turn themselves in to the legal system. I happen to have more faith in the ability of the hacker community to fairly figure out what happened than the legal system to fairly figure out what happened. If I shouldn't, then we have a serious problem as a community.

zaitcev 11y ago
After Alice Goffman, a publication with this kind of journalist involvement has to be seen with a certain suspicion.
edanm 11y ago
Your post basically boils down to: 1. You don't trust the police/legal system. 2. You trust our own community more. Not saying I agree or disagree, but there are a LOT of people who would really disagree with this, and a lot more who would think that someone saying "why involved the actual people the public has chosen to deal with this, we can deal with it ourselves" would be very wrong.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  It's hard to imagine how anyone familiar with any part of the police/legal system's pattern of clueless, ham-handed, hierarchy-ridden interaction with technology over the last 30 years could find justification to continue extending them trust.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    So what are we supposed to do instead? Rely on self policing by the individuals or the industry? The the police or judicial system is off track, you attempt to correct them, not ignore them and route around them. That may unfortunately end up with injustice for some while the correction is ongoing, but that's the normal state. There's always correction that needs to happen, and there's always injustice, that's the normal state, the point is to try to minimize the injustice as much as possible. Ignoring the built in mechanisms for steering the government in the right direction doesn't yield a better situation in the end.
    - marssaxman 11y ago
      If an angry bear is terrorizing your campground, then yes, call fish & wildlife so they can shoot it with a tranq dart and haul it off somewhere safe. In the meantime, though, do you go about your life as though nothing is wrong? Hell no, you get the fuck away from the angry bear! And tossing chocolate bars into your neighbor's campsite in hopes that the angry bear will wreck their stuff is just not cool.
      - kbenson 11y ago
laumars 11y ago
If there's been journalistic licence employed then they should be able to demonstrate that to the authorities since the entire footage was recorded. So there isn't an issue. It also should be noted (since nobody else has raised this point) that some people within the police force likely read Wired anyway. So complaining about the police involvement for a piece posted to a popular news site is like moaning that your boss reads your Twitter feed.
kbenson 11y ago
If only there was some agency or agencies responsible for investigating possible illegal activity, we could have contacted them instead, and then they could investigate the matter with the input of the judicial system, interview the people involved, and come to the appropriate response.

facetube 11y ago

Slowing down and eventually driving off on to a grass shoulder wouldn't even crack the bottom 1% of crazy shit I've seen people do on highways, on purpose. IMO, the danger to the public caused by the researchers somewhat-controlled exploit is utterly dwarfed by the danger Jeep/uConnect is causing by directly connecting its cars to the internet. If the researchers are successful in getting car manufacturers to remove features like this entirely, the net result will ultimately save lives.

pyre 11y ago
> Slowing down and eventually driving off on to a grass shoulder wouldn't even crack the bottom 1% of crazy shit I've seen people do on highways, on purpose. The article claims that the transmission was cut on a section of the freeway with no shoulder, so I'm curious how being stuck in the middle of the freeway translates to "slowing down and eventually driving off onto a grass shoulder." (And just because something "isn't the craziest thing I've seen" doesn't mean it isn't dangerous)
- facetube 11y ago
  Grass shoulder: http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/IMG_0724-1024x768.jpg http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/IMG_0724-102... I agree that it probably presented some level of danger to the public, but I maintain that (i) the added danger was small relative to the normal everyday danger of driving with humans; and (ii) the media exposure they've achieved by doing this on a public road has the potential to pressure Chrysler to remove tens of thousands of hazards (read: vulnerable Jeep Cherokees) from the road, which could ultimately reduce danger and save lives. It's not clear-cut when you're dealing with a vendor who chooses to ignore and/or litigate upon an initial disclosure instead of fix their product.
  - pyre 11y ago
    > the danger was small relative to the normal everyday danger of driving with humans The danger of a car having its transmission crap out on the freeway is non-zero, yes. On the other hand, they explicitly cut a vehicle's transmission on the freeway. The danger for the people in the immediate area of this vehicle was increased because the situation (a cut transmission) went from "maybe it will happen" to "it is definitely happening." At that point, whether or not an accident happened depended entirely on the skill and attention of the drivers around this vehicle something completely out of the control of the researchers.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]