[ThorSanchez]

I’m not sure I want my car squittering it’s location* several times a second to anyone who has the right receiver.

I sometimes turn off my cell phone just on principle. I refuse (so far) to buy a car with OnStar or other monitoring system.

There's no reason it has to squitter out that this is monocrhrome's car, and this is where he lives, and here's his credit card number and SSN. To enable the safety features all it has to do is say here's a anonymous car, here's exactly where it is, and what it's doing. And this information could/should all be encrypted. And there will be cars unequipped with this essentially forever, or you can disable it, which you'll be allowed to drive if you can put up with the higher insurance premiums.

Will someone hack into the communications system and create occasional havoc? Probably. But we're currently staking our lives on 17-year-olds with a Big Gulp in one hand, an iPhone in the other, and the steering wheel being controlled by their knees.

[monochrome]

My response would again be political, so . . .

The problem with all of these ‘safety’ justifications is (even though I am a ‘good behavor’) I have to surrender individual liberty to protect everyone else from anti-social actors. Eventually there is no more individual liberty, because individual liberty is potentially risky for everyone else.

[interested_observer]

I’m not sure I want my car squittering it’s location* several times a second to anyone who has the right receiver.

I sometimes turn off my cell phone just on principle. I refuse (so far) to buy a car with OnStar or other monitoring system.

... but, do you remove the battery? Just "powering it down", does little if you are the target. Just about any cell/smartphone can be just re-enabled, while it still appears to be "turned off". You can also put it in a Faraday cage.

[monochrome]

... but, do you remove the battery? Just "powering it down", does little if you are the target. Just about any cell/smartphone can be just re-enabled, while it still appears to be "turned off". You can also put it in a Faraday cage.

Heh. In the unlikely event they’re really after me it won’t matter. I lead a boring life. It’s the casual grifter with a black market Stingray I worry about.

[interested_observer]

There's no reason it has to squitter out that this is monocrhrome's car, and this is where he lives, and here's his credit card number and SSN. To enable the safety features all it has to do is say here's a anonymous car, here's exactly where it is, and what it's doing. And this information could/should all be encrypted. And there will be cars unequipped with this essentially forever, or you can disable it, which you'll be allowed to drive if you can put up with the higher insurance premiums.

Will someone hack into the communications system and create occasional havoc? Probably. But we're currently staking our lives on 17-year-olds with a Big Gulp in one hand, an iPhone in the other, and the steering wheel being controlled by their knees.

The information that this is monocrhrome's car, etc. has already been aggregated. The information is essentially available to anyone who wants to make the effort to acquire it.

The problem is that for the "here's a anonymous car", you will have several million of them, however each will have an embedded tag, label, address, a unique identifier of some type. So monocrhrome's anonymous car, through his habits will be able to be identified pretty quickly. Even if a unique identifier of some type is not used, then the identifying characteristics of monocrhrome's anonymous car will be identified very quickly just like your browser's anonymous settings are currently used to identify you pretty quickly.

• No hiding from this new web fingerprinting tech: But one browser can still hide your ID | ZDNet

My response would again be political, so . . .

The problem with all of these ‘safety’ justifications is (even though I am a ‘good behavor’) I have to surrender individual liberty to protect everyone else from anti-social actors. Eventually there is no more individual liberty, because individual liberty is potentially risky for everyone else.

Yes, and your point (rhetorically)? "Eventually", is essentially here - for the most part. Most folks just don't realize that it has already ventured that far. No one is really interested in most folks. However, for whatever reason, when someone really really wants to find you - you will most likely be found. There are folks who go off grid (for whatever reason), but they usually work pretty hard to stay hidden.

[ThorSanchez]

My response would again be political, so . . .

The problem with all of these ‘safety’ justifications is (even though I am a ‘good behavor’) I have to surrender individual liberty to protect everyone else from anti-social actors. Eventually there is no more individual liberty, because individual liberty is potentially risky for everyone else.

One car telling another car "I'm right here, don't run into me" doesn't necessarily have to lead you to a dystopian hellscape out of a Phillip K. Dick story.

[monochrome]

One car telling another car "I'm right here, don't run into me" doesn't necessarily have to lead you to a dystopian hellscape out of a Phillip K. Dick story.

The nature of society, however, suggests that it will. John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty” Tyranny of the Majority see especially Centralization Excess, but the entire entry is informative and the links are relevant.

In a general sense this discussion can be applied to photography, as in ubiquitous, autonomous security cameras and facial recognition algorithms, or rights of a photographer to capture images in a public space, ergo it is on topic and not overtly political. .

[interested_observer]

Heh. In the unlikely event they’re really after me it won’t matter. I lead a boring life. It’s the casual grifter with a black market Stingray I worry about.

They really don't usually need to go the Stingray route. Just choose a house in a nice neighborhood, do some checking - there are quite a few open source intelligence utilities that are available - see Kai Linux, and use you as a target. There is a quite a bit of information out there on most folks. The jackpot is the bank accounts, credit cards, medical records (which I understand are going for a premium these days), etc. that can be skimmed and siphoned away - or just an instant hit of zeroing or maxing everything out.

• Top Five Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Tools

You can mix and match the information from these, to build a pretty compelling composite image of you, easily and quickly. I went to a local security meeting a while back (oh, and the FBI, Secret Service and HomeLand Security attend and present too. Most of the large companies have one or more of their IT/IA/security folks there also). One of the folks was demonstrating a collection of tools. They went out an pulled an email address at random from the internet of someone working at a large local company. Within about 10 minutes, with no real problems, found the person's physical address (in the bay area), found that she had her own little fashion company, skimmed where she appeared to do her banking (and didn't go any farther - as he was not expecting to be able to go this far, as quickly as he was able) as she posted on some social media that she likes a certain bank and does all of her business there, type of car they drove, and it just goes on and on and on.

Actually, I knew most of this was capable - but I had not kept up with the tools, and was surprised at the amount (the fine granularity of data) and level of aggregation that had been done. The ease that raw data can be refined into usable knowledge and then turned into actionable intelligence would be mine boggling to the average folks on the street.

Also, this was not even going out on the "dark web" to see what was available - which was another meeting sponsored by the IEEE.

[Mikesul]

Maybe I am too late to the game but I feel about autonomous vehicles the way I felt about auto exposure when I bought my MX. DONT need it. i am old now but still...

[interested_observer]

One car telling another car "I'm right here, don't run into me" doesn't necessarily have to lead you to a dystopian hellscape out of a Phillip K. Dick story.

No, there is no intent on the part of the vehicle system designer to do this. That said, with that information available, it will be collected, aggregated and linked which leads to de-anonymization.

It's similar to imaging license plates. Now, you have police cars just collecting the raw license plate images, which is information along with several private companies - which is all aggregated together, and what you wind up with is someone seeing monocrhrome's car parked in a drive way - jotting down the license plate, then buying access and getting a pretty good example of a week in monocrhrome's life. His daily routine, driving habits, usual routes, where he usually shops for groceries, etc., etc., etc. You get the picture pretty quickly.

In greater Tumbleweed, the town/police have installed fake cactus with cameras, to record everyone entering and leaving the town. This has resulted in arresting a number of burglars operating in the town. Everyone thought that was great. Then a couple of divorce lawyers obtained the data - so as to see who was visiting who. Just let you mind wander a bit.....

Also, the police from other towns, drive the company parking lots, mall parking lots, streets - looking for hits on stolen vehicles. Again, a great crime fighting idea in action. It's really easy to aggregate all of this data together - and you have.....

[photoptimist]

You mean like the supposed intrusive tracking that Microsoft is doing with Windows 10? With all the push back, now they are going to track = sell that information, to those other guys?

For all the complaints and gnashing of teeth about this issue, the vast majority of people seem to accept the trade-off. Most people use Windows, Facebook, Android, etc. despite the privacy concerns. Perhaps some companies will gain marketshare by offering less tracking (although they may have to charge more to offset the lost revenue). And perhaps governments will step in and regulate privacy as they do in Europe. But perhaps some people willingly sign up for services like Waze in which they agree to give detailed car tracking data to Waze in exchange for real-time traffic and rerouting based on other user's tracking data.

Overall, the personal, familial, economic, and societal benefits of sharing data are too high to be entirely ignored. Most people, companies, and governments do pick some level of sharing over privacy any day and everyday by their actions. Moreover, autonomous vehicle sales will be determined by commuters who would gladly give up the data that they already give up anyway (i.e.,all smartphone owners are being tracked 100% of the time) in exchange for getting to do other things besides drive.

Two things, Talk to Boeing about FAA intrusion, I did work there supporting Reliability and Maintainability Engineering and the FAA was plenty intrusive. Second, a near-miss means that two or more objects have actually collided. Sort of like hitting the edge of the target is a near miss. The proper term is near collision not near-miss..

Fine... near-miss, near-collision, jumbo-shrimp, whatever. The point is to collect data on hazard-related anomalies (vehicles passing too close to each other, emergency maneuvers, software glitches, etc.) with the intent of improving the software and steadily reducing the rate of both near-accident events and actual accident events.

How is that going to help when you encounter a new situation, or one that that requires communication to the hive? And it can't be using wireless since you have stated that wireless is not a requirement.

When was the last time a human driver called someone about a "new situation" while driving? There would be no requirement for communication with the hive mind in the short-term although that communication is useful in the long-term for gaining experience that is shared during periodic software upgrades.

I had hoped that the myth of requiring an omniscient central controller had died with the Soviet Union. If massive flocks of birds can fly in complex, 3-D collision-free patterns in the sky without GPS, cellphones, smart infrastructure, or a central controller, so can flocks of cars drive collision-free 2-D patterns on the roads. If tiny bird brains can handle this, so can autonomous vehicles.

[ThorSanchez]

I had hoped that the myth of requiring an omniscient central controller had died with the Soviet Union. If massive flocks of birds can fly in complex, 3-D collision-free patterns in the sky without GPS, cellphones, smart infrastructure, or a central controller, so can flocks of cars drive collision-free 2-D patterns on the roads. If tiny bird brains can handle this, so can autonomous vehicles.

Is the collision rate of a formation-flying unladen European swallow less or greater than the accident rate of a human-controlled car? Swallows are renowned civil libertarians, so the data is devilishly hard to come by.

[PDL]

For all the complaints and gnashing of teeth about this issue, the vast majority of people seem to accept the trade-off. Most people use Windows, Facebook, Android, etc. despite the privacy concerns. Perhaps some companies will gain marketshare by offering less tracking (although they may have to charge more to offset the lost revenue). And perhaps governments will step in and regulate privacy as they do in Europe. But perhaps some people willingly sign up for services like Waze in which they agree to give detailed car tracking data to Waze in exchange for real-time traffic and rerouting based on other user's tracking data.

Tell that to monochrome.

---------- Post added 07-05-18 at 09:23 AM ----------

Fine... near-miss, near-collision, jumbo-shrimp, whatever. The point is to collect data on hazard-related anomalies (vehicles passing too close to each other, emergency maneuvers, software glitches, etc.) with the intent of improving the software and steadily reducing the rate of both near-accident events and actual accident events.

Proper language use is important. Tell someone like a cop or Lawyer that you nearly missed the car and they should ask you "so you hit it right?"

---------- Post added 07-05-18 at 09:47 AM ----------

When was the last time a human driver called someone about a "new situation" while driving? There would be no requirement for communication with the hive mind in the short-term although that communication is useful in the long-term for gaining experience that is shared during periodic software upgrades.

I had hoped that the myth of requiring an omniscient central controller had died with the Soviet Union. If massive flocks of birds can fly in complex, 3-D collision-free patterns in the sky without GPS, cellphones, smart infrastructure, or a central controller, so can flocks of cars drive collision-free 2-D patterns on the roads. If tiny bird brains can handle this, so can autonomous vehicles.

You are the one who said that the car would be able to connect (not wirelessly as you said that wireless is not required) to acquire new knowledge. Autonomous vehicles are not "human drivers", and yes I have know other people who's children have called them to ask about what to do in a new driving situation - while they were driving.

As for omniscient central monitoring, you have not been to Great Britain lately have you. CCTV on virtually every street, even the little hole in the walls.

If you are equating autonomous vehicles to birds then you really need to explain how these non-living vehicles are going to be able to communicate between themselves. Are they going to be using wireless, satellite, LASER's, hand signals (we have enough of that with human drivers now, usually of the single digit type). Or are you suggesting that Facebook, Uber, Waze (owned by Google), Apple, Microsoft or FOSS systems are going to "cooperate" on a standardized protocol. (Good luck with that without Federal level government intervention) Heck even aircraft use standardized protocols when communicating with air/ground controllers. Even the ACARS system (which my group at Boeing pushed hard for during the development of the 777 and that data was integrated into the maintenance database my group created and supported) uses standardized international protocols. The people I worked with had a hand in developing that protocol and other IATA standards. (International Air Transport Association)

As for tracking vehicles every few seconds as suggested. There are approximately 5,000 commercial aircraft in the sky on average. On average there are 253 million vehicles in the US, even at 50% usage on any given day, suggesting that each one is updating to "something" every few seconds, that is a lot of bandwidth. No need to own a microwave - just open to door to your Faraday Cage (i.e. house) and put your eggs on in a bowl on your front porch. ;-)

[ThorSanchez]

As for tracking vehicles every few seconds as suggested. There are approximately 5,000 commercial aircraft in the sky on average. On average there are 253 million vehicles in the US, even at 50% usage on any given day, suggesting that each one is updating to "something" every few seconds, that is a lot of bandwidth. No need to own a microwave - just open to door to your Faraday Cage (i.e. house) and put your eggs on in a bowl on your front porch. ;-)

Aren't there already something like five billion cell phones in the world? They seem to operate pretty well in their allocated bandwidth without cooking us or our eggs.

Also (warning, very back-of-the-napkin calculation here) the sun irradiates the ground with something like 30 million times as much power as all the cell phones in the world transmitting at max power continuously.

[photoptimist]

Tell that to monochrome.

---------- Post added 07-05-18 at 09:23 AM ----------



Proper language use is important. Tell someone like a cop or Lawyer that you nearly missed the car and they should ask you "so you hit it right?"

---------- Post added 07-05-18 at 09:47 AM ----------



You are the one who said that the car would be able to connect (not wirelessly as you said that wireless is not required) to acquire new knowledge. Autonomous vehicles are not "human drivers", and yes I have know other people who's children have called them to ask about what to do in a new driving situation - while they were driving.

As for omniscient central monitoring, you have not been to Great Britain lately have you. CCTV on virtually every street, even the little hole in the walls.

If you are equating autonomous vehicles to birds then you really need to explain how these non-living vehicles are going to be able to communicate between themselves. Are they going to be using wireless, satellite, LASER's, hand signals (we have enough of that with human drivers now, usually of the single digit type). Or are you suggesting that Facebook, Uber, Waze (owned by Google), Apple, Microsoft or FOSS systems are going to "cooperate" on a standardized protocol. (Good luck with that without Federal level government intervention) Heck even aircraft use standardized protocols when communicating with air/ground controllers. Even the ACARS system (which my group at Boeing pushed hard for during the development of the 777 and that data was integrated into the maintenance database my group created and supported) uses standardized international protocols. The people I worked with had a hand in developing that protocol and other IATA standards. (International Air Transport Association)

As for tracking vehicles every few seconds as suggested. There are approximately 5,000 commercial aircraft in the sky on average. On average there are 253 million vehicles in the US, even at 50% usage on any given day, suggesting that each one is updating to "something" every few seconds, that is a lot of bandwidth. No need to own a microwave - just open to door to your Faraday Cage (i.e. house) and put your eggs on in a bowl on your front porch. ;-)

There simply is no safety reason to track all the vehicles and none of the autonomous vehicles on the road today or in development depend on such tracking. They can't depend on tracking because none of the other vehicles on the road have it so none of the deisgn depend on tracking.

But even if tracking were implemented for other reasons it would not be that burdensome. The average car in the US only drives 33 miles per day -- probably only about 1 hour per day and not 50%. In contrast, there are 327 million mobile phones in the US and most phones are on 24 hours a day. So the bandwidth requirements would only add about 4% to the device tracking data load.

And as for car-to-car communication standards, it would seem that turn-signals, brake lights, and the occasional flash of the headlights suffice for humans and would suffice for autonomous vehicles, too. There's no reason to make this so complicated.