> you may have to think both about protecting your data by technical means, and about not angering the agents more than you plan to
That's the same problem with technical solutions to crime.
I come from a very dangerous city and I used to have a car that needed a PIN to work. You could turn then engine on and drive but after a minute if you didn't input the PIN it would turn off without warning and start blasting the alarm. The idea being that if the car was stolen the thief would be stranded not far from home unsure about what's happening. Great technical solution but it ignores that a lot of the time the car is stolen with you in it (in a kidnapping, for example). Having the car shutoff in the middle of a highway next to a panicking guy with a gun and trying to remember a PIN is not a situation you want to be in, so I just had the PIN number written down on the dashboard, which worked very well when I was eventually kidnapped and just pointed at the piece of paper with the number.
And there's the problem that if the PIN or worse a biometric version of this becomes remotely well known you've now created an incentive for a car thief to kidnap people even if they only want the car.
Or anything else you can't easily transfer. I can't help but point at passkeys in particular (or 2FA in general).
A variant of this is the well-known scene from a previous century's movie involving extracting an eye to bypass retinal scanner.
Many cars already have internal/cabin view camera. I'd imagine it will sooner or later get detection for potential theft and kidnapping situations, where it can simply detect the driver by face and prevent driving if it doesn't recognize the invidual as one granted driving privileges.
Like when fingerprint readers were added to car doors in the 90s, and carjackers started cutting fingers off to get away...
That is a largely incorrect statement that is loosely based on a single incident, not a trend.
The single incident was an individual in Malaysia who added an after-market finger-print based engine immobilizer to his car in 2005. The attackers threatened the individual with machetes, so that he would put his finger on the sensor, and then drove off with him in the car. The attackers later cut off his finger believing it would let them restart it without him present.
In phone terms, that's the $5 wrench problem. The elaborate tech is not relevant if you can be simply coerced somehow to bypass it.
Again in phone terms, maybe bring a blank phone through that border.
Coercion was the reason from start, it's explained in the article.
"A motion filed by his defense argues the interrogation focused on child sexual abuse material as a pretext for investigating his connections to the protest movement."
So the message was simple: don't protest and you will be not harassed.
As one does. Why, six of the eleven times I've had my car stolen, it was a carjacking with myself or my family member in it.
Six of the eleven times...
Crazy.
What city was this, if you don't mind me asking?
Jesus, what country?
probably South Africa?
Also what decade.
That is insane. Where do you live?
Must be Gotham City
Joburg?
What city was this, if you don't mind me asking?
Yeah, it would have been way better not to have an alarm, and instead make it appear like the car broke down. Could even maybe somehow actually break it programmatically.
Why are you staying in this place?
(Is this in South Africa?)
Brazil maybe?
Even for Brazil, even for the most dangerous cities, that's still an insane number of kidnappings. They happen enough that you need to be aware and be careful to not be an easy target, but it's still a rare event overall.
Iceland I think
Washington most likely
I live in Washington DC, and even though carjacking is a problem here, not to a degree that people plan on it happening to them. I would be surprised if OP's situation took place in DC.
Carjackings ramped up in 2021 through 2024. They appear to be headed back down the "low and steady" of the early 00s. Looking at the numbers, DC isn't alone in this trend - Chicago was pretty bad as well.
Gee… A lot of people lost their jobs at once and crime went up? Then when the economy recovered crime went down? It’s almost like keeping people educated and employed actually does work better than more police and longer sentences.
Also the rise of stressed delivery drivers leaving their cars running, and the kiaboys social media meme / subculture contributed.