The EU eCall system for cars

[Alan_uk]

I heard that an eCall system for cars was being proposed (i.e. cars can call the emergency services automatically) but didn't realise that since October 2015 all new cars sold in Europe have been fitted with a GPS tracker and mobile data module to connect to pan-European cellular networks and this has to be activated by 2018 and must then be checked as part of the MOT.

Article here explains more and highlights a number of concerns, namely privacy, lack of mobile coverage, and government control (e.g. governments could immobilise your car if congestion or pollution was too high).

http://www.draytek.co.uk/information/news/the-new-eu-ecall-system-for-cars

PS Strange article to find on a technology site about routers but maybe it was having a dig at Qualcomm (one of its rivals) who make the chips for the eCall system.

 

[bretti_kivi]

Ford Spokesperson: "we know when you speed".

That was two years ago.

It's off on the Fi and I don't intend to turn it on. Stupid, stupid, stupid, giving any vestige of privacy up for "safety". Same as the black box from the insurers. You have absolutely no assurances worth the paper they're written on that they're not going to track who you are, where you are going, what you are doing, and sell that information to others. None. Ah yes, you might be saved thirty seconds earlier, which *may* be the difference between life and death. Fair enough, I choose death.

You're already glass online - hello Facebook and Whatsapp - and this makes you glass offline, too. Never mind one of the biggest surveillance systems in the world called ANPR.... that's why you don't need a registration concept. Because you're already findable.

This winds me up no end. Thank ********* the anti-terrorism act needs to be re-looked at. From wired:

UK counterterrorism laws violate the right to a free press, a British appeals court ruled in a case involving the seizure of encrypted documents from David Miranda in August 2013. Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, faced a nine-hour interrogation at Heathrow airport while transporting Snowden documents from Laura Poitras to Greenwald. British authorities had previously argued that disclosing (or threatening to disclose) the Snowden files was itself a terrorist act. The court determined that detention of Miranda was lawful under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, but also stated that the statute itself is incompatible with Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which provides the right to freedom of expression and information. This ruling will require government ministers to reexamine the Terrorism Act.

Candy crush is another example: behaviour is taken apart to the level of "we will make this level more difficult so you have to buy something or tell us the names of some of your facebook friends - which incidentally tells us who you are, how old you are, where you are, what you do, who you communicate with, how often, and probably also the contents of your contacts, so we can drop CC onto the adverts on their walls". Why was Zynga (who make CC) worth a fortune? Clue: It's not about the game! Why is Supercell worth so much? Yes, the games make money, but it's the behavioural data they're really after. Then there's stuff like this - Best practices for getting users to forget privacy concerns...https://t.co/M99jPRkQhz (go have a read, it's worth the three minutes).

If you're going to chat online, use something like Telegram or Threema. Yes, they cost money. They can't track and it's end-to-end encrypted.
Oh, and when you started Whatsapp, you uploaded all of your contacts and their details to Facebook. Wasn't that nice of you?
Google de-facto analyses all email to work out what to show you as adverts. Youtube knows what you're watching and adapts its recommendations to suit. Amazon does the same. Echo essentially listens to *everything you say* just like the voice-controlled TVs and then tries to make sense of it. This is advanced technology - do you really, really, honestly think it's about something more than making as much money as possible from you?

Privacy is dead unless you actively take a role to keep it.

- Bret

 

[Alan_uk]

Hi Brett

Oh dear, I seem to have touched a sensitive nerve!

Privacy is dead unless you actively take a role to keep it.

Agree. It's hard work to maintain privacy and I suspect most people let convenience rule - and when privacy is compromised they wont know where or why, and by then it will be too late. Personally I avoid Facebook, Twitter etc but google is getting harder to avoid and opt out.

Governments will no doubt push tracking on the grounds of safety and improved national security but criminals will easily circumvent these - they will just go online and rent a Russian hacker to disable the system, switching it back on for the MOT, if they bother with such niceties.

ANPR is expensive, so it is limited (I see lots of cameras on the motorways, trunk road and in London but never seen any in provincial areas ). Trackers will be so cheap for government as the consumer is paying, initially in the cost of the car and no doubt also an ongoing subscription to keep all those convenience functions (e.g. sat nav) operational.

 

[bretti_kivi]

ANPR is acknowledged as one of the biggest information-gathering systems in the world. It is available on *all* major intersections and perfectly capable of automatically estimating average speeds across all and any routes. Province or no - witness the project to add around 170 cameras to two areas of Birmingham listed in the Wikipedia article on the subject and I think that benign notions of the system's capabilities can be easily canned.

It's not really a nerve, it's an understanding due to what I do and who I talk to that:
- the general public do not give a monkey's about privacy and don't understand they no longer have any
- way too many people are prepared to give up any notion of privacy for convenience and cost reduction
- they trust way too far companies whose only interest is in behavioural analysis and therefore marketing
- there's no way on earth the systems that collect this data are a) unhackable b) safe and secure and c) not connected to the internet which means it's a "when" not "if" on the hacking
- the powers that are already available to governments across the globe are massive and significant.

The idea of building backdoors into encryption is stupid. OTOH, I understand law enforcement want something... some kind of key authority is going to be the only way forwards in the medium term.

Oh, and an Israeli firm recently discovered another zero day flaw, this time potentially affecting nearly 70% of all android phones. Which is >50% of the market. Has the flaw been used? we will never know.

Ease of use over security is and probably will continue to be the ultimate sacrifice of privacy, though the eCall thing has one major flaw: if there's no telephone connected, there's no ecall. But that's a small comfort... and until I know and can see what data is being saved, why, and when it's being overwritten, I do not want this in my car. Of course, there's no information on that, either, so it's another round of obfuscation, just like the Megamos issue and the new keyless-go ones - the keys and technology is "good enough" according to the car companies but no crypto experts have looked at it and I'll bet that even if they did, someone somewhere said "it's OK". Lovely, until someone works out the main crypto key, meaning the whole thing is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Which is what happened to Megamos and why we ought to be using physical devices to secure A2s.

- Bret