Yves here. Notice that a major hook for cars acting as spyware has been the introduction of services which are convenient but fall far short of necessity, such as GPS and entertainment systems. However, cars are also full of sensors used for diagnostics; this goes back to at least the early 2000s. And as the warning form Tesla suggests, these systems are increasingly designed to brick the vehicle if nominal owners opt out of connectivity. Faraday cages for cars seem to require that the vehicle be stationary.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
“Neoliberalism as an economic system enshrines the extraction of rent over industrial production.”
—Yours truly, here
Two of the most revolutionary inventions man ever made were created in the 20th century, one at its start and the other close to the end. Both offered the same innovation: a quantum advance in individual freedom and power.
I’m talking, of course, about the automobile, personal transportation, and the PC, your own personal computer.
Cars and Computers
If you own a car, you own your own transportation; you don’t rent it or borrow it. You can argue the merits of “owning” personal transportation — there are climate, pollution, and crowding arguments against — but there’s no question about the freedom it gives to people. You want to leave now? Just jump in the car and go.
If you own a PC, same thing. Before the PC, some calculations and modeling were just too painful and time-consuming to do, and many were simply impossible. Think of the most complicated spreadsheet you’ve ever created — could you have done that by hand? Or better, if you could have done it by hand, would you have?
Before the PC and its business equivalent, the UNIX-based Sun Workstation, access to computing power were through IBM-style mainframes and minicomputers, like those made by DEC. None of these could be considered “personal”; they were too costly, and though they could accommodate multiple users at terminals, the computing itself was centralized and corporate-owned.
Keep this in mind: Before the PC, computing was centralized and corporate-owned. After the PC, computing power was inside the box you worked at, and priced for individual sale. Now thanks to Windows 11, that’s all been reversed.
Cars and computers, each a revolution in personal power and control. Now both will be taken away. Your car will no longer be yours, nor will your PC.
Soon You Won’t Own Your Car
The above statement is true in too many ways. The car you’ve already bought will be licensed to you, a license that can be revoked.
Your New Car Is a Spy
Cars have become computers over the last few years. And that means cars have become spy machines. Here’s one review, by the Mozilla Foundation, of the automobile industry from the standpoint of privacy, written in 2023. Its bottom line is the headline:
It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy
All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label — making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed.
The link for individual brand reviews is here. Their sins are many; these are the important ones:
- They collect too much personal data (all of them)
- Most (84%) share or sell your data
- Most (92%) give drivers little to no control over their personal data
- We couldn’t confirm whether any of them meet our Minimum Security Standards
Recipients of the sale of your data could include your insurance company, which can purchase everything recorded about your driving habits.
And you can’t shut this stuff off, because it’s not hardware, but software, and the car needs its software to run. Here’s Tesla’s warning about its software, again from 2023 (emphasis mine):
However, “if you no longer wish for us to collect vehicle data or any other data from your Tesla vehicle, please contact us to deactivate connectivity. Please note, certain advanced features such as over-the-air updates, remote services, and interactivity with mobile applications and in-car features such as location search, Internet radio, voice commands, and web browser functionality rely on such connectivity. If you choose to opt out of vehicle data collection (with the exception of in-car Data Sharing preferences), we will not be able to know or notify you of issues applicable to your vehicle in real time. This may result in your vehicle suffering from reduced functionality, serious damage, or inoperability.”
It’s gotten worse since then; Tesla’s just getting started.
The Biden Bill–Mandated ‘Kill Switch’
Watch the Breaking Points video at the top; it details, from reputable reporters, the next dystopian “feature” of cars manufactured in 2027 and later — a “kill switch” that turns your car off if it thinks you shouldn’t be driving.
The detail is here. Basically, under Joe Biden, Section 24220 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act “requires all new passenger vehicles to eventually include factory-installed technology that detects driver impairment and prevents or limits vehicle operation.”
The implementation falls under the NHTSA, which is writing the rule. Barring congressional prevention or modification, the kill switch is expected appear in all newly manufactured cars (but not used ones) starting in late 2026 or early 2027.
Privacy and Control
In modern America, two things are certainly true. 1) Once privacy is taken away, it never comes back; and 2) when a power is gained by corporations and government, they pervert it as fast as they can.
The prime example is this war — because Congress long ago surrendered its war-making power, the Executive has steadily moved in, to the point that today there’s not even a pretense of getting congressional permission. Trump wants a war wherever, that’s what he does. Or consider the definition of “terrorist” — today it’s “whomever the feds wishes to hurt, and to whatever extent.”
So what’s the maximum harm that can be done by the “new automobile”? Your driving is monitored by AI; the data is fine-grained and stored; anyone who wants it can buy it for whatever goal, including to raise your insurance, or deny you coverage.
Further, anyone with control of the software — the manufacturer, the FBI (initially under subpoena, but later, who knows?), cops, Homeland Security, or any branch of the law, whatever that means — can turn off your car when it wants, or (why not?) gain full control, lock you in, and drive you wherever it wishes. Remember, eventually every new power is perverted.
It starts, as always, with calls to Save the Children (MADD is mad for this law).
The next expansion is to further the War Against Crime. (“Remember the OJ Simpson highway chase? What if they could just turn off the car? You want to catch OJ, right? Do you hate the cops?”)
Then it transforms into … what? Whatever the security state wants, because “keeping you safe.”
The Licensing Revolution
You won’t own your car for another reason as well. You may have noticed a trend: what you used to be able to buy, you now merely rent.
• Apple doesn’t sell music, it licenses use.
• You no longer own your software. TurboTax, for example, sells a “personal, limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable, revocable license to use the applicable Software only for the period of use provided in the ordering and activation terms”.
• Same with Amazon’s ebooks and audiobooks.
• Same with Microsoft Windows. (More on that later.)
Non-transferable and revokable licenses. Renting your life.
The benefits of the Licensing Revolution are many for those in charge. A big one is social control. If Amazon wants to delete a book from “your” library, it has every right to do so — and it has. Imagine a Trump-run Amazon “curating your books.” Or a Tipper Gore-style Apple deleting “violent” songs you’ve already “bought.”
The other big corporate benefit is an income stream amounting to billions of dollars. You used to be able to buy Adobe Acrobat. Since 2020, it’s a license that must be renewed. That’s hundreds of dollars per user per year, forever — or until customers just walk away. With hundreds of millions of users, that’s billions per year.
You can walk away from Adobe. Maybe from Apple. You can’t walk away from your car and still hold a job.
What To Do, What To Do?
Every new car made after the mandated date will have un-bypassable software that monitors and controls your use. In addition, these cars will be increasingly unusable without per-feature software licenses, which must be renewed.
What to do? Simple: Don’t buy a new car. Forever. You won’t be alone, and the used car market will bloom.
Windows and the ‘Personal’ Computer
I said several times that computers have already gone where the car will soon go. They will no longer be yours, but belong to the software companies that control the OS, and which also control the “trust chip” (Trusted Platform Module, or TPM) that most new computers contain. Privacy and control issues with the TPM chip are many; same with Windows itself. This will be the subject of Part 2 of this set of articles.
But the big bottom line is this: With Windows 11, you no longer own your computer. You’ve purchased a terminal, where most of the software and data live somewhere else, and most of the processing happens up “in the cloud” — meaning on machines controlled by somebody else.
So yes, we’ve been brought back to this:
The PC undone, the revolution reversed, like much of what else we’ve endured. Stay tuned for the detail.
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Everything is being shifted to dependency because, naturally, consumption is falling as a result of the increasing impoverishment of the precariat and professional service providers. Fewer jobs for tradespeople, less work, less disposable income; public transport fares are set as high as possible because then the roads don’t need to be maintained.
I sold all my Apple devices after Apple dictated to me when my tablet, phone, laptop and desktop were outdated, and got the models running on Linux. No silly 26.4 with Siri an AI. The same applies to vehicles; in the 1990s and 2000s, the highest level of quality in mass production was probably achieved, so two old, identical Toyota Land Cruisers or Land Rover Defenders, one for spare parts, are big enough to take also the two Rottweilers along, who then make sure that the contemporary folk with their strange notion of relativity of property rights don’t get too cheeky.
dog passengers: some breeds better at sniffing ‘cheeky’…and with assistance from their owners…..can spell it also. Land Cruisers and Rovers in your example…gives them license
It’s pretty clear why governments not only support this trend, but also try to legislate away every alternative. It will not be a decade until only devices that are personalized and not under control of their owner (e.g mobiles with only accredited software, PCs with locked down operation system and vetted application) are allowed to connect to the internet.
Unfortunately i see no way to stop this suffocating march to a totally supervised future.
I sit in various technical comittees and political circles where this is discussed, and the problem is similar to the tragedy of the commons:
every participant in the decision groups stand to gain personally, for his specific company, and for the industry as a whole, as does ever legislator or supporting individual. The commons has no voice.
Plus, with these on-board surveillance systems that they want to put in cars, I am sure that they will also be constantly sending data on drivers to auto insurers who will be looking for any excuse they can to jack up people’s premiums.
In 2015 we bought a 2005 car because in 2006 EU regs required various impairments be added to new diesel cars in the name of Gaia. But what should we do when it dies? How old a car will we need to avoid Highwayman world?
As for PCs the first one I used was called the Commodore PET – it was entirely stand alone: I used it for data-logging and statistical analysis of experimental results. A delight, even though the mainframe computer multi-access system I had previously used was unusually user-friendly. (It may have been relevant that the hardware wasn’t IBM and the software used wasn’t written in Fortran.)
Later I switched to Macs – lovely machines with the claim of “intuitive” use pretty well justified. I loathed switching to Windows machines and went back to Macs once their spell of producing dud hardware had finished. But I don’t suppose Macs are any more resistant to “your money or your life!” demands than other machines. Are they?
We recently had to do some searching to find a manual transmission replacement for our 6-speed, 14 year old Subaru. Very glad we did.
Now if I can just find a replacement CD player, we’ll be all set.
I’m very happy to have a 2010 Subaru with basic electronics, no nanny features (that annoying lane minder), and no connectivity. I anticipate that I’ll stop owning a car in about 8 years, so keeping the current one going is a high priority.
aye. i drive a 2001 dodge ram pickup. the local mechanic guys all say the same thing:never get rid of that truck. warehouses full of parts, easy to work on(for them,lol),and only a rudimentary computer to manage fuel injection and simple diagnostics. hand crank windows, no a/c—but heater works..tailgate closes with a rope. amfortas shaped hole in driver seat. stick shift so i can push start it.
and as soon as i got it($4500 cash from original owner)in 2005-ish, i located the dinging thing under the dash and ripped that f&cker out.
next vehicle is a buckboard and a mule or two.
because eventually, they’ll outlaw all the old cars without some mandatory and expensive upgrades and fees.
mom’s spaceship…2000 suburban with a few VA mods…well, i hate driving that thing. always dinging for unknown reasons…seat shakes when theres tall grass beside you…and the screen will flash, bells will ring, as yer drivin down the road and remind you not to take yer eyes off the road.
all the sensors and automatic crap are merely a million points of failure.
and i the onboard onstar listening?
watch what you say…
is the gps foning home my location buying weed?
mom quit paying for all that connectivity right after she got it…but who knows?
and, related, sorta: all the little towns out here now have flock cameras at every egress point.
i scratch my face with the bird every time i pass one, just in case.
thankfully, local gov didnt pay for them…dps did,lol…but to what end?
some database at a fusion center now knows that i go to fredericksburg once a month.
of course, in my truck, the front lic plate has been on the dash for 20 years…kept falling off because i kept pushing things with the truck,lol….coating of dust, and under a pile of bones and cool bits of wood i find.
back lic plate is bent and rusty due to ramming into trailer tongues.
ill also go for years sometimes failing to get it registered…and nobody cares out here, because they all know me anyways.
I have a 1998 Dodge Dakota and my present problem is the ABS hydraulic controller. Ye gads! So many of the parts are no longer available, even in the aftermarket sphere. As I say occasionally at the terminus of some comments: Stay out of the clutches of the Organs of State Security.
Stay safe in the Wild West.
With a the help of a YouTube tutorial, anyone can set up a new PC with only a local user account on Windows 11. There’s no need for a Microsoft login or even a connection to the Internet. They don’t make it super easy, but it’s very possible. I just set up a new home server running it last week.
https://askleo.com/set-up-windows-11-with-only-a-local-account/
Also, reselling second hand software is legal in the EU. Even the La Poste website offers resale deals on standalone versions of Office, Windows, server products or individual components. A perpetual license for Microsoft Office 2021 is €53. Standalone versions of Acrobat Pro, Photoshop, also still available. All those products are multilingual.
https://www.laposte.fr/boutique/c/logiciels
Maybe we’ll become a nation of work-arounds. Linux has not been mentioned.
In the Auto Department, we have crank windows and not much else:
https://www.slate.auto/en
Quote:
Manual Software Updates: Without cellular connectivity, Over-the-Air (OTA) updates are not possible via the vehicle’s internal modem. Instead, updates are downloaded to a paired smartphone and transferred to the truck via USB cable.
I wish Slate had not gone for a two door truck as the basis for their vehicles. I want a four door hatchback, sedan, or wagon. I would settle for a four door crossover I guess. Why would I buy a two door vehicle for a family when all the competitors off four doors?
Modern, high-tech cars are loaded with unnecessary features and priced exorbitantly, making them unaffordable for the average person. One day, a greedy oligarch will see this as an opportunity and push for the liberalization of inexpensive Chinese car imports. Many automakers will pay the price for their folly.
I recently got a new laptop that had Windows 11 installed and after looking that over for a few minutes, wiped the hard drive clean and replaced the operating system with Linux Mint which was what my old laptop was running until the motherboard went. My somewhat older desktop computer I just made a dual boot Windows 10/Linux Mint setup using the old hard drive from the old laptop. There is some software I have that doesn’t work in Linux that I’ll keep using and also will eventually take the Windows 10 to being offline only.
As for cars, I’ll never have a new or a late model used vehicle. I’d rather make my mortgage payment than a car payment. Everything in my garage or in the driveway was designed in the 20th Century. None of the modern dystopian tech. I’m retired so the number of miles I drive a year massively dropped. I can do the majority of the repair work myself. I keep as much as possible a back stock of needed parts which has been handy.
If You Tube is to be believed, there appears to be a growing trend of people rejecting their 2020’s vehicles and buying and driving cars and trucks made from the 1960’s up to the very early 2000’s and using them as daily drivers. Not hot rods, just the basic daily transportation bread and butter cars.
Agreed. A 2000s to early 2010s Corolla or Camry has plenty of safety features but no touchscreens or internet connection.
Exactly. My mom drives a 2011 Corolla. An excellent balance of safety features, but still has a radio/CD player instead of a spy screen. My newest car is a 2002 Chrysler Concorde modern enough for safety, but no spy tech. It gets excellent fuel economy for its size. When I have to go on a long trip the Concorde gets into the low 30’s highway mileage.
From “Model Year 2020 Privacy Statement applies to all Model Year 2020 Volkswagen vehicles”:
Re Linux and Win 11–I did the same for my brother. Personally I’ve stopped using MS altogether although I do run a couple of Win XP era programs under WINE.
However I disagree about the cars although things may have gotten worse since my 2017 was made. My lowly Hyundai runs perfectly and the two problems I have had with it were unrelated to computers or “modules.” Analog wears out. Digital runs forever unless the wiring gets wet or some other non digital problem crops up. There may be problems with the controlling software but that’s a human programmer problem, not the machine.
As for the paranoia about cars being disabled for ‘licensing’ reasons–nobody is going to spend 50k on a product that does that. It’s true that modern cars have computers that only the dealer can tinker with but as mentioned above computers–the digital parts–don’t break. Or at least I have had three cars now that run under computer control and that part has never failed digitally. You are dependent on dealers now to find a replacement engine control unit but that’s been true since fuel injection became standard in the early 90s. Best not to drive through flooded intersections.
It looks like this nasty new TPM chip will make it harder to get rid of Windows and install Linux. When buying a new laptop, I always go for one that’s got no OS on it yet, or only MS DOS, and in future, I’ll see if I can find one without this TPM thing.
as for the computers…yeah. i saw that wndows eleven was coming, and was gonna be forced upon me…so i got an external harddrive and loaded it up with all the pictures and writings(successful) and the music library(lost about half of it). and then that laptop died/hung up in an update.
so i dug out all the laptops out of that closet, and tried all of them, finally found 2 that would work and loaded them with linux mint. the battries on both are dead, but that doesnt really matter for my purposes.
one of the newer laptops that has windows 10 i airgapped(like removed the wifi software,lol) so i can access that external harddrive and listen to music.(linux doesnt see the contents of that drive, and i grew weary of trying to find the magic words to put in the command line after about 3 months of messing with it).
i am not interested in being a part of the matrix, thank you.
and will just quit tech cold turkey if i am given no alternative….go back to record players, i suppose.
or just whistle.
the big boys frelled up a good thing.
windows 98se remains my fave.
I did the same thing to a 2009 Hewlett Packard laptop when Vista service pack two made it appear my computer was seriously dying. Linux Mint showed me there was nothing wrong with my laptop and I got another six years out of it before the mother board went. My new laptop had Windows 11 on it and I wiped that hard drive and put Linux Mint on it. Salvaged my old hard drive from the HP, and turned my Windows 10 computer into a dual boot. When I quit taking Win10 online, Linux will be the main system.
California is trying to pass a law (A.B. 2047) that would require 3D printers notify the state by the web of everything it prints in case you make gun parts. So the will state search your files preemptively with no probable cause. This will, surely be expanded to cover copyrighted stuff like toys, car parts, ect. The stuff you print must be state approved.
Your printer will spy on you and replacing that $800 Tesla part with 5 bucks worth of plastic, you’ll face prison and a civil suit from Tesla.
BTW the vast majority of ghost guns are stolen with the serial numbers ground off. It’s easier to do that than make one which is harder than it sounds.
If I don’t own the product because it only works if I pay a recurring licensing fee, then the product should only ever be rented out, not sold. So, if I no longer want it, I simply return it to the renter and stop paying the fee.
Only sell me the product if I don’t have to pay ANY rental fee for it to work.
Do the motorcycles, mopeds and/or electric bikes/scooters also have tracking/disable devices? Any other suggestions for alternatives?
I don’t think of ‘licenses’ of computer software, etc, or for intellectual property use as any kind of business model other than rent-seeking. Not so long ago, finance capitalists figured out that collecting rent was much more lucrative than sales and was much like collecting interest. Land rents, interest payments, bank fees, license fees, IP fees are all instances of what Michael Hudson calls “financial rent.” This mode is only one step above serfdom and is the goal of our technofascist overlords.
This comment is probably too late to get any attention, but here goes anyway.
I’ve been using Linux for 25 years. I love it, but a computer with software is not much.
There’s a world of opensource software that does anything you’ll ever need.
LibreOffice is an office suite that I find to be as good or better than Microsoft stuff.
Postgresql is a really high level sql db. Open source and no cost other than a contribution if you wish.
Moving on there’s Blender for graphics – the movie “Flow” won a award of something and it was created entirely with Blender.
Loads of GIS software for linux – grass, qgis, saga and heaps more.
And the good thing about Linux and the opensource world is that these users are really willing to help you use it and there’s hundreds of thousands of video’s showing exactly how to do things.