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from the is-Howard-Stern-listening-in-on-you? dept.
A recent techdirt article says that
Thomas Fox-Brewster of Forbes is taking a closer look at a decade-plus of in-car surveillance, courtesy of electronics and services manufacturers are installing in as many cars as possible.
Following the news that cops are trying to sweat down an Amazon Echo in hopes of hearing murder-related conversations, it's time to revisit the eavesdropping that's gone on for years prior to today's wealth of in-home recording devices.
One of the more recent examples can be found in a 2014 warrant that allowed New York police to trace a vehicle by demanding the satellite radio and telematics provider SiriusXM provide location information.
In this case, SiriusXM complied by turning on its "stolen vehicle recovery" mode, which allowed law enforcement to track the vehicle for ten days. SiriusXM told Forbes it only does this in response to search warrants and court orders. That may be the case for real-time tracking, but any location information captured and stored by SiriusXM can be had with nothing more than a subpoena, as this info is normally considered a third-party record.
It's not just satellite radio companies allowing cops to engage in surreptitious tracking. OnStar and other in-vehicle services have been used by law enforcement to eavesdrop on personal conversations between drivers and passengers.
In at least two cases, individuals unwittingly had their conversations listened in on by law enforcement. In 2001, OnStar competitor ATX Technologies (which later became part of Agero) was ordered to provide "roving interceptions" of a Mercedes Benz S430V. It initially complied with the order in November of that year to spy on audible communications for 30 days, but when the FBI asked for an extension in December, ATX declined, claiming it was overly burdensome.
The 2001 case didn't end well for law enforcement. It wasn't that the court had an issue with the eavesdropping, but rather that the act of listening in limited the functionality of the in-car tech, which the court found to be overly-burdensome.
[...] Law enforcement may find encryption to be slowing things down in terms of accessing cell phone contents, but everything else -- from in-car electronics to the Internet of Things -- is playing right into their hands.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Friday January 20 2017, @07:30PM
From the Wiki
> Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.
> Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some
> equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
Pretty impressive from someone who couldn't imagine how, courtesy of the Internet, people would actually do it to themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @08:13PM
I find this puts it into perspective too https://xkcd.com/1227/ [xkcd.com]
We look upon the past and think 'how did they do it without xyz'?! When the reality is they did not even care because they did not know about it. When what we did with the internet is take the very systems they built re-imaged them and smashed them into 1 interface HTTP. With the internet we just have more immediacy of what is going on. Where as it used to take a modicum of physical work.
Take for example video games. I collect them. I have about 2500 purchased copies and about 30k in 'warez'. No way I can play all of them. Out of each generation of games there is a tiny handful that are amazing 'must play' games and a few 'hidden' treasures no one played because they just did not get sold much for whatever reason. There are however hundreds of games in each generation that are not worth playing/owning at all. We look back at say the NES and think of Zelda or Super Mario Bros most were not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @11:08PM
Are you saying Eric Bristow's Darts was not a classic? How DARE you, sir!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @11:23PM
i doubt huxley cared. he was probably just using insider knowledge(his brother or somebody was working on the shit he put in his book) to make a buck/get notoriety. maybe make himself feel better about his family being involved in the domestication of the human animal.