And once you've gotten rid of Google and Apple, your telecom company tracks you, your CC payments help track you and even cameras in public do.
It's hard to not want to throw your hands in the air screaming "whatever" when almost everything you use in public is somehow used to track you either as you move around, or in the future.
This is one of those things that can't ever be solved with individual solutions but needs to be solved through legislation and standards, and ideally a fundamental right to privacy (and a fundamental redefinition of what privacy means when it comes to corporate surveillance of individuals).
Needless to say, cars in the UK/EU have no such privacy invading features without an explicit opt-in thanks to sensible data protection legislation; including the GDPR.
The FUD spouted on here by the scummy adtech industry about legislation to protect YOUR privacy is mind boggling. These are the people doing the digital equivalent of sniffing your underwear to work out what you had for breakfast.
(And before somebody shouts FUD about the UK/EU vehicle eCall 112 system, that certainly doesn't track you or seek to invade your privacy on any level!)
>cars in the UK/EU have no such privacy invading features If you say so.
Maybe if you buy the car with cash, but if you finance it you are leasing from a company that has definetly accepted all the terms and conditions to capture and sell all the telemetry to various parties
>without an explicit opt-in
check out at a modern volvo/audi/whatever, they are making it so difficult to say no every single time the screen is powered on
> if you finance it you are leasing from a company that has definetly accepted all the terms and conditions to capture and sell all the telemetry to various parties
No it isn't. Stop spreading FUD.
It is illegal in the UK/EU to make provision of a service dependent on allowing your personal data to be sold to third parties. This is BASIC data protection law here. You should be embarrassed for not understanding this.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...
> modern volvo/audi/whatever, they are making it so difficult to say no every single time the screen is powered on
More FUD.
The nagware is for "safety" features such as lane assist which must turn on every time by default (yes, this is a PITA). This has nothing whatsoever to do with data privacy requests.
I'm in europe and I work with cars, pal.
nagware is absolutely not for safety features. Deny the terms and conditions and every time you start the car you have at least three screens you have to scroll and click buttons. It is a very recent feature, have seen it on models from january onwards.
BTW: You also want to deny that because if you agree you also agree to update the system at their will (many cases on the press of them fucking it up, bricking cars requiring ECU replacement. A couple of manufactures i won't mention fucked that up as badly as using two different ECU makes for the same car model, and sending the wrong binary and the bootloader happily accepting it. All without user approving the update beforehand. All happening in the background. Car stops at the sign, ECU reboots and dies.)
You also have constant nagware when you disable the tracking features in software.
A class action lawsuit in the making! Pal.
I seriously wish it happened.
Sure, and Volkswagen’s diesel cars are totally clean and pass emissions tests as written.
Your trust in the law (EU law! Haha) to do the enforcing itself is nice, but history and lived experience tell me that these laws are going to be skirted if there’s money in it.
Sorry, I missed the bit where the company was fined, prosecuted, suffered a consumer backlash and subsequently brought their behaviour into check.
Honestly, the number of people on here spreading FUD and defending the 'right' for the adtech industry to invade their private lives and treat them like shit is unreal. One could almost think their salaries are dependent on it!
> It is illegal in the UK/EU to make provision of a service dependent on allowing your personal data to be sold to third parties.
Nobody seems to care and this isn't enforced at all.
It is very hard to live in Germany without having a google account. Many services are only offered via phone-app that is only available through play-store. I'd have to use apks from questionable, untrusted third-party websites.
Good luck finding an employer that doesn't require you to have a microsoft account.
The EU is not the privacy paradise some make it seem to be. It's a corrupt, bureaucratic, exploitive nightmare with some splashes of democracy here and there.
Von der Leyen is the perfectly ridiculous representative, she left nothing but corruption, collusion and incompetence in her wake.
> It is very hard to live in Germany without having a google account
Which in the EU/UK, is subject to data protection law; including compulsory opt-in for sharing personal data!
Granted, the scummy adtech industry push the law to the limit ("legitimate use"), meaning we need better regulation, not less.
> The EU is not the privacy paradise some make it seem to be
Nobody said anything about paradise, though considering the unrestrained nature of adtech in the USA, I certainly know under which laws I'd rather my (and others) personal data is kept.
Replying to my own comment to inform the reader that the fluctuation in moderation points I'm seeing is frankly, extreme! It looks like my parent comment has really touched a nerve here on HN: Privacy supporters Vs Adtech supporters, or maybe those who believe in rule of law, and those who think they can do what they like with others private data.
In addition to the eCall system, note there is also the mandatory OBFCM (On-board Fuel and/or Energy Consumption Monitoring Device), that data is then downloaded from the vehicles using OBD during checks.
The data is anonymized and you can opt out, but many people probably don't know it's collected in the first place.
> (And before somebody shouts FUD about the UK/EU vehicle eCall 112 system, that certainly doesn't track you or seek to invade your privacy on any level!)
How do you know?
BTW, the checking all the opt-ins is usually the first thing the sales person does when selling a new car.
> How do you know?
And the FUD has started. Maybe try reading the law?
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-em...
I did read the law. Did you? The actual eCall specs are not in there. They are in EN 16102:2011 which is not free, I don't have it, I won't pay for it, and probably you won't either.
But based on my experiece:
- GPS cold start requires 1-2 minutes to get a fix. That's too long in case of a crash. That means GPS is started at the same time as the car.
- A-GPS is better, but not sufficiently fast in case of a crash either.
- The cheapest way to implement an eCall module is to use a phone chip that includes both phone and GPS functions. I'm sure we can agree that all manufacturers will choose the cheapest. That means the telephony is started at the same time as GPS - when the car is started.
- Let's assume that telephony chip is separated. A phone boots in ... 30s? Too slow even if the eCall module doesn't include a full OS.
- A phone in airplane mode still takes 5-10 seconds to connect to the network and 3-5 seconds to dial. If you press the ecall button on your car, how fast does the call connect? If it's less than 5s, the ecall module was already registered on the network. If it's registered on the network, the car leaves a metadata trail on at least one of the local phone operators' servers. That metadata includes the time and the cell towers = full tracking data.
- GSM networks since the beginning mandate that the SIM card can execute commands received from the network. A SIM card is a full independent embedded processor. You should really watch the Defcon and BackHat presentations about SIM cards. Anyone that can send binary SMSs (and most operators are very ignorant/permissive) can track it, start calls, listen on the mic, etc.
- All telephony chips today support packet data. If the car manufacturer wants to, it can preinstall tracking software.
Because no company has ever broken the law before
What a ridiculous argument!
So what is the point in having laws then?
No doubt you believe any adtech request for personal data should be met by the subject promptly bending over and grabbing their ankles with both hands?
I am absolutely sure (even though I can't give a link as proof) that all telephony operators everywhere have to provide a backdoor for the "authorities" in order to obtain their licence. So, yes, a telecom provider will be bending over immediately, or risk losing their licence.
I also suspect that in many cases, the operator won't even be informed about the tracking because the gov agencies already have direct access to all the data.
Laws exist to keep the common man in check, and to punish government organizations and corporations _if_ they get caught. The original purpose is to keep voters meek and to stop them from overthrowing the politicians. Laws have very little to do with scaring corporations and nations.
I'm tempted to say "oh you sweet summer child", because it seems just unbelievable that the statement is true (in the sense that the small print in rental cars and sales contracts doesn't allow it, ot it's done by law enforcement agencies surrepticiously).
But maybe it IS true. I know it's legally mandated.
> it seems just unbelievable that the statement is true
So do you think UK/EU vehicle manufactures are deliberately in mass breach of data privacy law... fully knowing the cost of a consumer backlash, fines and vehicle recall costs to fix any law breach?
Really?
It's genuinely amazing how many Americans on here (a tech news site!) are unaware of data privacy law and expectations outside their homeland.
I really do think there is a good chance that say MI5 or the BND or the DGSE flagrantly ignore the law to catch non-national evildoers, just as much as in the US. The temptation to do this 'in the name of security' is very high.
Of course, I can't or won't prove it.
And yes, I am _intimately_ familiar with the GDPR and other laws and regulations. The US also had (has) wiretapping laws that would have prevented snooping on Americans.
I'm not claiming the EU is no better than the US, it clearly has better intentions. But fundamentally, I think the EU will end up in the same place as the US sooner or later, simply because the same forces are at play: desire for security >> desire for privacy for most people if the rubber hits the road.
Here's some fun read for those who seek more info:
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-privacy-watchdog-sid... https://www.bnd.bund.de/EN/Service/PrivacyPolicy/privacypoli... https://www.lexxion.eu/?newsletters_method=newsletter&id=477
> So do you think UK/EU vehicle manufactures are deliberately in mass breach of data privacy law... fully knowing the cost of a consumer backlash, fines and vehicle recall costs to fix any law breach?
They were also in mass breach of vehicle emission laws. The fact that there was some backlash (although people didn't really stop buying VAG cars), people got prosecuted, the company got fined, didn't really change their decisions while they were pumping out fraudulent cars.
Yes, we should have privacy laws like this in the EU, this is a good thing! But thinking that, when these laws are in place, all companies magically will follow them is naive. To them it's still a cost/benefit analysis, and history has shown short term benefit trumps many other things for these companies.
ONE company did it (not a mass of them), resulting in massive fines and prosecutions; they certainly aren't going to do it again!
I'd also suggest the backlash from breaches in data privacy would be much larger than from fiddling emissions tests (as evil as the latter was, it actually saved many customers money on a (more polluting) car with higher performance).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#O...
> After news broke out of Volkswagen cheating on diesel emissions, multiple other vehicle manufacturers got caught falsifying emissions data, as well as exceeding legal emission limits. This uncovered a greater industry-wide issue that goes far beyond only Volkswagen Group.
> To them it's still a cost/benefit analysis, and history has shown short term benefit trumps many other things for these companies.
Doesn't that depend on the company though? Not all companies are focused in the same amount on short vs long term benefits.
There are costs of not following the regulation (example, did not check in detail: https://www.enforcementtracker.com/) and I do not hear (media, social network, etc.) anybody complaining about fines so I think it will just continue ad hopefully will change their opinion at some point.
Yes.
Or, more succinctly - they are likely following the law but have figured out a way to avoid it as written using consumer opt-in and dark patterns.
You call it FUD, but this is hacker news and with overwhelming incentives it is not unreasonable to ask for verification that data isn’t being exfiltrated.
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I guess we'll just sit on our hands and do nothing, then.
> Government leaders will never give up their pipeline of knowing everything about everyone.
Then let us hire different leaders into government. Public servants, not overlords.
If you have noticed, every independent candidate almost never gets elected. Vast majority of those who say they will "change the country to the better" either never get elected or are ousted early on. And those who stay change their tune.
I fear that only blackmail-able people with the potential to win elections, get the support, so that they are beholden to someone who ultimately gives them the job (e.g. funding their campaign) and has to return the favor x10 when elected, so promises go out the window and new reality sets in.
Someone tried to create an entirely new country with minimal governance by dumping sand on a submerged reef until it became an island[]. Even then it was quickly co-opted by the nearing statist powers (Tonga) with the blessing of western powers.
So it's not just that the primary process will crush anyone who will seriously roll back government powers. They won't even let anyone peacefully create an entirely new fucking island to try and get away from the tyrants and do it while leaving everyone else alone and not messing with the powers that be.
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Minerva
Isn't that the libertarian paradox in a nutshell, the entire reason why "government" exists? Because in reality, the alternative is "might makes right" and a larger, stronger group will band together and steamroll the smaller and uncoordinated individuals?
Government is might makes right, just with a nice name slapped on it. Minerva was minarchist, not anarchist, but for whatever reason they chose not to defend their country by force. Somaliland and the remains of Rojava come to mind as present-day ~minarchist governments that defended their territory by force and ~succeeded. The point being is these kind of changes won't be allowed by election or peacefully. The primaries stop the election process and the militaries stop the peaceful separation process.
America did have a period of relatively small government intervention at the beginning, but that took a war with Britain. It also had some periods of it during the pre-founding (some of 1600s Pennsylvania and Rhode Island while Britain was occupied elsewhere). Pennsylvania (before it was a state) in particular was basically straight up anarchist for I want to say, about 20 years.
> but for whatever reason they chose not to defend their country by force
When forced off the reef, the founders went back to places like Australia, Manhattan, and London with considerable wealth. Pretty easy to see why that was preferable to possibly dying by firing on the armed forces of another country.
Somaliland and Rojava don't have that option.
> relatively small government intervention at the beginning,
Yes, the women, slaves, non-land-owners and native Americans all loved that phase! It was paradise on earth and the embodiment of the eternal liberty to which all (*) humans are entitled.
(*) your experience may vary, depending on your membership of various demographics. Some restrictions apply. Please see package for details.
Thank god you mentioned that. You foiled my diabolical plan of introducing slavery as utopia, as clearly imposing slavery is a way to shrink government intervention. No mention of early USA is complete without damning any experiences drawn on it because muh racism/sexism. Nevermind that whittling down to even that point took a war with Britain, which was relatively more free than before when yet still slavery and Indian slaughter was still happening.
Thank god you responded. You have effectively disarmed my diabolical plan of refuting the idea that early American history was some sort of libertarian paradise, by pointing out that I have used the old canard of slavery as if it, by itself, could invalidate the many good things that came from the early, limited form of government.
I have no option other than to lay down my intellectual tools before you and declare you the winner of this battle of the ages. I am humbled by my idiocy in even bringing up the fundamental economic engine of the early American republic, as if it actually mattered at all in the face of the noble, if perhaps a little selfish, goals of those proud young Americans.
I would say relatively true of the southern colonies. New England, slavery import was banned rapidly, slavery itself banned fairly early (some states almost immediately) and it was arguably never a load bearing pillar. Virginia in particular and the southern colonies only avoided starvation by stumbling on tobacco.
I'd also note slavery was also influenced by how land distribution happened in the colonial era. Lands dispersed under more feudal models lent themselves more to slavery and indentured servitude. Lands that for various reasons that were rapidly sold were more likely to end in the hands of small holders without slaves or fewer slaves.
I've read Graeber/Wengrow. Any new recommendations?
Hierarchical power conflicts with servitude
Its quite easily solved. Stop buying them. There's lots of cars out there that don't have these fun features. Buy them.
> your CC payments help track
Not only that. Them and the point-of-sale vendors (aptly shortened PoS), sell that data. They tend to attempt to do this anonymized. How successful they are in anonymizing that is very much so up for debate.
The websites (and even their retail locations) you buy from send your purchase data to meta and other advertisers directly via APIs so they can better track their marketing conversion rates. You can browse their APIs [1][2] to see what kind of data they like to get, but it tends to be every piece of identification they have on you. Rewards programs make this a much richer data set. You don't need to be a user of Google/Meta for them to build a marketing profile based on this. Google links your physical conversion from ads based on your maps data. Facebook does the same if you give them your location data. Many retailers attempt to use the bluetooth/wifi signals from your phone to track the same data even if you pay in cash [3].
There's no legal framework preventing this outside of the EU and California.
1: https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/ads-commerce/c... 2: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/conversion... 3: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluet...
> They tend to attempt to do this anonymized. How successful they are in anonymizing that is very much so up for debate.
Yeah I think the big thing to push or talk about is that there is no such thing as "anonymized".
There's only such as a thing as "can only be identified as X many people". Like for a given dataset you can make any data point correlated to 1 of say 50 people. If somebody is anonymizing data and they don't provide a k-anonmizity [1] you should just assume it's 1:1 and effectively not anonmized.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-anonymity
K-Anonymity isn't the only technique. Differential Privacy is arguably more robust.
> They tend to attempt to do this anonymized. How successful they are in anonymizing that is very much so up for debate.
In the good old days, if you were found to be informing on your neighbors to hostile powers, you were liable to find yourself in a mass grave when the political winds shifted, or even sooner.
But now it's so convenient and discreet and common, we think nothing of it. Plus, Google and Apple and Facebook and their partners and everyone they sell data to are our friends, not enemies :)
True, but we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I don't own a smartphone, so neither google nor apple track anything about me that way. I leave my dumbphone at home when I'm out and about, so it basically works like a traditional landline phone, again, no data there (except for phone calls and textmessages of course).
My car is old, so no gps/trackers there, but this is troubling of course. I think that if/when I buy a new one, it has to be either some vintage car, or I have to find a workshop who can rip out all the tracking.
CC payments can be mitigated by paying cash, when available. But yes, CC and bank are a concern and so is CCTV.
Nonetheless I'll still try to maintain what privacy I can.
You do you, John C. Calhoun of Minerva Road, Springfield, CO.
An agent will be shortly with you to assist in that endeavor.
> An agent will be shortly with you to assist in that endeavor.
In some parts of the world that's a death sentence for the target. In other parts, it's one for the agent.
Oh, please. We're not cavemen here. A little coaching on internet best practices, a dash of psychological assistance, perhaps a girl scout cookie or two ...
A friend used to work in ad tech years ago. The telecoms sell real time location data to digital billboard companies which are targeted at whoever is nearby. It's basically minority report. I can definitely imagine they're now using visual processing and face recognition on the billboards.
> And once you've gotten rid of Google and Apple, your telecom company tracks you, your CC payments help track you and even cameras in public do.
Maybe, but what happens without the mod described is that Google and Apple track you in addition to the telecom company. That, of course, assumes that you carry a cell phone tied to your identity. Some people refuse to carry cell phones altogether because of the privacy implications, or use them mostly in airplane mode with an anonymous SIM for backup.
It’s still worth minimising how many companies get your data, and minimising the data itself. I’m not sure what data Apple and Google get specifically out of their car thingies, but it’s very easy to avoid using their car thingie.
I use a googleless flip phone and just don't do anything important on it, and leave it behind often. We didn't always carry tracking devices with us, you can choose not to.
You can also buy an older car that doesn't come with a SIM card installed.
This is the way! But note that telcos are working hard to ban dumbphones from their networks. There is a clear push to force people to dump dumbphones and accept the digital surveillane device.
Should that happen, I will move to a VoIP provider. Not perfect, but better than a smartphone.
At least you can shut your cellphone off and pay in cash.
Exactly, and more and more places are removing cash as a payment option :(
Cash handling isn't free, and for smaller businesses might actually end up being more expensive than accepting electronic payments.
If your margins are so razor thin that the cost of handling cash is significant, you need to raise your prices. Cash is legal tender -- not accepting it for in-person transactions is really shitty (maybe shouldn't be allowed?)
> you need to raise your prices.
And if the competitor doesn't? Ouch.
I think there should be a "digital equivalency act" or something to hamper full digital capture, but my feelings aside, there's a few powers that dislike cash:
Free people like cash, but businesses with low-skill/low-trust workers dislike cash because despite the CC fees, there is less theft, less overhead with cash reconciliation, cameras to watch cash with, less safes to manage, less cash pickup services.
The IRS hates it because there is a cash industry (as there should be, imo, but I'm injecting too much opinion already) that doesn't report earnings. I personally know barbers, housecleaners, handymen that admit to reporting no or few earnings, and synthesize a living off cash and benefits. If you stop paying taxes, this actually works pretty well compared to a low-end tax-paying job. My housecleaner takes overseas vacations (like, thrifty ones in hostels) 2-3 times a year this way.
Banks (arguably the IRS again, deputizing them with KYC) squint at you when you deposit or withdraw significant cash - ask any weed industry participants. Untrackable currency is a natural catch-all for people they don't want to bank with, so it's just friction and headache naturally.
You can't even get coins counted for free at retail banks anymore. Cash handling is too expensive even for the place that ostensibly provides cash handling services to the general public.
Just make all your prices round up to the nearest dollar bill after tax. Eliminate coins at the source.
"Legal tender" only means it must be accepted to settle a debt.
Walking out of the store with groceries generates a debt, no?
I believe that's more likely to generate a criminal charge
You're being more literal than I was. My point was that "a debt" is a broader concept than the GP comment acknowledges. A debt is incurred any time you propose or agree to buy something. And legal tender is the way you settle it.
Then how about paying after ordering and eating a meal?
Depends.
If there was a posted notice that no cash is accepted it's unlikely you'll get a criminal charge, but you can get civilly sued. Most places will just accept the cash then put up a picture saying "If this asshole shows up again, trespass him"
No, eating food & then paying is a debt. After the services have been rendered. If seller can pull back the items, never provided the service, no debt.
You can't go into a store with a gun and demand the cash out of the register if there is no cash.
The actual cost is shrinkage from general human accounting mistakes and all the extra time it takes to manage.
I worked at the gym in college and we sold like one item a day and it was still a whole bunch of work and pain to keep up on the cash counts correct.
I definitely believe that all businesses should take cash as much as is reasonable, but logistically it is understandable why some choose not to
You shouldn't do that anyway; also, you can't skim a credit card I'm not using/carrying. There are crime arguments on both sides.
It's not about "just raise prices", it's about some industries (e.g. upstart restaurants) that already have massive failure rates and have hyper competition. Even airlines don't make money on flights, and instead only on selling credits cards or other perks.
If your operating costs are some percentage higher for accepting cash versus the coffee shop across the street that doesn't, you're more likely to fail.
If everyone has to accept cash, then everyone has the same costs and the point is moot. At any rate, courts are required to accept legal tender, and I think that requirement ought to extend to businesses as well.
> At any rate, courts are required to accept legal tender
Assuming you’re talking about the US here: there is no such requirement, at least not at the federal level. Individual states may have their own laws, but see for example this notice [0] from a Texas federal court that they will no longer accept cash as of May 21, 2021.
[0] https://www.txnb.uscourts.gov/news/notice-court-will-no-long...
The real problem for those businesses is way upstream of payment processing costs, namely in the cost of business loans, the general poverty of the American consumer, and (for brick-and-mortars) zoning. The latter is a matter of getting municipalities to relax restrictions put in place mid-century literally to support segregation, and the former two are a matter of forcing the wealthy to eat the costs of their poor decisions from the last few decades, rather than continuing to allow them to socialize related losses through avenues like scandalously low labor pay vis a vis productivity and various investment/asset market scams (which, through housing and passive retirement investment, they've roped in Boomers and older Gen-Xers).
If you wish to make an apple pie shop from scratch, you must first invent an economy that isn't hamstrung by legacy obligations from ventures that people who are long-dead somehow were allowed to finance with your paycheck. (Somewhere, a middle-aged nepo-baby is clutching her pearls at the thought, and I just think we should cherish, rather than shy from, the opportunity to throw her and her siblings under the bus.)
Handling cash isn't free, but $0.30 + 3% or whatever is also a significant distance from free.
RE .... company tracks you ..... [ somewhat off topis ]
Did you know ... in many countries government tracks car number plates and the data is stored for many years.
1987 4runner, no phone, use cash.
I have heard whispers at times that people who operate 'off grid' like this end up being viewed heavily as persons of interest.
Anecdotally via friends in law enforcement.
I live in Idaho so I don't think that's much of an issue.
Perhaps it's time to give up some convenience for old ways, eh?
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