[BlackPearl]

At first I thought the title of the post to be clickbait, but since it was on BBC, I thought of going through it. This is a proper crime story! The telemetry on the Land Rover Discovery Sport (though the article says just Discovery) helped in catching the murderer. Without this information it would have been impossible for the police to catch the suspect. A lot of questions might be raised regarding a vehicle sharing information back to the makers, and I in particular am not much in favour of such advanced things. I like vehicles to be old school and simple. But after going through this article I might change my mind.

The article -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51466273


Excerpt from the article -

The complexity of the case saw it generate 5,500 documents and involve a team of 50 police officers before going to a trial lasting five weeks.

"If it wasn't for the electronics, the black box in the Land Rover - which didn't just record information but sent it to Jaguar Land Rover, Whall would have got away with his lies," the jury was told.

That, with Whall's crossbow record and the burning of the Land Rover, gave police enough pieces of the jigsaw which would convict him.

Det Ch Insp Brian Kearney of North Wales Police said it was a "planned, premeditated execution from a cold blooded killer".

[padmrajravi]

Good that I don't have a car with a sim card. Not that I want to murder someone, but somehow the thought of my every movement being tracked and recorded does not feel nice. Though, this telemetry data can even be used as an alibi in case people get wrongly accused.

The level of detail is amazing. It even records the time at which doors were opened and closed

[2000rpm]

Originally Posted by padmrajravi

Good that I don't have a car with a sim card. Not that I want to murder someone, but somehow the thought of my every movement being tracked and recorded does not feel nice. Though, this telemetry data can even be used as an alibi in case people get wrongly accused.

The level of detail is amazing. It even records the time at which doors were opened and closed

There is no point resisting this. Your movements are anyways tracked by Google. Check out your google timeline and you will realize how well tracked you are.

[dark.knight]

Originally Posted by 2000rpm

There is no point resisting this. Your movements are anyways tracked by Google. Check out your google timeline and you will realize how well tracked you are.

If someone wants to be a wee bit old school I think its refreshing, and should be encouraged. Not resisting the great technology prison doesn't mean we all strap Go-pros on our heads, have a 24/7 smart device on our person and willingly surrender our mind, body and soul to Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. That would be naivety at its finest, putting it softly.

I only use data when needed else its disabled and the location is permanently off, now I know they'll still manage to harvest data in some way or form, arguably.. that's ok, I do my bit against selling my soul.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by 2000rpm

There is no point resisting this. Your movements are anyways tracked by Google. Check out your google timeline and you will realize how well tracked you are.

There is an app called as Life360 which allows a family to track its members. Technology is a double edged sword - in that it has its advantages and disadvantages. The app I mentioned above is quite useful for parents. It can even send an alert if any of your family member gets out of the house.

[2000rpm]

Originally Posted by dark.knight

If someone wants to be a wee bit old school I think its refreshing, and should be encouraged. Not resisting the great technology prison doesn't mean we all strap Go-pros on our heads, have a 24/7 smart device on our person and willingly surrender our mind, body and soul to Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. That would be naivety at its finest, putting it softly.

I only use data when needed else its disabled and the location is permanently off, now I know they'll still manage to harvest data in some way or form, arguably.. that's ok, I do my bit against selling my soul.

Thats the point, noone is doing it willingly. I am very old-school myself and dont even make a single post on social media sites like FB, Twitter, Insta, etc.

Dont get me wrong, I resisted it as much as possible, but there is no way around it if you want to use the features and benefits its provides. If you use a smartphone, most apps require location access. Google Maps, Uber / Ola, Swiggy / Zomato, Dunzo, mIndicator. If you are a part of the digital world, you will be tracked. Even if you resist, they will find a way. I would strongly suggest you read up on the Darkweb and what info is sold there. You will realize what I am trying to day.

The best way to avoid this is, use multiple, completely unrelated accounts and use them sporadically such that no one service provider gets all your info. Usage of browsers like TOR which wont provide your details easily. Basically distribute your data such that it is not concentrated with google or FB or Whatsapp OR, use a feature phone.

We should have a seperate thread on this and some experts here can provide some tips on this.

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

What's is the lesson?



A. That you can be traced from your connected car?

B. That the investigation and trial for a murder can be completed in 12 months and not 21 years? Oh. No special court too.

C. Both?

D. None of the above. Aw. We are Indians. Our politicians are corrupt. Our police are corrupt. (Neither the politician, nor the policeman is a part of the sociery)



Oops. I'm in a cynical mood

[Stribog]

Originally Posted by padmrajravi

Good that I don't have a car with a sim card. Not that I want to murder someone, but somehow the thought of my every movement being tracked and recorded does not feel nice. Though, this telemetry data can even be used as an alibi in case people get wrongly accused.

The level of detail is amazing. It even records the time at which doors were opened and closed

You have the choice now but in my opinion, we are barely at the cusp of the "tracked world".

Autonomous cars are coming, like it or not. Maybe in 25 odd years it will be fully realised and made available to the mass market. Of the 5 levels AI available we are already at lvl 3 (cars can drive themselves but you still need a human to give active inputs regularly). The leap to stage 4 will be the challenge because here except severe weather or unmapped areas, cars are entirely autonomous.

Once we get here, cars will constantly be talking with servers in the cloud.

Even otherwise, surveillance cameras are getting cheaper by the day and govts are saturating cities (incl Indian cities) with these. With costs not a factor, dashcams, surveillance cams installed by pvt Citizens will also add to the blanket coverage.

Payments are increasingly electronic and Payment apps monetise your data.

Attendence systems are getting increasingly biometric (costs here used to be so prohibitive that only top military and govt research sites used to have these even 20 years ago)

Then... The ubiquitous phones. Sim cards are constantly feeding your info to telecom companies. Apps that mandate sharing oh location as mandatory are also doing the same.

With the rise of smart appliances...hello 24/7 tracking.

So in these case, assume you aren't using a "smart car"which you aren't ofc, even then your phone will betray your location. Then using that a pic of your movements can be made out using smart cams. Maybe slightly more difficult not not very.

My friend, humankind is just scratching the tip of the tip of the iceberg of a connected 24/7 surveillance state. It will make big brother look petty once it is fully done.

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

What's is the lesson?



A. That you can be traced from your connected car?

B. That the investigation and trial for a murder can be completed in 12 months and not 21 years? Oh. No special court too.

C. Both?

D. None of the above. Aw. We are Indians. Our politicians are corrupt. Our police are corrupt. (Neither the politician, nor the policeman is a part of the sociery)



Oops. I'm in a cynical mood

Sorry but to assume that British police and system is somehow above corruption is misplaced.

They have covered up literal paedophiles because they were rich and connected (possibly even to the royal family). The govt has ordered a media clampdown on such coverage under a British law that allows this.

And across the pond, should I talk about Epstein? A Paedo who supplied children to other paedos and whose first "arrest" was in a county jail but he was given the permission to fly anywhere on his private jet, as long as he got back by midnight?

Or that this most wanted guy, already in suicide watch suddenly "commits" suicide, and the only tape (yes that's right) of his prison is missing and the guard can't recall anything?

Please let us not bring in unrelated things.

[SreeT]

I personally cannot stand that a company gets live data from my car and store it in their servers. The detail of the information transmitted is astounding. Why does anyone need to know, live, when I've opened my boot or turned on a light in my car that I brought at full cost?

The case was 90% solved by 'good ol' police work', without infringing on anyone's rights. The telemetrics might have let the case be closed maybe a few months earlier, which in my opinion is not remarkable enough for all of us to be tracked and monitored, to be 'kept in line' by the government or anyone else. They abuse our need for safety and security, to slowly push more and more of such measures, till the people in power can put us all in a virtual cage where we live in an apparent free world while anyone showing a slight sign of dissent will be met with swift and secret punishment.

Privacy is an absolute necessity for humanity, for it is essential for ideas to be thought of and to be shared freely, to have a society where everyone is truly free and for humanity to have a beautiful future, instead of a future where we all slave unknowingly for the few people who have control over ideas- and such a future is infinitely worse than any slight advantages such monitoring might have. We live in the safest time humanity has ever lived in and we need to stop being afraid, because then we have something to be taken advantage of.

[nasa_hubble]

Couple of months ago there was news regarding a stolen Scorpio being caught within 5 hours of theft with the help of information from FASTag. The tag was providing vehicle location as it was crossing toll booths. Although the tag cannot share extensive data like the Discovery Sport but being able to track down a vehicle by FASTag gives surveillance options to government agencies.

I will not be surprised to read few years down the road that a car with connected features and microphone was used to eavesdrop, or email and other data hacked from phone connected to a car with eSIM.

[McLaren Rulez]

Honestly, it's outrageous that third parties (Google, FB and now, car companies) track your movements to this level.

The BBC article's tone suggests that this was a good thing i.e. don't do anything illegal and you have nothing to worry about. I'm not so sure though - it's high time there was a privacy revolution in tech.

[yesyeswe]

Imagine you get in middle of some serious things, you are falsely accused, people are after you, you try to run away, maybe move to some unknown isolated place to hide.

But your car is a connected one, (which people have made a deciding factor nowadays) soon people are able to track you down and you're caught, and you finally wake up from your thriller dream

There are both pros and cons to all these connected features, and we are moving towards them whether we want it or not, unless we leave everything and start living in an isolated place we will be watched, and companies will try to sell this data to make money.

[Ruchitya]

I remember reading about a case in the USA some (many) years ago that was solved using information from the telephone company about a particular user. This was a user who committed a serious act in violation of the law. Permission to access his specific phone data was used as a precedent to access pretty much every phone user's data, and now, the Government through it's agencies can gain access to all of one's phone usage.
I can see this particular case being used as a precedent to push for more information collection in automobiles. If anyone tells you this is a good thing, remind them this case is an exception. An outlier should not be used to justify mass surveillance.

[vik99]

Convergence (buzzword from yesteryears), IoT (the buzz today), smart devices (smartphones, smart refrigerators, smart homes etc), connected cars are all means to a mostly single end...increased visibility into the lives of individuals and the functioning of organisations.

If you are wondering why, let me remind you of a statement in the recent past by a famous Indian businessman "data is the new oil".

Many free and paid services which claim to provide some or the other service in return for your data in its electronic form hoard this data or at least metadata (i.e. data describing the actual data without including it's content).

More often than not we share data with these services without even realising that we are doing so. You'd be surprised to know that you yourself authorised the app to do so while agreeing to the Terms of Service(TOS) or the End User License Agreement (EULA).

TOS/EULA are usually so long that it would take even a lawyer hours to read them! This isn't by chance. If some so you were using were to tell you briefly, in clear terms, that they intend to track your location so that it could be sold you wouldn't really be interested in using the App would you?

What use is all this data of to these companies you may ask, and rightly so. Oil is black gold, data then is digital gold. Data is money, and there are Data Brokers who offer this data to marketers who then use it to run advertising campaigns. Of course there are the bad guys who steal from the data brokers, like the incident mentioned here wherein a "database of 49 million business contacts sold online on a underground hacking forum", or here wherein 340 million records were leaked by a data broker.

All of this data is used to generate profiles of individuals so as to offer them customized experiences in these Apps/Services...ever wondered why Facebook shows you advertising for car insurance after you have just checked out some offers on from auto insurance websites? Customized services

Sorry about going OT, it was in the interest of giving some context to the issue at hand.

You car company may not explicitly sell data to advertisers or data brokers, but that doesn't mean that the data(telemetry and what not) that they are storing can't or won't be stolen by malicious actors. We are living in an age where just about every organisation with a presence on the Internet has been hacked. It's just that some don't know that they've been hacked yet.

There are other issues than sharing/sale of data for advertising here, imagine what insurance companies would pay to get an eye in on the driving habits of individuals?

As far as the use of data by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) in solving crimes goes, it depends on the level of access the LEA has to the data. There still is a kind of apartheid at play here. Police in Karnataka will surely not have the same level of access that the cops in the US/UK do. This is simply because the entities that hold the data are beyond their jurisdiction. Most technology firms are US based and they expect requests (under most circumstances) from LEAs of other countries to follow due legal process (read indefinite waiting periods).

So you think you need not worry as you have nothing to hide? Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia which is relevant in this context...Edward Snowden: "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

[landcruiser123]

I find this creepy. If it can be used to track murderers today, not far is the day when this data is used by divorce lawyers and other such parties to track one's movements.

While I'm comfortable with data collection, I'm not comfortable with the way it is being used. Irrespective of strict laws or privacy policies, the government is always playing catch-up when private companies are having a free run. Unlike issues involving material problems like deforestation or soot in the air, this is a hard one for the government to study especially considering the amount of lobbying tech giants have.