Stalling Cars Via OnStar 737
Lauren Weinstein writes to tell us that GM will be installing OnStar systems on almost 1.7 million 2009-model cars that will allow law enforcement (or anyone who cracks the system) to remotely shut down vehicles. Here is the AP's writeup, which like most MSM coverage doesn't mention any privacy implications.
Forget thieves, think teenagers! (Score:5, Interesting)
On a more serious note, not all tracking systems are inherently bad. There's an interesting story [pressdemocrat.com] about a teenager whose parents installed a GPS tracking system into his car. Now he's going to court as the GPS record shows he wasn't speeding, unlike the police officer who wrote him a ticket.
"INFO" Fuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Removing this fuse should work on 2000-2007 Chevy/GMC pickups and full size SUVs (built on the "GMT 800" platform). I believe the procedure is similar for all other GM vehicles.
Privacy? With OnStar? (Score:5, Interesting)
Privacy? With OnStar?
They can already:
- Locate the vehicle and
- Bug the conversations in it.
Seems to me adding the ability to halt the car has no privacy implications because there IS no privacy with OnStar (or a similar system) installed.
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Slippery Slope (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh?? People rocket around at a mile a minute in fragile little tin roller skates. When two roller skates run into each other, the contents tend to get badly shaken up. Without seat belts, you're far more likely to be ejected or impact the steering column with your face. I acknowledge your right to freedom, but at the same time I have no wish to fund your care while you spend 30 years fading to black in a vegetative state because your brain got scrambled in a relatively minor accident.
br>That said, OnStar shouldn't be in a position to disable a stolen vehicle while its rolling because they cannot assess the potential for injury to others. There's no reason they can't simply disable a stolen vehicle while its stationary and pass on its location to the police.
Wonderful... (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming that a terrorist is able to stop all the cars in the USA in one nice swoop, does the vehicle automatically re-enable after 30 seconds? What kind of limitations are there on the OnStar's ability to control the vehicle after it has been disabled? Does the care auto re-enable after so much time and can't be disabled again until it's 'reset' locally?
I can't even begin to imagine all of the bad things that can go wrong with this setup. This is yet another reason why the futuristic shows that show everthing 'connected' is bad for us.
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles" (Score:5, Interesting)
UK Police call for remote button to stop cars [guardian.co.uk]. So, if you are in the UK at least, no it would not be a slippery slope; they have already asked for this power to be added to all cars once it is safe. Interestingly, some politicians expressed interest in this being used as a way to prevent speeders by forcibly reducing your car's maximum speed around school zones or in bad weather.
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles" (Score:4, Interesting)
I've performed this procedure for a friend (also remove the entire GPS antenna). I can dig up pics of the entire operation if interested.
Once again daveschroeder slings the propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
He implies that this system will be under the owner's control, and that police will only activate the system when they can see the car, and know it can stop safely. Because the police always operate in such a safe and sane manner. And our government has never taken voluntary safety devices like seat belts or air bags and made them mandatory. And the government has never, ever lied to us.
Thanks again, dave! Without you, we wouldn't know what to be scared of (terrists) and what not to be scared of (the status quo).
LoJack does it better. (Score:5, Interesting)
LoJack, which has a very good track record in stolen car recovery, is better designed from a privacy standpoint. LoJack hides a box somewhere in the car. It normally doesn't transmit anything. The box just listens to a subcarrier on broadcast stations for a signal that tells the LoJack boxes to turn on. When the box turns on, it starts sending out a signal, which suitably equipped police cars can pick up and home in on by radio direction finding.
It's reasonably easy to monitor LoJack for abuse. The broadcast control signal can be listened to by anybody, and the signal from a LoJack box isn't a much of a secret either. When it's triggered, every police car with LoJack gear in range lights up, so there's considerable visibility of its use. Southern California has about 500 LoJack activations a month. [wsati.org] LAPD has their helicopters equipped with LoJack receivers, so stealing a LoJack-equipped car is likely to result in being spotlighted from the air within minutes.
Home of the Free... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles" (Score:3, Interesting)
Once disabled over the air, there is no fucking way to enable it over the air. None. Not going to happen. You can hold a gun to GM's head and you still can't get the unit enabled over the air once it's been disabled by OnStar.
No Fucking Way.
Why?
You can't connect to the vehicle in any fashion no matter how strong your Kung Fu is.
The ONLY way to get the vehicle and unit back in action is to call OnStar from within the vehicle, using the OnStar unit, to force a call back to Onstar. No way to get a call into the vehicle. Ever.
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles" (Score:4, Interesting)
You thought the John Kerry kid deserved it? If that situation isn't enough, you should really watch more SPIKE TV or Court TV -- with Sheriff John Bunnell, or whatever his name is. I saw a show entitled something like "COPS - TAZED AND CONFUSED" where they showed consecutive clips of cops using tazers in hilarious situations.
In one, here was the situation -- cop is following a pickup (somewhere in the rural western US). He follows the guy into a store parking lot, then puts on his flashers. Mind you, he has no information that this guy is shady in any way shape or form (though he was black) -- or Sheriff John certainly would have informed us, as he always does. So the guy I don't think even notices the cop at first, and starts to open his door. The cop draws his tazer and starts yelling at him like crazy, so much that I could barely make out what he was saying. He starts telling the guy how to step away from the truck and lie down face down on the ground. Again -- this guy did nothing wrong that the cop knew!
So the guy has his hands up (as ordered), and is ordered to get on the ground face down. So he starts putting his hands down to get down on the ground (as a somewhat fatter individual). The cop flips out (from like 20 feet away) and screams to continue putting his hands in the air, although he only moved them down like 6 inches as he was trying to go to his knees. The guy is scared by the scream, and puts his hands up, but kinda jumps up from his half-kneel, then starts trying to go back down. But he forgets not to lock his arms straight above his head. Cue announcer: "this officer had no choice but to subdue the suspect. Next time he thinks about not following a cop's orders, he'll remember THAT 50,000 volts!"
Turns out, the guy had some warrant for trespassing or something 6 months prior, but the cop clearly didn't know that until he ran his ID. I couldn't believe it -- and this is the "valor" that they show on national TV! Imagine the "normal" usages!
One more reason to *NOT* buy GM (Score:4, Interesting)
All of that aside, this step crosses the line. What they have implemented here is a means to remotely take control of the car from the driver. Think about that for a minute. They've decided that an "override" function should exist which would superceed the judgement and will of the pilot of the vehicle. This is the same kind of reasoning that caused the Airbus A320 crash at the Habsheim air show in 1988. The computer overrode the pilots attempts to climb and crashed the aircraft, killing many.
If I ever own a vehicle with such technology installed, the first thing I'll do before driving it will be to completely disable it.
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This space for rent
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles" (Score:3, Interesting)
Whatever you think about tasers, I think we can all agree that at the very least non-lethal does not in any way imply non-painful. For non-violent confrontations, it's frequently in everyone's best interest to just keep it in its holster and try something else.
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles" (Score:4, Interesting)
Didn't that already happen? I mean what part of the Bill of Rights isn't habitually violated, other than the quartering of soldiers in our houses. Is there anything couldn't possibly be rationalized by the Interstate Commerce Clause? I sure haven't heard it. Our government has been increasing its power geometrically for some decades, and it's showing no signs of stopping, but rather of accelerating. I'm sure the Founders wouldn't recognize the country they created, because it no longer exists. In fact, one could argue it hasn't existed since the 1860's.
Re:Slippery Slope (Score:3, Interesting)
But the difference to me is that letting people make obviously bad, harmful decisions is not somehow a virtue. We all know that no one needs a nanny state that can't abide by the thought of anyone getting a scraped knee, but seriously, where is the sense in allowing stupid people to throw away their lives for nothing? We know that it's a much better idea to wear a belt - its not inconvenient or uncomfortable, and its much, much safer. So tell me, where is the good in ignoring that?
And by the way, its not like there aren't regulations surrounding sky diving, because people DID decide that some risks were reasonable and some were not. If you're asking why it hasn't been banned, well, neither has driving. WE JUST REQUIRE PEOPLE TO PUT ON A BELT.
In Cop Cars? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles" (Score:3, Interesting)
No. As ordinary people, mechanics, whomever you chose, what "killing the engine" means. Every one of them will tell you the engine is shut off.
You'd be wrong on this. Most people, if their engine lost most of its power, would say that "The engine died", even if the engine is still running.
They won't say that it's in a idle state with no throttle with power brakes and steering still functional. When someone says "remotely shuts down vehicles", the clear implication is that the vehicle is being turned off. It is not.
Again, no. If you car won't move forward when throttle is applied, it has been shut down. What use is a car that doesn't move when commanded to?
The clear follow-on to that, and a major objection, would be that such an action would be massively unsafe. That's what the submitter is implying all throughout her blog post, saying things like "would you be your life" on this, etc.
But it is massively unsafe to remove power, even if the other systems are running. So I'm not sure what your point is.
Which is why "if officers see the car in motion and judge it can be stopped safely, they can tell OnStar operators". That's the whole point.
But what guarantee do we have that this will be the only time it is used? What's the guarantee there isn't a glitch in the system causing to happen without police supervision?What's the guarantee that the police, if in visual range, will judge the safety of stopping at that point correctly?
Now if you believe it will be used in contravention of the ways they're explicitly and specifically saying it will be used, that's another story entirely. But that should also mean we should have heard a lot of other examples of OnStar abuse, since it's been around for a while, except we haven't.
No, that's a non-sequiter. There's nothing to stop it happening in the future, even if it hasn't happened in the past. We also don't know if past OnStar abuse has happened but been covered up. Your statement is not logical. Recently, some banks lost a whole ton of private customer information. That had not happened in the past. By your logic, the banks shouldn't have lost vast amounts of personal information, because they hadn't previously. But it happened.
Actually, police, to most people and for the most part, do have exactly that track record. That's, you know, their job.
In bizarro world. In reality, police corruption is widespread, and the police endanger the public's safety constantly.
You just apparently choose to take examples of corruption and abuse, and assume that is the norm, when it is the exception.
I never said it was the norm. But it's far too common. It's not an insignificant problem as you seem to be making it out. It's actually unreasonably common.
That's no excuse to completely write off a technological solution to a problem just because it can be hacked or abused. OnStar can currently unlock doors on every OnStar equipped vehicle. Seems like that's a pretty ripe target, and so by the logic trotted about here, that should already have been hacked to shreds.
That's an entirely different issue. Theft is an annoyance, but it's not the same as putting the public at risk. We have to apply much higher standards, and ask if the benefit outweighs the risks. The benefits seem rather dubious to me, so it doesn't seem worth the risk.
And once again you misrepresent the argument. Nobody is saying it must be "hacked to shreds" - just that there is a chance that it could be. And it happening even once is a pretty serious matter when people's lives are at stake.
I have an idea: let's all be luddites, and dismiss any technological solution to any problem, whether the government is using it or not, because it might be able to be hacked or abused. That's a ridiculous view of the s
The obvious way to hack the system (Score:3, Interesting)
You: "This is officer Jones of the XYZ police department in FooBar SomeState. We have a deadly chase going on, suspect has already hit and possibly killed two pedestrians. The vehicle plate # is 123XYZ. Can you disable this vehicle?
OnStar Operator: "What is the authorization code for police shutdown?"
You (even more frantic): "I don't know! You have to shut this vehicle down, people are getting hurt! More will die!"
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I bet the OnStar operator shuts down the vehicle against protocol. Anybody have reason to believe they wouldn't? I'm sure someone could come up with more convincing dialog too. Maybe have some other fake info in advance to sound convincing, like a badge number or cop jargon.