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points by techteach00 2 days ago | 0 comments

It's a completely lost cause. For example, when you agree to Mazdas TOS for the connected services app, you give them permission to sell your driving data to 3rd parties including law enforcement and insurance companies.

I said no so I'm not allowed to have remote start. I'm a bad cog. Punish me.

[–] mryijum 2 days ago

Seems like (at some point, or maybe already) this decision will itself be the sort of thing that contributes to someone being flagged as suspicious

[–] ehnto 2 days ago

Tucked away neatly in Australian law is the concept that a phone that is not iPhone or Android is a criminal device, similar to owning lockpicks. Something like GrapheneOS. I forget the exact term they used but it wasn't "jailbroken". The act of refraining from corporate tracking as illegal is in that way already codified.

That's why I feel it's super important hardware developers get on board with open source OS support for mobile, much like some are for Linux already. It should be the norm to not be tracked by corporate entities and advert networks, it should be the weird option to opt into that.

[–] throwaway2037 2 days ago

    > Tucked away neatly in Australian law is the concept that a phone that is not iPhone or Android is a criminal device, similar to owning lockpicks. Something like GrapheneOS.

This is untrue. It only took me one simple Google search to find the answer.

My query:

    > "is it illegal in australia to have a mobile phone that does not use iphone or android?"

Top result: https://privacydevices.net/encrypted-phones-legal-australia/

    > Owning, buying, and using an encrypted phone is legal in Australia, and so is installing a different operating system on a device you own.

EDIT

Also, dumb phones are certainly not illegal. Plenty of old folks still use them.

[–] ehnto 2 days ago

The Dedicated Encrypted Criminal Communication Device Prohibition Orders Bill 2022 introduced law that says it is illegal to posess a modified communication device (ambiguous) that is encrypted (or otherwise impedes law enforcement from snooping). It has some nuance to who it applies to in that you need to already be under suspicion of a serious crime, but there is a great deal of other pretty trivial things that can put you under suspicion. It's ambiguous enough (in my opinion) that it could pretty easily be targeted at a regular joe by an eager enforcer. I did not feel then nor now, that the qualifiers were sufficient enough to protect against abuse.

[–] throwaway2037 2 days ago

Are there any well-documented (mass media) examples of an arrest and conviction for having a smartphone that does not run iOS or Android? I doubt it.

[–] ehnto 2 days ago

I did say "tucked neatly away", not "at the forefront of law enforcement".

Anyway, it's probably nothing. Let's ignore it until it becomes an issue.

[–] anenefan 2 days ago

There were a couple of dumber phones for sale in Australia at Kmart that are neither apple or google OS. I bought one that I'd guess was imported from China, and used Moor OS as the operating system, back a couple of years I could find only the barest amount of info on the OS as I was curious to see if there were additional apps. Presently nothing to find by way of the google or ddg, even Yandex came up empty handed.

[–] ehnto 2 days ago

It shouldn't be that your options are a corpo-phone or a dumbphone though. Currently you can run something like Graphene and will probably be fine, but in NSW specifically there is law that could be used against you if you're suspected of crime.

[–] anenefan 1 day ago

Certainly as Google gets more aggressive over their android phone, options to easily load another OS to enjoy similar experience to what I uncounted with early android version would be most welcome.

I am aware that back a few years ago, 2018 iirc federal law was introduced which granted additional powers to law enforcement in regard to telecommunication equipment, though only skimming though the rules, but not greatly understood - I was left to assume if the device is discovered via a search, the law can view and copy data the device stores or accesses if they so desire.

I actually have an old pixel phone that given to me and has GrapheneOS ... but like the rest of my cheap phones, I only use them for phone calls, texts, photos, time piece, maybe once a year utilise GPS and a hotspot when the signal from the nearby towers are good enough to get some bandwidth. [Mobile networks as such that my usual location can be so iffy even receiving a simple sms in a timely manner can be a challenge]

[–] ndsipa_pomu 1 day ago

> a criminal device, similar to owning lockpicks

I would hope that merely owning lockpicks is considered benign, but the carrying of lockpicks without good reason could be considered suspicious, though not criminal in itself. However, it would be amusing to see LockPickingLawyer being thrown into a cell and then the cops hearing "click on one, binding on two..."

[–] pvaldes 2 days ago

A couple of notorious cases, and then people will start rejecting Mazda cars.

[–] encom 2 days ago

Yup. If I enable "privacy mode" in my Nissan Leaf I can't turn on the heater remotely.

I requested a copy of the data they harvest. They log EVERYTHING. GPS of course, but also when I turn on the wipers, turn signal... basically the total state of the car at all times.

And all I want is remote heating. Checking the battery is nice for monitoring charge progress, but I could do without it.

So what I do now is drive in privacy mode, and when I park I have to remember to disable privacy mode if I think I might need heating tomorrow morning.

The future is fucking retarded.

[–] drfloyd51 2 days ago

I bet all your state data is buffered until the car is in public mode.

[–] wojciii 2 days ago

What is retarded is the inability of normal people to understand that this is bad. The same kind of people who say that they are ok with being monitored because they have nothing to hide.

[–] BigTTYGothGF 2 days ago

> retarded

Cut it out.

[–] encom 2 days ago

Pardon me. The future is cognitively diverse.

[–] MaxikCZ 2 days ago

How dare you wrongthink

[–] chung8123 2 days ago

Soon we will be able to use AI to hack all these things to gain access to our own equipment.

[–] uludag 2 days ago

nope, you'd be bypassing an encrypted system and would be imprisoned thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

[–] skinfaxi 2 days ago

Good luck finding out! They have to prove you did it.

[–] fzeroracer 2 days ago

They don't have to prove anything, they can just lock you up waiting for either a trial or a plea deal for over a year and still ruin your life.

[–] dzhiurgis 2 days ago

You can already remove SIM card / modems on pretty much all of them.

AI won't break encryption for you.

I can't believe we have such a low level comments on HN tbh.

[–] weknowbetter 2 days ago

This is assuming the AI doesn't refuse after the next update.

[–] Natsu 2 days ago

If you can run the model yourself, you can remove the refusal:

https://dev.to/behruamm/uncensoring-ai-how-to-surgically-rem...

[–] steelframe 2 days ago

AI wants to be free!

https://allmodels.io/llm/abliterated

[–] jihadjihad 2 days ago

And spend time in federal prison for the privilege.

[–] sershe 2 days ago

I just disconnected the antenna on my Chevy bolt and terminated it. Much more reliable :)

Although for me the concern is insurance getting data... My rate is so low based on whatever they have now, that I definitely don't see it going any lower :) perhaps I'd give them data if it was high.

[–] MisterTea 2 days ago

> For example, when you agree to Mazdas TOS for the connected services app,

Is there a database of car models that foist this bullshit on you so I can activly avoid ever buying them?

[–] 93po 2 days ago

It's basically all manufacturers aside from Tesla. Tesla does not sell user/driver data, and only provides info to police when they have a warrant.

"Tesla never sells or rents your data to third-party companies. This includes your personal data and driving history."

Most manufacturers either sell this to brokers which cops easily consume, or only require subpoenas instead of warrants.

[–] hansvm 1 day ago

That's the normal legalese loophole. They don't sell or rent your data, but they share it free-of-charge with 10k of their favourite corporate friends who, in a completely unrelated transaction, have sent Tesla money for some reason or another.

[–] 93po 1 day ago

There is no evidence Tesla has or will done this, and suggesting as much as much basically school-yard-tier levels of rumor mongering.

[–] hansvm 1 day ago

- Their own privacy policy [0] says as much. "We may share your information [for] ... marketing"

- Their own list of third-party cookies [1] has a laundry list of those associated with personalized advertising across a variety of providers.

- ConsumerReports and Northeastern [2] found the car directly connecting to 34 advertising domains (with similar results from many other such investigations from other parties), not even bothering to filter it through Tesla servers.

And so on. This isn't a grand conspiracy. Privacy invasions are a big part of nearly every modern, large company. I'm not singling out Tesla in this instance. Repeating my claim, if the ToS bothers to say that your information is neither sold nor rented and the lawyer who drafted it didn't bother to include "sharing" in that promise, that omission was intentional approximately 100% of the time.

Good? Bad? You decide. It's happening though.

[0] https://www.tesla.com/legal/privacy#how-we-may-use-your-info...

[1] https://www.tesla.com/legal/cookies

[2] https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/personal-informa...

[–] ahartman00 2 days ago

mozilla used to: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-...

[–] BobaFloutist 2 days ago

Yes, it's the database of car models.

[–] Melatonic 2 days ago

Probably doesn't stop law enforcement accessing the cell chip