[Infowarrior] - Fwd: Your car is watching you

[Richard Forno]

--
It's better to burn out than fade away.


> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: dan
> 
> http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160809-your-car-is-not-your-friend
> 
> How connected car tech is eroding personal privacy
> 
>   Your car is watching you -- tracking your driving style, your
>   whereabouts, and even your favourite songs. Can it be trusted?
> 
>     * By Erin Biba
> 
>   9 August 2016
> 
>   BILL SCANNELL FELL DOWN A RABBIT HOLE. All he wanted was to
>   disable a device in his car: An always-on, net-connected "helper"
>   that provides the car's driver with app connections, turn-by-turn
>   navigation, and roadside assistance... at the expense of personal
>   driving data. Similar devices track how fast you're going, how
>   hard you ride the brakes, even your final destination. And all
>   that info gets sent back to the manufacturer. Scannell wanted
>   out. Unfortunately, it was easier said than done.
> 
>   You see, Scannell is a security guy. And, while Scannell thought
>   these features of the Car-Net system in his new Volkswagen Golf
>   were pretty neat, for him the system was a lot more than the
>   "partner" that VW advertises. But he's been in privacy for years.
>   In fact, it's literally his job -- he's an adviser for security
>   start-ups. And he knows all too well how simple it is to hack
>   into a system with an open internet connection. For him, Car-Net
>   wasn't a helper. It was an opening for companies to spy on him.
>   For a hacker to take control over his steering wheel. To find
>   himself in a potentially dangerous situation.
> 
>   It's a reality that is present in basically every single new car
>   that hits the market these days. Our cars are all waking up and
>   coming online. The companies that manufacture them are filling
>   each one full of hundreds of sensors that capture endless amounts
>   of data about us and how we drive. It's the last bastion of
>   consumer information.
> 
>   And just like your mobile phone, which has been spying on you
>   for years, your car is not your friend.
> 
>   Your car forgets nothing
> 
>   Unfortunately for Scannell -- and all car owners, for that matter
>   -- disabling systems like Car-Net is no easy task. Sitting in
>   his brand new car at the dealership, watching the system's light
>   flashing (even though he never asked for it to be enabled)
>   Scannell was concerned. And then he started reading the manual.
>   He soon decided: The system had to go.
> 
>   "[Car-Net] is this two way microphone into your entire life. You
>   never know when it's on or off. Your life is not your own," he
>   says. "At this point my concern is about control. And who controls
>   what. Do I believe VW would shut my car off while I'm driving?
>   No. Do I believe there's potential, just because it's America
>   and things are weird... that someone [could] decide to shut my
>   car off? Yes."
> 
>   And his fear doesn't come out of nowhere. Hackers have already
>   proven that they're capable of this feat. Last year, Manchester-based
>   NCC Group told the BBC that they had found a way to take control
>   of a car's brakes and a variety of its systems through the car's
>   radio. In fact, they said, it would even be possible for them
>   to take control of several cars at once using the same technique.
>   All it would take was one stream of code to infiltrate a weakness
>   in the system.
> 
>   "I don't think I should have to worry about these things,"
>   Scannell says. "I'm a great believer in privacy, but I'm not a
>   privacy nut. I didn't want this thing activated. It was important
>   to me that it not be activated."
> 
>     These devices have microphones and video cameras. The on-board
>     entertainment and navigation systems keep track of what music
>     you're listening to and where you physically go in your car.
> 
>   The insidious part of these systems is that their potential to
>   do harm isn't as big or scary as a stranger taking over control
>   of your wheel.  It's the smaller, less obvious forms of data
>   collection and tracking that are starting to make privacy experts
>   very nervous.
> 
>   Ever since General Motors introduced the OnStar telematics system
>   in 1995, car makers have been busy filling vehicles with a whole
>   slew of devices that track, sense, and communicate. Most new
>   cars are equipped with about 100 electronic actuators that are
>   distributed throughout the vehicle's various systems. It's their
>   job to notice what's happening in the steering wheel, the throttle,
>   and the brakes. They sense weight on the seats and they keep
>   track of how fast the car is going. Then they log all this data,
>   store it, and send it back to the manufacturer.
> 
>   The dealership or the manufacturer will then use this data for
>   a variety of purposes. The main reasons -- at least the ones
>   that they share publicly -- are to assist the vehicle's owner
>   with car maintenance and protect their safety. Hit a certain
>   number of miles on your odometer? Your car will let you know
>   it's time for an oil change.  System notices your brake rotors
>   have started to wear down? Your car will tell you it's time for
>   a fix. In 2009 OnStar introduced Stolen Vehicle Slowdown, a
>   feature that allows the company to remotely manipulate a moving
>   vehicle's throttle response, gradually cutting the power. The
>   company touted the feature -- which is part of a security suite
>   that includes a remote engine ignition blocker and a theft-alarm
>   notification function -- as a way to safely disable a stolen
>   vehicle that was in sight of law enforcement, thereby ending a
>   high-speed chase before it started. But to privacy experts, it
>   was further proof that telematics systems could override every
>   vehicle control short of the steering wheel. And if an OnStar
>   operator could do it, they feared, couldn't a hacker?
> 
>   Beyond the actuators, there's data collection going on in the
>   OnStar and Car-Net-like systems as well. These devices have
>   microphones and video cameras. The on-board entertainment and
>   navigation systems keep track of what music you're listening to
>   and where you physically go in your car.
> 
>   In fact, in the US, there's a federally mandated "black box" --
>   an elusive device known officially as an Event Data Recorder,
>   or EDR -- that has been installed in every new car since 2014.
>   It logs much of this data, like whether or not you're wearing
>   your seatbelt, for use in law enforcement and post-accident
>   assessment. There is basically no aspect of the driving experience
>   that can't be measured, quantified, and logged.
> 
>   "It's the field of dreams approach to privacy and surveillance,"
>   says Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier
>   Foundation, a non-profit organisation that is dedicated to
>   protecting civil rights in the digital world. "If there are
>   sensors in cars collecting data that pertain to what people are
>   doing then there will be a law enforcement interest. We start
>   there. But we recognise that it's all of the companies, whether
>   car vendors or third party vendors, that also have a lot of use
>   for that data. It's the car analogue to data on the internet.
>   You go to Facebook and they're sucking in data.  Google -- they're
>   sucking in data. If you build it, they will come."
> 
>   No easy way out
> 
>   After being met with blank stares and shrugs by salesmen at the
>   VW dealership when Scannell asked if his Car-Net system was
>   running or not, he ultimately decided the best bet would be to
>   try and get it removed. And, because he's tech guy, he turned
>   to the Internet to see if anyone had attempted the task on their
>   own. Car-Net, he found, was a lot more than just a little module
>   that could be yanked out. In an online forum for Golf owners,
>   he found someone who had tried to remove the system.
> 
>   A step-by-step photo essay on the forum shows user "shoku"
>   dismantling their entire dashboard and finally teasing out the
>   Car-Net box, which is marked with a label that notes opening the
>   box voids the warranty. "Inside we find a pretty dense multi-layer
>   circuit board.  Compared to my Nexus 5 cell phone, it has way
>   more components," shoku writes. "Under the board is a loose
>   plastic bit with some terminals.  Definitely the cell antenna.
>   Just removing the antenna did not disable the communications.
>   It was able to connect as if nothing was wrong, even after I
>   tried shorting the leads together."
> 
>     There is basically no aspect of the driving experience that
>     can't be measured, quantified, and logged.
> 
>   This is the part that Scannell says is the most concerning. Even
>   when the system's antenna was physically disconnected, the car
>   was still online. He says that buried deep in the dashboard is
>   Verizon cell phone 3G hardware that's always on. "Whether you've
>   provisioned it or not," he says. "You can still wirelessly connect
>   to the car."
> 
>   According to Dorothy Glancy, a professor of law at Santa Clara
>   Law School, and a nationally known expert on transportation and
>   privacy security law, all of this data collection and wireless
>   connectivity is perfectly legal. "The government isn't doing
>   anything about this," she says. There are few laws that protect
>   the privacy of the information that you generate inside your
>   car. The only real auto-related privacy protections the US federal
>   government affords are for the records held by the Department
>   of Motor Vehicles.
> 
>   And this has some nerve-wracking implications for consumer
>   protection that go beyond a little snooping. For example, US-based
>   Progressive Insurance recently introduced Snapshot, a biscuit-sized
>   device that plugs into a car's standard onboard diagnostics port.
>   During the sample period (usually at least 75 days), the module
>   tracks vehicle speed, time of day and location -- thanks to
>   integrated GPS, included "for research and development purposes".
>   The module uses this data to extrapolate acceleration rates and
>   braking force. (The device actually beeps during hard braking,
>   to evoke a sort of Pavlovian response to "bad" driving.) The
>   company then provides all the data in a handy, easy-to-access
>   online page on your Progressive account. Progressive says voluntary
>   use of the device will allow the user to "get a personalised car
>   insurance rate based on how you drive."
> 
>   And Progressive isn't the only US insurance company that has
>   started providing this service. Allstate also has a similar
>   device called Drivewise, Nationwide has SmartRide, and StateFarm
>   has DriveSafe and Save, which actually collects its data through
>   customers' pre-existing OnStar systems. Glancy says that, while
>   these services are elective, it's not completely clear what
>   exactly insurance companies are doing with all the information
>   they're gathering. "I've been concerned about this being misleading
>   to consumers," she says. And because there are no laws to protect
>   consumer privacy in this arena, she continued, it would be very
>   difficult to use legal measures to reveal how the data is being
>   processed.
> 
>   A spokesperson for Progressive says they try to be clear about
>   how they manage data, but that policy is not necessarily the
>   norm industry-wide.  According to Progressive's terms of service,
>   the company says they don't use the data to resolve an insurance
>   claim unless you ask them to. Though they do say they will share
>   it in response to a legal subpoena, or "to a state department
>   of insurance to support renewal rates, to service providers who
>   are contractually required to maintain its confidentiality;
>   and/or as otherwise required by law." Lastly, the terms of service
>   do state they share non-identifiable forms of the data "more
>   broadly" -- "de-personalising the data means that we remove
>   personally identifiable information so that the data cannot be
>   associated with a particular driver or policyholder."
> 
>   Spilling secrets
> 
>   Five car gadgets that could invade your privacy
> 
>   some text
> 
>   STANDALONE GPS NAV UNITS Most basic dash-top GPS devices are
>   strictly receivers, using satellite-provided location data to
>   drive internal mapping software.  But even the simplest of them
>   still record detailed location information -- data that could
>   be harvested when the unit is connected to a computer for annual
>   map updates or, if the unit has a Bluetooth chip or an FM radio
>   transmitter, snagged out of thin air.
> 
>   TOLLWAY TRANSPONDERS Intended to allow motorists to breeze past
>   the cash-carrying plebes lined up at toll booths, these radio
>   frequency identification (RFID) modules transmit user data to
>   antennae above the roadway. These pulses of information confirm
>   the identity of the module's owner and deduct funds from a prepaid
>   account, logging time and location in the process.  What else
>   can such transponders do? Measuring the time it takes a car to
>   move from one antenna to the next gives an accurate indication
>   of vehicle speed. And if that speed is higher than the posted
>   limit...
> 
>   DASHBOARD CAMERAS Dashcams are purchased on the optimistic
>   assumption that in the event of a collision, somebody else will
>   be at fault and the video evidence will provide courtroom triumph
>   for the cam's owner. But dashcam data -- which along with a video
>   record includes location, speed, braking, and impact-force data
>   -- works both ways, and you can be assured that deleting an
>   incriminating clip will not be looked upon favourably by the
>   court.
> 
>   GPS TRACKING DEVICES Aftermarket gadgets like the LoJack GPS
>   tracker were created to allow law-enforcement agencies to locate
>   and recover stolen vehicles in real time. But there is no denying
>   that such real-time data could be quite useful to a variety of
>   parties: parents with driving teenagers, spouses with trust
>   issues, insurance companies, rental-car agencies, even employers
>   with field employees.
> 
>   OBD-II BLUETOOTH MODULES Once the sole purview of service
>   technicians with special training and expensive gear, the data
>   that flows to a car's onboard diagnostics port - engine fault
>   codes, fuel consumption and more -- can now be tapped and broadcast
>   via Bluetooth-equipped modules like the Automatic dongle, which
>   pairs to a free smartphone app. The setup allows users to
>   scrutinize their car's internal workings, and combine this info
>   with location data to track trips, find a parked car, or locate
>   a fuel station. And all of that information -- the mundane and
>   the sensitive -- is pumped into the cloud. What happens to it
>   up there, well... -- Matthew Phenix
> 
>   Allstate, on the other hand, has been pretty boisterous in its
>   excitement about the possibility of monetising consumer data.
>   To incentivise their Drivewise program, they give customers
>   rewards points just for enrolling. And then, as they use the
>   device, customers earn additional points towards rewards like
>   merchandise and gift cards. In May last year, according to a
>   Bloomberg story, the company's CEO Tom Wilson, while speaking
>   at a conference in New York, noted several companies that are
>   currently making money by collecting their customer's data:
>   "Could we, should we, sell this information we get from people
>   driving around to various people and capture some additional
>   profit source, and perhaps give a better value proposition to
>   our customers? ... It's a long-term game," he said.
> 
>   In fact, both Glancy and the EFF's Tien agree that marketing
>   companies are desperate to get inside your vehicle and figure
>   out what the heck you do there. For generations, the only way
>   marketers have been able to get at us in our cars have been
>   passively, through billboards or radio ads.
> 
>   Being in the car, says Tien, "it's alone time. Whether I sneeze
>   or fart or yell, it's very private in a weird way. From a
>   marketer's perspective they're really curious. They want to know.
>   It's an area they haven't been able to get much data on. Now
>   that [data is] going to be available and it completes the
>   profiling. It's one of the last frontiers for areas where you
>   can get data about people." The incentives to spy on people, he
>   says, are very strong.
> 
>   Drive carefully -- marketers are watching
> 
>   When Scannell decided he didn't want to void his warranty by
>   tearing out Car-Net on his own, he turned to Volkswagen to help
>   him deal with the device. After what he calls a "Terry Gilliam
>   Brazil-like" experience of being told the system would need to
>   be turned on before it could be disabled, the company eventually
>   said removing the system would be impossible. In a letter sent
>   to him by their CARE customer service division, the Region Case
>   Manager wrote: "Volkswagen is unable to meet your request to
>   remove the Car-Net system or module from your vehicle. Doing
>   this would void certain warranties and may interfere with some
>   safety features on your Golf, such as the immobilizer system."
> 
>   According to Tien, safety is always going to be at odds with
>   consumer privacy and protection when it comes to manufacturers.
>   "Pretty much everything we want socially we can get without
>   having to give up privacy. But it's very easy to not protect
>   privacy. The only people who care are ordinary people. Because
>   neither the companies nor the government really care very much.
>   They may pay lip service to it, but it's always going to be
>   overwritten by safety, or collision avoidance, or emissions
>   standards. All these grand good things," he says.
> 
>   How customer privacy is treated varies. According to Glancy, the
>   German car manufacturers avoided installing the black box tracking
>   devices into their cars for years. And Ford, meanwhile, recently
>   created a program called the Driver Behaviour Project in the UK.
>   That project would provide drivers with a plug-in device much
>   like the Progressive Snapshot, that would assign drivers a
>   personal score based on their driving behavior. And Ford says
>   that they believe customers own their own data.
> 
>   According to Don Butler, Ford's executive director of Connected
>   Vehicles and Services, respecting people's privacy in their cars
>   preserves their trust in the company. And there are few things
>   more important for a car brand then to ensure that their customers
>   trust them. "I want to be very, very clear that we don't track
>   customers. We value and treasure the data on behalf of the
>   customer," he says. Ford has set up an internal council that
>   makes policy recommendations and decisions throughout the company
>   to ensure the protection of privacy.
> 
>   That said, this January Ford announced it had entered into a
>   partnership with Amazon to allow its drivers to connect to their
>   cars and Ford's technology through the cloud. This new feature
>   effectively turns the car into an Amazon Echo on wheels. The
>   Echo is an always-on device that has already sparked huge privacy
>   concerns as it sits in your living room quietly and passively
>   listening for you to give it a command. And now it will quietly
>   listen to you in your car as well.
> 
>   As our vehicles become more and more automated, that sense of
>   trust and security Ford is attempting to cultivate will become
>   even more important. After all, if humans hand their control
>   over their vehicles to self-driving cars, then manufacturers
>   will be responsible for individual lives on a level they never
>   have before.
> 
>   In the end, Scannell says he never got any sort of positive
>   resolution with VW. "There's no where I can go with this," he
>   says. "We get to drive our VW Golf SportWagen [and hope that]
>   someone doesn't shut it off on us. We are not given legal recourse.
>   There's no remedy for us to have control over our vehicle."
> 
>     Whether I sneeze or fart or yell, it's very private in a weird
>     way.  From a marketer's perspective they're really curious.
>     They want to know.
> 
>   Volkswagen, however, says that Scannell wasn't given the full
>   story by the CARE letter he received. According to Frank Weith,
>   General Manager of Connected Services at Volkswagen Group of
>   America, "What the letter doesn't outline is that we do have the
>   capability to completely sever the connection from the car to
>   the cellular network. The customer would have to bring their
>   vehicle to the dealer where it would be put into 'flight mode'.
>   The result is the same as if the module were removed from the
>   vehicle. This can only be done at the dealer."
> 
>   Once this "flight mode" is enabled the Car-Net system, he says,
>   effectively becomes a "brick in the car" and the dealer will
>   also perform a test to ensure that the vehicle is not capable
>   of sending or receiving information.
> 
>   In some ways, it's consumers themselves that can partly take on
>   blame for this state of affairs. Much like what happened with
>   our phones and location tracking, people "see what the want to
>   see," says the EFF's Tien. "It's a lack of imagination -- or
>   lack of technical literacy.  People are used to things being a
>   certain way. When things get upgraded their expectations tend
>   to stay with them even when [devices] are evolving under their
>   noses. As long as it gives them what they want to get out of it
>   the idea that it's capturing information doesn't seem terrible."
> 
>   That means ultimately it will be up to consumers to demand privacy
>   from manufacturers before they will give up access to our data,
>   because there's no incentive for them to do otherwise -- especially
>   when only security experts like Scannell are the types of consumers
>   that are calling for it.
> 
>   "Some manufacturers may be more friendly to your privacy than
>   others," says Glancy. "But we ought to have more friendly cars.
>   The car shouldn't be a rat or an adversary. It's supposed to be
>   a tool for us to have personal mobility. But it's kind of turned
>   on us in odd ways."
> 
>     Marketing companies are desperate to get inside your vehicle
>     and figure out what the heck you do there.
> 
>   And, while it may feel like Volkswagen is the bad guy of this
>   story, they're not even close to being the only car manufacturer
>   that has equipped their vehicles with on-board systems that send
>   and receive data. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Lexus, Toyota, Nissan,
>   Infiniti, Honda, Acura, Mini, Hyundai, and Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep
>   cars all come with their own versions of Car-Net. And, of course,
>   every single new car that hits the road is federally mandated
>   in the US to have a little black box.
> 
>   These snooping systems aren't going to get less intrusive over
>   time.  Unless, of course, consumers start calling for privacy.
>   As Scannell's example clearly highlights, even though the
>   manufacturers may be building in an off-switch, the consumer
>   desire to protect their own privacy is so low that even knowledge
>   of the switch's existence appears to have been a mystery to the
>   dealer, the customer service team, and the technicians they
>   consulted with. Only Weith, a top executive at the company,
>   managed to have a solution to Scannell's problem. It's likely
>   that wouldn't have been the case if more customers had been
>   asking to have their Car-Net systems disabled.
> 
>   Once cars become fully driverless they will rely entirely on
>   their outgoing and incoming data connection to function properly.
>   And that means we are currently laying the groundwork for what
>   the future of privacy in our cars will look like. If people
>   actually do care about protecting themselves from manufacturers
>   and marketers that want to watch their every vehicular move, the
>   time to speak up is now.  Otherwise it could very, very quickly
>   become too late.
>