Anyone using Google Now is already sending all the data that constitutes the article's undesirable dystopic vision to Google. And anyone running Android, I suppose, could get an update that began surreptitiously phoning home data. If that's a thing Google wanted to start doing.
Short of being in a faraday cage, we also already know cell phones have a habit of not really rendering you 'untrackable' even when lay users think they've turned them off.
And, frankly, the phone is a superior vector in the first place, as the car has little idea who's driving it, no real idea who the other occupants might be, and little idea where the occupants actually go when they get out. [1]
Yet this article chooses to worry about the cars?
I don't see a huge delta between "I have to leave my phone at home to be sure it can't be used to track me" and "I can't use my 'smart' car, if I want to be sure it can't be used to track me".
[1] The Gym, the massage parlor and the pizza joint might be in the same strip mall. Your car can't know one or ones you go to, whether you get into a subsequent vehicle and go somewhere else entirely, etc. Your phone can know exactly where you're going, and for how long. The car's data is far inferior. Rather than being a data detectives dream, it seems more like a "better than nothing" fall-back, if the tracked-individual happened to actually leave their phone at home or properly disable it.
And anyone smart/aware enough to prevent themselves from being tracked by their phone is smart/aware enough to take a different vehicle, or take the Google car to a transit station/park-and-ride/alibi-establishing-alternate-location/etc.
Most of your points are great, but I just want to point out that it is not true that your phone can be tracked when it is turned off. That's a misconception that is propagated by a few very poorly written articles that misinterpreted some comments in a court case. No power = no tracking.
Isn't the point that not all phones are truly off when the user thinks they're off? i.e. if you can ensure there's no power (removed battery) you can be confident there's no tracking. But if you can't ensure it...
You are conflating a hypothetical with a real claim. it is hypothetically possible, but it isn't actually true. And you can ensure in many ways. Like measuring the power usage when your phone is off. Like looking at the source code of the operating system.
Looking at the source code of the OS does not change anything, as you don't know which compiler was used or even if the same source was indeed compiled. Even further, if you compile it yourself you still don't know since at this stage you clearly wouldn't trust even your compiler.
I think you guys are getting lost in the hypothetical vs the reality. Is it hypothetically possible, yes. Is there any evidence it is true, no. See my comment below to see how cnet confused a physical bug with some inherent bugging capability of the phone.
Even in the hypothetical, don't you think someone would have identified the "bug" by now? It would need to draw power while the phone is off, that would be measurable. It would need software on the phone. Even without the source code, the bug could be found in the OS or firmware. Do you think the FBI is working with ever phone manufacturer to install this and no one ever leaked that info? There isn't one piece of evidence that it is actually true.
The version of Android bundled with several cell phone manufacturers' smartphones isn't open source. In many cases, it's not possible to just check out Google's tree and build it on your Samsung; you still have to fiddle with proprietary hardware modules, etc.
That said, i would only trust my cell phone to be off if I took out the battery.
That's exactly the bad article that started the misconception.
This is a case where you need to let common sense override your trust in journalists. You are probably smarter than them, you know more about tech and phones than them, don't trust them when they write stuff that doesn't make sense. Even if it were true don't you think some hacker woud have verified it by now? Offered a hack to stop it? They haven't because the article is dumb and wrong, and CNet should retract it. I'll cite the source cnet lazily misinterpreted if you give me a minute.
Here is the original source, the court memorandum. You can see how grossly irresponsible/lazy/stupid Cnet was.
Note that it is VERY clear that the government is asking to install a physical bug into a phone that works when the phone is off. It has nothign to do with the inherent hardware of the phone.
Judge Jones granted the application, authorizing continued interception at the four restaurants and the installation of a listening device in Ardito's cellular telephone. The device functioned whether the phone was powered on or off, intercepting conversations within its range wherever it happened to be.
> Yet this article chooses to worry about the cars?
The article doesn't really focus on your car phoning home and telling Google where you are.
Instead, it talks about restrictions on how fast you can drive, driving style, and loss of autonomy by having an AI drive for you. Almost all of the benefits being touted as advantages of driver-less cars only become reality if everyone uses the AI. In theory, in some dystopian future, everyone would be forced to rely on the AI to drive.
I don't want to be forced into a situation where I cannot drive my car.
Of course, the problem here isn't the presence of some AI, but laws requiring me to use one. Having the choice to drive with an AI is certainly better than not having the choice, but choice is key.
> The article doesn't really focus on your car phoning home and telling Google where you are.
Apparently you and I didn't read the same article, since the main worry of the article seemed to be that Google can't be trusted with your data.
>Almost all of the benefits being touted as advantages of driver-less cars only become reality if everyone uses the AI.
The article does imply this, but it's simply not true. Autonomous cars will be able to reduce accidents and park themselves the moment they are available. There have been some past pie-in-the-sky ideas of ultra-high-speed internetworked cars, but the practical problems of those are (perhaps counter-intuitively) harder to solve than the technical problem of a car that can drive autonomously without communicating to other vehicles.
Furthermore it is obvious with a little thought that autonomous vehicles will have to be able to function well on roads where every other car is driven by a human. Otherwise there will never be a "first" autonomous car.
> In theory, in some dystopian future, everyone would be forced to rely on the AI to drive.
1) IMO that is still far in the future
2) Whether or not this is dystopian is subject to debate; certainly in the hypothetical future where the car sends all your travel data Megacorp X without any option to opt-out it's dystopian, but the same would be true of mandated tracking devices in cars without mandated autonomy. I personally would be perfectly happy with a future where manual driving was forbidden on public thoroughfares but I could still take a sports car to Laguna Seca and burn some rubber.
Short of being in a faraday cage, we also already know cell phones have a habit of not really rendering you 'untrackable' even when lay users think they've turned them off.
And, frankly, the phone is a superior vector in the first place, as the car has little idea who's driving it, no real idea who the other occupants might be, and little idea where the occupants actually go when they get out. [1]
Yet this article chooses to worry about the cars?
I don't see a huge delta between "I have to leave my phone at home to be sure it can't be used to track me" and "I can't use my 'smart' car, if I want to be sure it can't be used to track me".
[1] The Gym, the massage parlor and the pizza joint might be in the same strip mall. Your car can't know one or ones you go to, whether you get into a subsequent vehicle and go somewhere else entirely, etc. Your phone can know exactly where you're going, and for how long. The car's data is far inferior. Rather than being a data detectives dream, it seems more like a "better than nothing" fall-back, if the tracked-individual happened to actually leave their phone at home or properly disable it.
And anyone smart/aware enough to prevent themselves from being tracked by their phone is smart/aware enough to take a different vehicle, or take the Google car to a transit station/park-and-ride/alibi-establishing-alternate-location/etc.