I understand the logic and can see how that *could* happen, but I think history shows that in the US, that rarely happens.
OnStar to allow police to slow vehicle.
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Why do you think that history has shown that to not happen in the US?
I bet if you did a cross reference, these are the same blowhards that think they are so important, everyone better get out of their way in the left lane.
One can certainly value privacy without having antything to hide, I have no issue with that, and any technological advance can be abused. Do you decline the technology advance because of the potential for abuse, or do you punish the abuser?
I advocate accept the advance, and punish those who might abuse it.
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Maybe paranoid, but I think for some of them it is just overblown ego driven. They think they are so important that if technology exists to spy on someone, it's going to be used on them, and if technology exists to screw with someone, it's going to be used on them, when the reality is their lives are so dull and ordinary that watching paint dry is jazzy by comparison and no one would want to waste their time spying on them.
I bet if you did a cross reference, these are the same blowhards that think they are so important, everyone better get out of their way in the left lane.
One can certainly value privacy without having antything to hide, I have no issue with that, and any technological advance can be abused. Do you decline the technology advance because of the potential for abuse, or do you punish the abuser?
I advocate accept the advance, and punish those who might abuse it.
Amen, hallelujuah, +1 and whatever else applies.
I had a discussion with a coworker once about survelience, specifically listening in on phone calls. My response was that if anyone is listening in on my conversations, boy are they going to be bored.
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Maybe paranoid, but I think for some of them it is just overblown ego driven. They think they are so important that if technology exists to spy on someone, it's going to be used on them, and if technology exists to screw with someone, it's going to be used on them, when the reality is their lives are so dull and ordinary that watching paint dry is jazzy by comparison and no one would want to waste their time spying on them.
I bet if you did a cross reference, these are the same blowhards that think they are so important, everyone better get out of their way in the left lane.
One can certainly value privacy without having antything to hide, I have no issue with that, and any technological advance can be abused. Do you decline the technology advance because of the potential for abuse, or do you punish the abuser?
I advocate accept the advance, and punish those who might abuse it.
You are really off base here with your comments and making it personal. I couldn't be further from the person you describe. Should the tables be flipped?
Anyway, many times the cat won't go back into the bag. Punish the abuser i.e. the police? Sure. Ever try to fight something as simple as a traffic ticket. Good luck. Wanting to merely punish the abuser after the crime has been committed is only treating the symptoms. Good system design roots out the problem(s) before they ever arise as Kestas spoke about earlier. Sadly, this rarely happens and is the source of my cause for concern.
For the moment. Pretty soon, OnStar will be out of the picture, and the po-po will be able to do it themselves.
Every liberty is precious, and it is very dangerous to give up any at all. If you don't think so, go to an airport for a flight (don't carry on much toothpaste or deodorant), any stadium for a game or concert, or any courthouse in our land. The freedom to move unmolested through our own country is being gradually eroded. Thank yourself when, twenty years hence, you need an internal passport to move about the US, just like the old USSR.
Every liberty is precious, and it is very dangerous to give up any at all. If you don't think so, go to an airport for a flight (don't carry on much toothpaste or deodorant), any stadium for a game or concert, or any courthouse in our land. The freedom to move unmolested through our own country is being gradually eroded. Thank yourself when, twenty years hence, you need an internal passport to move about the US, just like the old USSR.
For all of those welcoming this, I'd suggest that you race out and give the local Police and fire brigade copies of your house and car keys.
Imagine how much more safe and secure you would be knowing that if you were lying unconscious in your car or a smoke filled house knowing that when the authorities get there, they have instant access to you without having to waste time knocking down doors.
Why haven't you taken this initiative already ?
While down there, give them your account numbers and PIN. Can't be too safe, can we ?
Imagine how much more safe and secure you would be knowing that if you were lying unconscious in your car or a smoke filled house knowing that when the authorities get there, they have instant access to you without having to waste time knocking down doors.
Why haven't you taken this initiative already ?
While down there, give them your account numbers and PIN. Can't be too safe, can we ?
What a good idea. This should probably be part of the next Homeland Security Act.
Also, let's get rid of those pesky and inefficient local, county ans state police agencies, and let a development of TSA run the whole thing. A national police force is just what America needs to brings us up to speed with the Third Reich, Breshnev's USSR, as well as North Korea.
Also, let's get rid of those pesky and inefficient local, county ans state police agencies, and let a development of TSA run the whole thing. A national police force is just what America needs to brings us up to speed with the Third Reich, Breshnev's USSR, as well as North Korea.
The US has a national police force, it's called the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
I can have my engine turned off if the car is stolen. I notify the satelite company and they can turn off the engine. If the police or someone called they would have to have my password. They can also tellme where the car is if I call. With this system installed my insurance will cover 100% of the loss if there ever is one. And the insurance company pays the service and installation of the equipment.
Master Acid, the breathalyzer device linked to the car ignition is real and here today. Past DWI offenders in some localities are being ordered to install and use them, and some authorities have proposed requiring their installation with all drivers in all vehicles. And for the 1974 model year the feds mandated seatbelt interlocks that would not allow the car to be started without buckling the front belts. Congress received so many protests that it rescinded that rule and has yet to try to reinstate it.
Sure, you can opt out of the remote shutdown feature recently discussed in the media, but I'll bet that insurance companies will get in the act and demand drivers with their policies allow activation or face policy cancellation. That doesn't take much imagination. We've already seen insurance companies "encouraging" drivers to install onboard monitoring devices.
After all the publicity about police harassing drivers for "driving while black", it's easy to picture some redneck cop shutting down the engine of a minority-driven vehicle to give the vehicle an unwarranted "random" search. This takes little imagination, either. We tend to forget that plenty of law-abiding people can have reason to fear the police, if historically the police have taken an unjust interest in them. And these days, not only do most police view all citizens as perps anyway, but asset forfeiture laws encourage law enforcement fishing expeditions.
Some of the proposed features for "OBD III" have included satellite notification to state and federal environmental enforcement of check-engine light activation and remote shutdown of the car by authorities, possibly for the check engine light, but also for a host of other reasons—designated days when a car could not be driven due to congestion concerns, etc. (Hot Rod discussed these possibilities extensively, and I wrote about this in an article that the late, lamented outfit Loompanics published in its main catalogue in 2000.) The OnStar capability goes a long way toward allowing much of this.
And yes, it's only a matter of time until these systems are tweaked to allow satellite enforcement of speed limits. Has everyone forgotten the stink over rental car companies monitoring customers' speed using GPS? Allegations continue that automated toll payment transponders have been used in some areas for speed enforcement. If going from exit A to exit B would take, say, 60 minutes at the speed limit and the system sees that you reached point B in 47 minutes, then it's an automatic speeding ticket in the mail. The OnStar system could presumably handle that with a little extra coding too.
Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you. I'll stick to my 10-year-old Taurus wagon.
Sure, you can opt out of the remote shutdown feature recently discussed in the media, but I'll bet that insurance companies will get in the act and demand drivers with their policies allow activation or face policy cancellation. That doesn't take much imagination. We've already seen insurance companies "encouraging" drivers to install onboard monitoring devices.
After all the publicity about police harassing drivers for "driving while black", it's easy to picture some redneck cop shutting down the engine of a minority-driven vehicle to give the vehicle an unwarranted "random" search. This takes little imagination, either. We tend to forget that plenty of law-abiding people can have reason to fear the police, if historically the police have taken an unjust interest in them. And these days, not only do most police view all citizens as perps anyway, but asset forfeiture laws encourage law enforcement fishing expeditions.
Some of the proposed features for "OBD III" have included satellite notification to state and federal environmental enforcement of check-engine light activation and remote shutdown of the car by authorities, possibly for the check engine light, but also for a host of other reasons—designated days when a car could not be driven due to congestion concerns, etc. (Hot Rod discussed these possibilities extensively, and I wrote about this in an article that the late, lamented outfit Loompanics published in its main catalogue in 2000.) The OnStar capability goes a long way toward allowing much of this.
And yes, it's only a matter of time until these systems are tweaked to allow satellite enforcement of speed limits. Has everyone forgotten the stink over rental car companies monitoring customers' speed using GPS? Allegations continue that automated toll payment transponders have been used in some areas for speed enforcement. If going from exit A to exit B would take, say, 60 minutes at the speed limit and the system sees that you reached point B in 47 minutes, then it's an automatic speeding ticket in the mail. The OnStar system could presumably handle that with a little extra coding too.
Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you. I'll stick to my 10-year-old Taurus wagon.
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HEY! What's wrong with Brezhnev? It's Stalin you needed to worry about, Brezhnev was just a bureaucrat like Andropov or Khrushchev
It'll be free to shut down the engine, but $100 to restart.
The phrase "big brother" is used in contexts where a government is intentionally forcing survelliance into things as a totalitarian government would. When a company volunteers to put extra features into its products and then offers them to a government, the phrase "big brother" does not apply.
I think that GM's rationale behind doing this is that if it is possible for the police to easily recover vehicles they make, it is less likely that they would be stolen and in the event that they are stolen, they should be quickly recovered without damage, both of which should, in theory, differentiate their offerings from their competition's offerings and lead to more sales.
As for abuse, I think that the main potential that this technology has for abuse is from the fact that if one were to reverse engineer the OnStar component, in theory, one should obtain the knowledge necessary to fake an OnStar signal and slow down someone else's vehicle. This would be useful for say, a mob, when trying to collect their "protection money" from someone.
Basic navigational controls such as power steering and power brakes should still operate if the accelerator were killed, so crashes are improbable.
That would be the black box that was mandated to be put into every car. In theory, you could probably remove it, but many times, black boxes are very useful as they can be used to vindicate people of wrong-doing.
If my 1995 Toyota Avalon was to fail when I am driving on the highway causing a collision, I would not have the benefit of a blackbox when I am dealing with my insurance company. Thankfully, I take very good care of my Toyota Avalon, so that scenerio is unlikely, although possible.
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Not for sure if this is sarcasm or not. I assume not.
I do believe GM would do this no matter the security considerations either way. Of course they will employ some sort of K-Mart blue light special security considerations. But I've also read about a company up in the PNW that has a lot of product in the marketplace but still tons of security problems. Some dude named Bill. But I'm sure he will shut it all down ASAP until they get the security problems under control.But heck, what am I thinking? You are right - it's for the children. It will make us all safer so we can just all get along.
I was sincere. I have a relative who works for onstar and I can tell you that people are not going to be hacking this system and shutting your car off. They have been able to shut down your car all along but there were all kinds of legal hassles to overcome until they could actually begin working with the police to do it. The police can't shut your car off, they call onstar when it is safe to do so and then onstar will slowly stop you. Unless the police call them they won't be monitoring you at all. Why do people assume that anyone is "watching"? Believe me the people at onstar are too busy to bother with looking into your driving habits.
As a computer science student, I believe that if all of the data from OnStar is recorded, I could write the tools necessary to analyze it and identify unsafe drivers.
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Do you think every form of control is immediate and abrupt? No. It's introduced gradually and in an as innocuous and harmless manner as possible. It's always "for the best" of intentions ..then slowly morphs into something much more. There's always another (or THE other) shoe to drop that you didn't quite count on.
Contemporary example: Teaching tolerance. Sounds great. Everyone should be respectful of others legal social choices. Your mind, your life, your choice. The other shoe is teaching that gay lifestyle is not only acceptable ..but perhaps favorable to 7 year olds.
It's more of the "I don't have anything to hide" syndrome. Right now authority is your friend, or so you perceive it to be. This may not always be the case. I personally feel that those in most positions of authority (that includes government/para government/and regulatory agencies) are in the cattle herding business with cattle that need to "want" to go where they need them to be. Perhaps more like feeding ducks at the pond. A friend of mine would take me to "feed the ducks". He'd then just start throwing crumbs in an incremental arch ..and eventually I had a horde of ducks stampeding towards me.
You've obviously never seen manipulative behavior that operates in plain sight. I would offer that you've then never experienced a new or used car purchase.
I feed ducks with imaginary crumbs, and it works just as well.
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Appears so from my view
OBD1 FTW!!!!!111eleven I would never purchase a vehicle with remote control capabilities. I don't care how hard they try to sell it to my natural sense of fear.
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