VW Wouldn't Help Locate Car With Abducted Child Because GPS Subscription Expired (arstechnica.com) 226
A sheriff's office in Illinois said it was initially thwarted from tracking a stolen car with a 2-year-old boy inside when Volkswagen's Car-Net service refused to provide access to the tracking system because the car's subscription had expired. From a report: "While searching for the stolen vehicle and endangered child, sheriff's detectives immediately called Volkswagen Car-Net, in an attempt to track the vehicle," the Lake County sheriff's office said in a statement posted on Facebook about the incident on February 23. "Unfortunately, there was a delay, as Volkswagen Car-Net would not track the vehicle with the abducted child until they received payment to reactivate the tracking device in the stolen Volkswagen." Volkswagen Car-Net lets owners track and control their vehicles remotely. According to a Chicago Sun-Times article, "the Car-Net trial period had ended, and a representative wanted $150 to restart the service and locate the SUV."
just get an court order to trun it on now! (Score:5, Insightful)
just get an court order to trun it on now!
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Sorry, court is closed for the 4 day weekend. Filing fees must be paid at the clerk's office by check and be collected funds before the court can act.
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You do know, that's not how it works, right?
There's a difference between the police getting a court order for an emergency situation and the average person going in to court to file for a restraining order or what-not.
Law enforcement has a fast-track to reach a judge, even at home, to get these taken care of.
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Law enforcement has a fast-track to reach a judge, even at home, to get these taken care of.
Except, perhaps, for the tiniest jurisdictions, the courts have at least one judge formally "on-call" 24/7 for emergency orders (which everyone hopes will not need to be exercised, but "stuff" can happen). That judge may need to leave early and/or arrive late at their court in order to be certain to be available at their residence during their on-call hours.
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You do know, that's not how it works, right?
No, but why let facts get in the way of a pithy comment about the US justice system? On occasion, Slashdot loves to proudly display it's collective ignorance as much as anyone else.
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Re: I've Been Art Garfunkeled! (Score:2)
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There are many other countries in this world that contradict you.
Ironically, lots of countries with lots of guns are in fact authoritarian states.
Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children? (Score:2)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=q3... [youtube.com]
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I'm so glad children have the freedoms to be shot weekly at school. You think other countries have to practice active shooter drills? But no, clearly men dressing up in funny clothes is the problem.
It is agains the law to kill another human being except a few exceptions (such as self defense). Of course, someone already breaking one law wouldn't have much issue breaking other laws...
Re: just get an court order to trun it on now! (Score:2)
Re: just get an court order to trun it on now! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. Violence has dropped by more than half since "you" were a kid. The reason you didn't hear about school shootings was two-fold: fewer people had guns, by far, so shootings in general were less common (violence was much more common, however, just not involving guns as much); and the newspaper you got at home didn't report on every school shooting across the country. Today, we know about every shooting, 50 years ago we only knew about the local ones. This means that 50 years ago, people were less aware of the problem, not that it wasn't happening.
This is just like autism and ADHD. We've gotten tons better at detecting those disorders and so the number of diagnosed cases has risen significantly. This doesn't mean that more kids today have those problems than in the past, just that we're more likely today to know about the ones who do.
LOL no (Score:2, Interesting)
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If you need to do a no knock warrent (Score:2)
I'm just kidding, how are we going to get those cops over to the 3rd world country where the call center is located?
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An order from a court in Waukegan (Lake Co. seat - where the county court is) to the Lake County Sheriff Dept. Not a problem - both know who they are and who gives the order (judge) and who receives it.
Where does the judge / Sheriff Dept. send the court order to whom/how? What if VW doesn't recognize the jurisdiction? How does VW validate / verify that the judge / order is legit, and not a gang/cartel trying to find the vehicle to do a hit on it?
Agreed - there needs to be a mechanism to expedite and esca
re: VW and recognizing a valid court order (Score:4, Informative)
The thing is though? The police were apparently able to gain access to tracking the vehicle by simply calling and stating the nature of the situation, plus paying the required fee to turn the service on in the car.
So it doesn't sound like VW really *needs* to be super concerned with verifying a court order is really the real thing? The whole process isn't that secure to start with.
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And as a result they richly deserve for the Chicago Sun-Times to expose them as heartless mercenaries.
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They're just putting their shareholders first.
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In a truly civilized world I'd say tarred and feathered in the town square.
Re: VW and recognizing a valid court order (Score:4, Insightful)
More basically, is there a way to know if your vehicle HAS a GPS or other communications with the manufacturer and therefore also potentially available to the authorities?
Do all car companies reveal this upfront before you purchase?
Is there a ready way for the average consumer to de-activate, or even better...completely remove such device(s)?
I don't want such a service, I don't want this kind of thing even installed on my car.
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In Europe it's really easy to know whether a new vehicle has GPS tracking. It's government mandated...
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That's not likely. The courts would likely find they're within their rights to charge a $150 fee for it. It looks like the company was quite willing to take action immediately as long as the money was good, so there is no need to force VW to do anything.
On the other hand, most companies are smart enough to realize in the court of public opinion, it is a far different financial balance in effect.
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$150 payment versus much more expensive blowback to Volkswagen over the bad PR. Most likely this call center is staffed by undertrained people anyway for minimum wage (or less if off shored). They're just following the rules, it's not their kid, they'll get fired if they allow an exception, etc.
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Very time consuming. Also you have to present to court order to the person on the other side of the phone, wherever in the world that happens to be.
Best solution though - NO SUBSCRIPTIONS! A GPS doesn't need subscriptions, it is self contained and requires no interaction with any back office servers, the data transfer between the independent standalone GPS receiver and satellites is 100% open and known with no trade secrets.
It's your car if you purchased it and it is paid off, therefor it is your right to
Re:just get an court order to trun it on now! (Score:5, Insightful)
And the data connection to access said GPS in the car you're not in? Where's that cost coming from?
See, I agree with you for in-car stuff. If the device is physically there, I bought all the features of my property. But that doesn't obligate the company to pay for net/cell access to those devices for you, so any remote-access features they are free to monetize, and I'm free to not pay for either.
VW was just stupid here though. Law enforcement gives a legal route to access the GPS? They get it with a court order, not a payment. I'm somewhat leery of how this could be misused actually, for police tracking of you. But in this specific case, VW was just dumb for saying "we can't do this without payment." It would have been good PR for them to do so. And they could have even made it a privacy win (if they actually did so) by saying something like "if you're not subscribed, we don't keep this information, but we turned it on specifically in response to this court order." (etc). Then they look "good" (as much as possible) from all sides.
Of course that's not what happened. I wonder if they own that information regardless, and monetize you even if you're not subscribed. I'll bet yes.
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VW don't provide that data connection, it's done by a telco. You should be free to use whatever telco you want with no involvement from the vehicle manufacturer.
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Real answer? The car maker pays for a 24/7 cellular link rather you subscribe or not, and uses it to siphon data from your car, which they then sell to advertisers, insurers, etc. Read the fine print.
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Even that creates a delay that no right thinking person could stomach. We won't need GPS to know which way the corporate automaton that made that decision will be going when they die.
Things are not feee (Score:2, Insightful)
I’m curious if the sheriff official who gave that quote would have come into the office if he was told he would no longer being paid?
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How is that analogy at all reasonable? Nobody would actually incur a measurable cost or be denied pay. To help police find a child it is common to do things like call them when you see something, look through your CCTV footage for them if it's relevant, and, yes, temporarily enabling a GPS to give a location should be among the top of the list. I'd try to charge them for extortion trying to charge $150 in order to help... Yeah, we're not doing the abduction, just trying to profit from it!
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How is that analogy at all reasonable?
'cos it depends on how your business is structured. If you are a cafe in a nice rich area you are probably find doing it for free. If, on the other hand, you are the cafe next to the recently set up drugs den and most of your customers went away whilst the police come by wanting your CCTV coverage ten times a day, frightening away those few customers that still do come in, you might find that getting some reasonable payment for your time is justified.
I'd guess that VW runs their GPS service centre and much
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How about give the info NOW rather than delaying for the payment to process considering that a child's well being was on the line. If it's a simple auto theft, ask for payment up front.
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What is it with VW (Score:5, Insightful)
What is it with VW, do they get free high level legal help ? First the scam with diesel and mileage and pollution.
Now they want to flirt with a large payout should that poor child is injured ? If your Cell Phone is cut off, the carriers keep 911 active, granted a legal requirement but I think some carriers still allowed 911 before that law was enabled.
Re:What is it with VW (Score:5, Interesting)
How can you object to being tracked (Score:3)
I mean, all 8+ billion of us should be happy to have our every move tracked, recorded, and even monetized! After all, there is a slim possibility it might save a child!
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This is not about universal tracking, this is about demanding money to help resolve a kidnapping of a child. The person who answered the phone for VW would be in a world of hurt if something happened to that kid through his/her inaction, unless they could shove responsibility onto VW itself.
Re:How can you object to being tracked (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it really isn't. The fluff is about some idiot following procedure when he shouldn't have. The payload is about letting the government have instant, unquestioned access to tracking devices.
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> this is about demanding money to help resolve a kidnapping of a child No, it really isn't. The fluff is about some idiot following procedure when he shouldn't have. The payload is about letting the government have instant, unquestioned access to tracking devices.
This. The camel's nose under the tent is always "think of the children"
Re:How can you object to being tracked (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes it is. In an EMERGENCY when you actually want police to do something, MONEY shouldn't be the thing blocking, or slowing down, a capability that already exists. Now, should any person claiming to be a cop be able to call and get tracking information? No. There should, and probably is, a process. The emergency generates a police report involving said vehicle. Send a copy to the company. A very quick and simple verification process can ensure that everything is on the up and up. Would there still be abuses? Of course. There are abusers of every system ever created and there always will be.
tl;dr: Cops should not have unfettered access, but shitty capitalism shouldn't be slowing down emergency responses either.
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As long as the company in question (it is not just VW) verifies the caller, an immediate response is acceptable. So the request has to pass through an official channel, be it phone, email, etc. The nature / reason for the request is irrelevant - the emergency personal determine if it is warranted and not the company in question.
So I am in agreement with what you have stated. However, I would add to your point that in addition to a report being generated, all information regarding this request should b
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If you choose to do that, that's one thing. I opt out. My last two GM vehicles had OnStar, I removed their modules. Of course I received e-mails from OnStar lauding all of their great features, especially safety.
I don't want over-the-air control given to my manufacturer or third party, just no. I don't want to pay for subscriptions to features the vehicle lugs around like heated power seats or turn signals that somehow BMW owners never seem to sign up for.
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How difficult was this to do? Where did you find the information to do this?
I thought I'd heard that OnStar vehicles specifically....that OnStar was so tightly integrated into the whole car system, that it was nye impossible to remove without screwing something up?
Did your removal also remove the whole ability for the car to talk cellularly back to the mothership?
I ask because I do NOT want
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Snip the cable to the cell antenna. You might get lucky and find it even has a connector.
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In my case, it was just disconnecting a module. my truck was as simple as described here. [youtube.com] In the other it was in the trunk and just needed to be unplugged. Yes, it disconnected everything from the mothership.
Couldn't Or Wouldn't? (Score:2)
So pay the $150 (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, your kid is abducted and you wont fork out $150 to track him down? Reminds me of that movie "Ruthless People" where Danny Devito keeps trying to bargain the kidnappers down because he doesn't want his wife back anyway
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Seriously, your kid is abducted and you wont fork out $150 to track him down?
Seriously, you're sticking up for a multi-billion-dollar corporation that refused to help find a missing child without being paid first?
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Seriously, your kid is abducted and you wont fork out $150 to track him down?
Seriously, you're sticking up for a multi-billion-dollar corporation that refused to help find a missing child without being paid first?
Seriously, you're sticking up for a parent who wont fork over $150 to save their kid?
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The parent was RUN OVER trying to get the kid out of the car while it was being stolen.
Can't let extraneous details get in the way of an homage to capitalism. The parent should have anticipated this eventuality and tattooed a maximum ransom payment contract onto their arm, just in case they were incapacitated. After all, $150 is probably worth it to this parent to retrieve the child, but there must be some amount they don't want to pay beyond. Maybe even different limits for different children.
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No. That's a ransom. Doesn't matter if you aren't paying the kidnappers themselves. The car has GPS built in. Paying customer or not, the GPS should always be functional in an emergency with zero delays from the car company. But Volkswagen is a shitty company who makes shitty, ugly vehicles with shitty extra services.
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No. That's a ransom. Doesn't matter if you aren't paying the kidnappers themselves. The car has GPS built in. Paying customer or not, the GPS should always be functional in an emergency with zero delays from the car company. But Volkswagen is a shitty company who makes shitty, ugly vehicles with shitty extra services.
I agree that the company could help here, but if it was my kid I wouldn't have wasted five seconds trying to get them to do it.
That's MY KID, not theirs. MY responsibility. I'd have paid it on the spot.
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Responsibility here is irrelevant. What if you couldn't? What if you, the parent(s), were incapacitated and unable to do so?
In fact, the responsibility is NOT yours at all regardless of your situation. Yes, it is your child. But a crime has been committed. And as much as I conceptually love vigilante justice, it's not acceptable in the long run. So, a crime having been committed, it's now the police's responsibility to put a stop to that crime and return things to normal. That is their purpose. I grant you
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Seriously, your kid is abducted and you wont fork out $150 to track him down?
FFS. You couldn't take *thirty* seconds to read the article before posting?
The child's mother was seriously injured in the abduction and was in the hospital.
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"What is this, the bargain basement??... *crying* I've been kidnapped by K-Mart!" - One of the best, underrated comedies from the 80s.
Anyways, it wasn't about the money. The cop had to go find a credit card (personal, etc.) just to start up the service. The VW rep wasn't trained very well.
The disturbing thing isn't the money. (Score:5, Interesting)
The really problematic issue here is not so much the $150 charge. I mean... unless they're a large department to do it in house, outfits like the DNA and toxicology labs that analyze other types of evidence don't work for free either. It's the fact that VW (their outsourced phone support anyway) seems to have taken the word that the caller was a legitimate LEO without any validation. They just took the $150, switched on the GPS, and turned over the location to someone who, for all they could have known, was just some random weirdo, a paranoid controlling husband, some obsessed stalker, a rogue cop with a vendetta, or some scamster who really Really REALLY wanted to sell an extended warranty for the car. This is why we have things like subpoenas and warrants, after all... to validate that the request is justified, legitimate and authorized.
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We've been trying to reach you about your car's expired extended warranty. Thank god you posted on Slashdot, so we could find you! So, how would you like to pay for the charge on your account for your new extended warranty?
This will become more endemic (Score:2)
With Ford trying to patent recovery/collection features for cars, more GPS and tracking data in new vehicles, and even things like Tesla Autopilot are we not surprised
that these things will become more mainstream? In this case, there was a small child involved in a carjacking incident. VW's obviously outsourced staff wasn't going to help until the subscription was paid. That's egregiously callous but somebody was following a script somewhere and we must not go off script.
More and more data is collected on e
Potentially deficient training (Score:5, Informative)
I'm inclined to think that this is just a matter of VW (or whoever they outsource their support to) not properly training their CC reps for interactions with law enforcement because it doesn't come up very often. There's definitely a problem, but it's one I assume a lot of companies with call centers have. As other posters noted, I think the correct solution is some kind of expedited process for a court order for time-sensitive stuff like this. It's unrealistic to expect every call center out there to have proper training on this sort of thing; they probably should, but it's not realistic to expect it to happen.
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The regular call center may not be equipped to deal with law enforcement at all. At the only job I've had where the company had regular interactions with the police, we had a contractor who was our dedicated law enforcement liaison. She had a separate contact method from the regular call center... never even set foot in the center, actually... and all LE requests, and the occasional subpoena, went straight to her. She would then do whatever one does to validate the request. And then she'd pull in whoev
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If you are a company that has any kind of service that might need to be accessed remotely by law enforcement... you should probably have a separate dept of people trained for that. It's unrealistic to expect every call center to have some dept like this, but many wouldn't need it. Any company with GPS services? Not unrealistic at all to expect them to have a legal dept that interfaces with police. Any company providing remote video monitoring services? Same. It is very realistic to expect them to have these
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Training (Score:2)
It's not just training. Their legal team needs to come up with a proper protocol on how to handle law enforcement demands. For example, you need to verify whom is calling. You don't want nutjobs and stalkers calling to ask where someone's car is. Then, there are some cases where the police need a warrant.
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108.1 FM anybody? (Score:2)
Didn't we already lose control of our cars when they force installed Lojack and controlled it with frequency 108.1 FM? Why do you need VW's rootkit for this... we're already hacked!
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I've not heard about this one....got any links?
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Whats the issue? (Score:2)
I mean if they cared about the kid, $150 should be easy to come up with right?
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Obviously, but the basic principle is that you shouldn't be paying a ransom to someone who maliciously does something to hurt you because you know you have no guarantee they won't do it again, especially if they find out you are willing to pay them!
Oh, but it's only $150, you might say, and it's going to a company, not the criminals... But tell me, how do you know that the people who were asking for that $150 to locate the car aren't actually in on this, and willing to take advantage of a crime of opport
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Policy vs isolated incident (Score:2)
I think we should separate what is VW policy vs what actually happened. VW's policy is certainly NOT "no cash, no flash" when it comes to law enforcement, because it results in this exact terrible PR situation. However, VW's failure here was in not recognizing that there needs to be a clear policy for call center employees to follow to help law enforcement instantaneously without worrying about payment. There would need to be ways to prevent normal people from taking advantage of this, but I could imagin
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Re: Policy vs isolated incident (Score:2)
Responding to my own comment to correct myself. Here what VW says:
"Volkswagen has a procedure in place with a third-party provider for Car-Net Support Services involving emergency requests from law enforcement. They have executed this process successfully in previous incidents. Unfortunately, in this instance, there was a serious breach of the process."
So this wasn't even a policy failure on VW's part, they had a plan. It just wasn't followed correctly by one particular employee (of a contractor).
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Re: Policy vs isolated incident (Score:2)
I think that holds true if policy is consistently or frequently ignored. Otherwise generally policy is crucial to set standards for employees to follow. The question is whether it has been followed. According to VW their policy has been followed in the past, but we don't have the data to say a) if that's true, b) if this was a 1% exception, or c) if this was a 99% standard and the policy is just a smokescreen.
Of course! (Score:2)
for the children! For the children! (Score:2)
If you don't pay your phone bill (Score:2)
...the kidnappers won't be able to join you for the ransom, that's not on the phone company, pay your fucking bills.
Sounds like an act of extortion. (Score:2)
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Charges what for? Because I choose not to sign up to a service? If it were my kid that 150$ would be out of my account as fast as possible.
Charge VW with a crime (Score:2)
Interfering with a police investigation
Quid pro quo (Score:2)
To be fair (Score:2)
....if I was going to abduct a 2 year old, I'd probably let my GPS sub expire first too.
How much is your kid worth? (Score:4, Insightful)
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None of the things you mentioned are very useful for finding the vehicle's location now. Cameras are only good if you know which cameras to look at. Traffic cams don't automatically capture license plates to alert the cops. EZ-Pass or similar is only useful if the vehicle has one AND it gets used. Cell phones are only good if there is one in the vehicle, and you know it - if the kidnapper ditched their phone or you don't know the kidnappers' details then you can't quickly track the phone. So, in reality, in
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There's probably (always?) more complicating factors than that, right?
Can VW expose a customer's location without a proper court order? Does that leave them legally exposed?
Are there restrictions that only the owner can activate the GPS tracking, not third parties. Imagine if it was a jealous husband trying to enable tracking on his wife's car without her knowing.
Was there a proper channel for these requests and it was simply not followed so they wound up talking to the average call-center employee? (I se