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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: 1, Troll) by Unixnut on Saturday January 21 2017, @02:19AM
> 80s German cars are not representative of all cars worldwide, particularly not American cars.
Well, to be honest I never worked with American cars, maybe they are really poorly built in general or something. Perhaps modern American cars really are better than the old ones. Other makes that I can say has improved since the 80s is Fiat and Lancia. Their cars really rusted easily due to lack of protection (they didn't bother to galvanize the shells).
And my point to the original poster was to buy a decent 80s or 90s car (my preference for German, but Swedish and Japanese are good too) because they are cheaper to keep running, and are overall built better, if with less fancy gadgets and luxuries. You can get really good second hand models, with the benefit that a lot of them actually are appreciating in value, rather than depreciating in value.
> Irrelevant. No one makes cars with 90 horsepower these days. Back in the 80s, that was pretty normal for an American compact. These days, a typical compact has at least 150 horsepower, which was considered a lot back in the 80s. The faster ones now have 200+HP, which back then was Corvette territory.
Well yes, it is about as irrelevant to the conversation as your post on the matter as well, which is where it came from.
Always amazed me how Americans squeeze so little power out of such large engines though. I get that there is a lot of torque, but you run out of ooomph very quickly in the rev range.
> Incredibly stupid. Cars have bigger brakes not only because of higher weight, but also increased standards.
Oh look, an insult. Brake diameter is a variable in the function of stopping power, which are matched to the curb weight of the car. Of course that isn't the only reason (I never said it was), but it is the main reason.
Of course standards have improved, but more in line with things like ABS and electronically controlled braking. Still doesn't change the fact that the bigger discs on cars are primarily due to their larger weight. That is why earlier cars could get away with smaller disk brakes than the same models later. Modern cars are really heavy.
> Incredibly stupid. Obviously, you've never had to deal with the rat's nest of vacuum hoses that were commonplace on 80s cars.
Oh, another insult, Actually I have dealt with them. Many actually, on cars from the 70's to the mid 00's. Vacuum hoses are really quite simple, never found them that taxing to deal with. Also hose is cheap! I found it usually easier to just replace entire sections of vacuum hose rather than find where is is leaking from. The later cars were more of a PITA because the vacuum houses were routed under stupid plastic covers, and packed really tightly in stupid places because there is so much stuff in an engine bay nowadays.
Again, don't know about US cars, maybe their vacuum setups were nuts.
> You're an absolute idiot. You can see it with cars on the road and how far cars actually go. Cars in the 70s and 80s did NOT last over 100k miles routinely; I was there and I remember. You sound like someone who believes the Earth is 6500 years old despite all available evidence.
Right, and more insults. You really could do without them. They don't add to the conversation, and quite frankly do more to put your posts in disrepute than affect me. They just make it look like you are lashing out at me personally to substitute for your lack of a decent argument.
I work a lot with cars, and due to the nature of my business, I see cars from the entire spectrum. There is no denying that cars from the 80s are the easiest to maintain and repair. They were assembled mostly by humans, they are simple, they are basic.
They are easier to maintain and keep on the road for the same reason a go kart would be even easier to maintain and keep on the road (if they were road worthy). This is just plain obvious to anyone who has done engineering, the simpler a system is, the fewer parts that can go wrong, the easier it is to maintain and keep running, so the longer it will last.
And a lot of those 80s cars that came into the shop have seen >100k miles. One '79 Porsche came in with 237k miles on it, which I thought impressive considering sports cars are not really built for reliability but rather performance. Car did need a top end rebuild though to bring its output power back to original.
90s-00s cars are already getting a bit tricky, more robotic assembly, more interconnected electronics and wiring to have to debug. Already turning into a rats nest of wiring and ECUs, all needing special "manufacturer computers" which are nothing more than basic laptops with crappily made software, sold for stupidly large sums of money (give me the vacuum hoses any day instead).
Latest cars I have been working on have been 2005, and already at this point you can't do much to "repair" the car, only buy and replace units and segments. Not worth the time really. Modern cars becoming disposable really. I don't think I will be looking at working on anything newer soon, the ongoing costs for certification and getting the software to debug and trouble shoot is getting too much for an independent. For the prices I would have to charge for that kind of work, people can just go to an authorised dealer. So I may well switch over to just working on the older gen cars, start a restoration business maybe. Will see how things go.
I am not sure if you are overestimating how hard older gen cars are to work on, or underestimating how hard and expensive modern cars are to work on, but I think it is one of those two.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:54PM
Americans squeeze so little power out of such large engines because we aren't taxed on displacement. If we want more power, we get a bigger engine. It's affordable and physically sensible. In places like France and Japan, that'd cost you in tax, so instead you do everything possible to get power out of a small engine.