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Transportation Privacy

Police Turn To Car Data To Destroy Suspects' Alibis (nbcnews.com) 194

In recent years, investigators have realized that automobiles -- particularly newer models -- can be treasure troves of digital evidence. Their onboard computers generate and store data that can be used to reconstruct where a vehicle has been and what its passengers were doing. From a report: They reveal everything from location, speed and acceleration to when doors were opened and closed, whether texts and calls were made while the cellphone was plugged into the infotainment system, as well as voice commands and web histories. But that boon for forensic investigators creates fear for privacy activists, who warn that the lack of information security baked into vehicles' computers poses a risk to consumers and who call for safeguards to be put in place. "I hear a lot of analogies of cars being smartphones on wheels. But that's vastly reductive," said Andrea Amico, founder of Privacy4Cars, which makes a free app that helps people delete their data from automobiles and makes its money by offering the service to rental companies and dealerships. "If you think about the amount of sensors in a car, the smartphone is a toy. A car has GPS, an accelerometer, a camera. A car will know how much you weigh. Most people don't realize this is happening."

Law enforcement agencies have been focusing their investigative efforts on two main information sources: the telematics system -- which is like the "black box" -- and the infotainment system. The telematics system stores a vehicle's turn-by-turn navigation, speed, acceleration and deceleration information, as well as more granular clues, such as when and where the lights were switched on, the doors were opened, seat belts were put on and airbags were deployed. The infotainment system records recent destinations, call logs, contact lists, text messages, emails, pictures, videos, web histories, voice commands and social media feeds. It can also keep track of the phones that have been connected to the vehicle via USB cable or Bluetooth, as well as all the apps installed on the device. Together, the data allows investigators to reconstruct a vehicle's journey and paint a picture of driver and passenger behavior. In a criminal case, the sequence of doors opening and seat belts being inserted could help show that a suspect had an accomplice.

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Police Turn To Car Data To Destroy Suspects' Alibis

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  • Phones with always-on GPS trackers and tower triangulation that you always carry with you, cars that record and send location data, homes with digital assistants and cameras that always record you, outdoor spaces with CCTV cameras hooked up to facial recognition software.

    Welcome to dystopia.
    • One man's dystopia is another man's utopia. I mean the film Metropolis was in part directed to be the utopian ideal of Nazj Germany and yet today stands as a classic sci-fi example of dystopia. I feel too there has to be some law about the inconsistent nature of security, convenience, and privacy. Privacy often seems at odds with the others.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      That's not dystopia, that's panopticon. The two aren't the same. You can have a dystopia without a panopticon, and a panopticon without a dystopia. Currently they seem to be operating off the same page, but that's not inevitable. (OTOH it may be true that a government run by people that is a panopticon will tend towards a dystopia and conversely.)

      To me this is another argument that the AI we're developing had better be friendly, as if we needed another argument.

  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @01:16PM (#60875904)

    I want the source code or you must acquit!

    If the state can use this then I want the source code + the logs to be checked by own lawyer

  • Does anyone know how to tap into the telemetrics system of your own car? I want to try that.

    • vendor dependant.

      and as they get more and more clued in, expect even passive listening to yield nothing (as they encrypt their comms channels).

      right now, you can sniff CAN and LIN and some ethernet (I don't care about the other weird things like most and flexray; can/lin/eth is the lion share of what goes on in wires, in cars, today).

      once the ecu vendors move away from native CAN and go ethernet, the jig may be up, as you can encrype eth much easier and in more standard ways.

    • Re: Wow, cool (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dknj ( 441802 ) on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @01:30PM (#60875972) Journal

      Odb-2 is the port which gives you access to the bus that all your devices talk across. Most cars expose the MS/HS canbus which allows you to see lane assist, steering functions, abs, etc. a lot of the cooler devices (lane assist, abs, engine management) are behind firewalls that limit writing to the bus. Get a device like ODBLink MX and an app like Torque and you can see all of the telemetrics that runs across your car. Get a Linux CANBUS adapter and tie into the HS canbus line and then you can flood the network with your packets and do things like change your speedometer, tell your car to turn left, and control your stereo or windows.

      Not all cars support this, check out www.comma.ai as a good summary of what cars expose over canbus.

      These guys made a self driving go kart from Prius parts: http://illmatics.com/car_hacking_poories.pdf

      • Odb-2 is the port which gives you access to the bus that all your devices talk across.

        on cars designed without a true firewall gateway (and done by teenagers, I mean, 20somethings are are cheap to hire but have no world experience to speak of) - perhaps.

        but better designs are really limiting what traffic you can get to over obd port. its a diag port, not a true 'router leg' port. think dmz, sort of.

        filtering is the main thing that the router does (can gateway). only a stupid company would disable all fil

        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          and so the user is not going to have r/w access and even r/o access will be cut off over time

          Right to repair. How can they differentiate between a 'legitimate' independent shop and a shade tree mechanic with a laptop?

          • you don't get it.

            you have rights to see *some* counters (read only) but that's about it. not even event streams are being mapped to the obd port's router arm anymore - by anyone who knows anything about locking down a car. they are learning - but auto makers often have an unbalance of skill sets. like most cheap-assed companies (car companies are the cheapest! sheesh. but I digress) they want to spend as little as possible and in some vendors, it really shows.

            but for doing more than clearing dtc's and

            • by PPH ( 736903 )

              a good car will be a locked down car

              How does the dealer diagnose/fix the car? (Hint: There are more ports on most cars than OBD.) That's how aftermarket shops can read and if necessary update the systems.

              Completely lock the ECU down? Then what? Scrap the module just to fix a bug?

        • Your position sounds reasonable at first, but I'm not buying it. For one thing - what is the point of preventing read access? Experience has shown time and again that security by obscurity does NOT work and open systems always end up more secure in the long run. All the systems in the car should be open source, so anyone can look for bugs and backdoors and be sure that your car is working for you, not against you. Otherwise the first thing I'm going to do with a new car is find and disable all antennas.
          For

  • AFAIK, Virginia law prohibits law enforcement access to this data already.

    • Re:Virginia? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @01:42PM (#60876038)

      That just means they can't use it in a court of law. In the meantime, they will use to the data for parallel construction and won't even need the car data for the court room.

      • That just means they can't use it in a court of law. In the meantime, they will use to the data for parallel construction and won't even need the car data for the court room.

        Parallel construction isn't necessarily easy. If the defense can plausibly argue that the police found the other information because of the clues given them by the data they weren't legally allowed to obtain, then all of it will be thrown out as "fruit of the poisoned tree".

  • ...are not amused.

  • Considering the number of people I saw in our recent snow storm driving without headlights on, the number of people I see without headlights on (or any lights at all) when it's dark, the number of people I see on cell phones making a turn who all but drive into the oncoming lane because they're trying to turn the wheel with one hand, I would hope the police are using all available resources to cite these people when they cause an accident.

    It's bad enough the SUV and minivan drivers aren't being ticketed for

  • by plate_o_shrimp ( 948271 ) on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @01:41PM (#60876030)
    Another reason to drive old cars!
    • It's not my hobby, I only own old cars. 1958 and 1963 Chevies. Unfortunately, my phone is spying on me. Fortunately, it's not linked to my Gmail account so it doesn't know much.
    • OLD CARS (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tulsa_Time ( 2430696 )

      Will be illegal soon.

      If you think that "no car sold after 2030 will be powered by fossil fuels" won't quickly escalate.. you don't know your communist/socialist history.

      The CCP loves this. You will too.

      • I doubt it. It won't be necessary.

        The fossil fuel industry is going to collapse spectacularly and messily at some point in the future. No industry contracts without massive issues. That's what's going to get rid of the old cars. The $20/gallon boutique gas that you can only get 1000 gallons at a time will doom the old cars.

        Once more people move to electric, the least profitable gas station chains will fail. The least profitable refineries and distribution networks will go under. And all the people who used

    • Old cars are unsafe trash. They are death traps compared to modern cars. You're free to prioritize vehicle features how you want, but I'm betting there's a better chance of some drunk/cell users hitting you then security forces using you for quota. Also tons of good and entertaining video out there of folks crashing old trash into new trash to demonstrate that point.

      https://duckduckgo.com/?q=old+... [duckduckgo.com]

  • If you're criminals, you should.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @01:53PM (#60876076)

      governments make people criminals for various reasons, for example if they want to close a case quickly, or if they don't like the legal but embarrassing activities someone is doing.

      Like that whistleblower in Florida about COVID data, they raided her house and pointed guns at her children. If you give a government a potential means to do evil they will.

      • Like that whistleblower in Florida about COVID data, they raided her house and pointed guns at her children. If you give an asshole the authority to do evil they will.

        FTFY. IMO most problems with the government are due to the sociopaths we elect, rather than the embodiment of government in the first place. Anarchy is not a solution.

        • by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Anarchy isn't a solution, but the system is designed to facilitate sociopaths rising to control it. One of the features that causes this is that they are more rewarded by the power it gives them, so they're more willing to put up with the downsides.

          • by cusco ( 717999 )

            Bertrand Russell said, "In an elected government the only people who will want the position are those who are in it for the money, or those who are in it for the power. Of course those are two types of people who should not be in charge. What we need is a system to give the job to someone who doesn't want it." (Of course he said it much more eloquently, but I can't find the original quote.)

            • Yeah, I've thought about that often.

              The problem is how you filter out people who are entirely unfit for the job before randomly picking someone who's qualified. While people will joke and say that someone with an intellectual disability would be preferable to our current elected officials, in reality you need a fairly deep and complex understanding of the world to make good legislative decisions.

              A second issue is how you make people go do that job. I would not want it. I would be good at it, I imagine, as I

          • Anarchy isn't a solution, but the system is designed to facilitate sociopaths rising to control it. One of the features that causes this is that they are more rewarded by the power it gives them, so they're more willing to put up with the downsides.

            I completely agree with this. As a candidate for public office you will have most everything you have ever done in your life, including high school, turned upside-down, shook around, and cast in the most negative light possible. If they don't find enough wrong, they make shit up, and it's on you to contest it. That actually works more in their favor because the energy you have to spend contesting made up shit is energy you can't spend on your actual messaging. Who wants that in their life?

            However, I look at

            • by HiThere ( 15173 )

              If it's a predictable result, then it's a system design fault. Assigning blame is not a worthwhile exercise, and is irrelevant to any solution.

        • So someone points out government does evil things and needs to be limited, and you think someone is advocating anarchy? Power and money grubbing scum are drawn to political careers, they need to be on very tight and short leash.

  • by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @02:10PM (#60876116)
    There are so many different ways data is collected - cell phones, smart TVs, cars, face recognition cameras, internet tracking, application tracking etc that it is essentially impossible to avoid being tracked if you want to interact with the modern world. With a huge amount of effort it might be possible to avoid all of these, but successfully doing so is likely to be so rare as to trigger alerts that someone's behavior is suspicious. Various laws are passed on specific technologies: face recognition, GPS etc, but with an every increasing number of ways to track people, that can't keep up. There seems no political will to limit the "results" of tracking, only the methods. The risks are real and serious. Criminal actions from identity theft to blackmail. Companies can obtain enough data on people to apply "customer dependent pricing" in a fine grained way where everything you purchase is priced at the point of pain. A government gone bad could quickly sweep up everyone with certain political views, along with all their contacts. Unfortunately, despite all the warning signs, the public seems unconcerned and will probably remain that way until something terrible happens.
  • I'd challenge this under Constitutional "unreasonable search and seizure" which is often interpreted as a right to privacy. Cars are daily infrastructure. And sue the data collector for civil damages for collecting without permission.

    • I'd challenge this under Constitutional "unreasonable search and seizure" which is often interpreted as a right to privacy.

      I would expect the cops to get a warrant, whch renders the unreasonable search and seizure argument moot.

      Cars are daily infrastructure. And sue the data collector for civil damages for collecting without permission.

      the counter would be the car is operating as designed so even f you did not know what data it was collecting your use of the vehicl eis implied consent to collect the data; and the data may simply be stored locally so there is no 3rd party collection.

    • You're assuming the data even belongs to you. If it belongs to a car company then you have no expectation of privacy. And cars are not rights - that's why drivers license laws can be as arbitrary as you like.

    • by cusco ( 717999 )

      Vehicles that are outside your garage are in the public view, and there is no right to privacy when one is in a public place. Thousands of adulterers caught in the back seat demonstrate that very well. If you had a right to privacy within your vehicle no one would ever be caught smoking a joint or drinking a beer while driving.

  • ... if you have done nothing wrong. Right?

    Of course there will be no DA under the gun to close some cases ...

    No cop looking for a chance to curry favor with the police captain ...

    There will be no for profit prison industry [wikipedia.org] bribing judges to get more prisoners ....

    And of course whatever religion, ethnicity, nationality, social class you belong has never been targeted for mob justice ....

    So you have nothing to worry about if you have not done anything wrong....

  • And the occasional heavy goods taxi ($25 around here, for a full large van).

    Yes, I made sure my phone's GPS is actually off. No GApps either.

  • Can someone please explain to my why car manufacturers go to the trouble of collecting all this data in the first place? I can see that it might possibly be useful for the police and certainly for repressive governments and I can also see that some basic information might be useful for maintenance and servicing (like oil pressure and how often the engine has been started). But, so far as I can see, the vast majority of the data (when a phone was plugged in, when the door was opened, where the car was park
    • The simplest and most obvious answer is that they can use the data to understand how their customers use their vehicles and therefore tailor new model design to suit changing market needs.

      But this doesn’t even scratch the surface.

      Your car knows where you go and when you go there.
      It can have a rough idea of the number of passengers, pulling data from door locks, vehicle weight, seat belt settings, etc.
      It can identify wireless devices that pair with its own services and therefore may be able t
  • I want to be able to periodically delete all collected data, especially before taking it into the shop.

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