Tag Archives: Cars

Bloatware in Aftermarket Auto Parts

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This story is interesting:

One Civic owner purchased a cheap aftermarket head unit off Amazon, and decided to have Claude work its magic on it, like it would a smart TV. What was reportedly discovered isn’t surprising, but is worth knowing about.

Among the pre-installed bloatware—­or spyware, if you’re being less charitable­—was a voice assistant equipped with WebView, an Android system component that lets apps display content off the web. This apparently always used about a third of processing power, even while idle, which isn’t great. There were also Baidu location services, a call recorder (!), a DAB radio client that is pretty much useless in the U.S., and Adobe Acrobat, presumably so your passenger can entertain themselves with PDFs on the go…

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Unidentified Flock Cameras in Florida

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St. Lucie County in Florida discovered (alt link) a dozen Flock cameras whose ownership it can’t identify, and that the county government had not permitted.

I am reminded of the decade-old story of StingRay cell phone surveillance devices in Washington, DC, whose operators were also unknown.

My guess is that in the StingRay case, the devices were operated by foreign actors. This Flock case is more likely some local government entity that didn’t bother getting approval. Were I a foreign actor, I would rather hack the existing Flock network—like Israel …

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Connected Cars Are a Surveillance Platform

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Researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with Consumer Reports, evaluated how much modern cars spy in their drivers:

The new Northeastern study shows, for the first time, data flowing among the vehicles, the vehicle apps you download when you buy your car, and third-party companies, documenting exactly what kind of data gets siphoned from our vehicles and which companies are receiving that information.

Basically, your car’s manufacturer has you under constant surveillance, and they use that data against you.

The companies on the receiving end of your data, our investigation has found, include car insurers and lenders that are partners in “telematics data exchanges,” which compile driving data on millions of drivers, thousands of data brokers that create personalized risk scores, companies selling infotainment and WiFi hotspot products, and even local and state government agencies working on planning, traffic, and safety initiatives…

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Reverse-Engineering Flock Cameras

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Hackers captured a Flock camera and got a look (alternate link) at the software:

While much of the automatic license plate reader’s (ALPR) most sensitive storage remained encrypted and inaccessible, the joint analysis of the recovered data shows that software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The camera can produce dozens of images of a single passing vehicle and, according to several weeks of recovered logs, generated more than a million images. Its computer-vision software also sometimes isolated bumper stickers and other graphics, including, in one case, an American flag patch on a motorcyclist’s saddlebag…

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Police Are Hiding Their Use of Flock Surveillance Cameras

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A usage policy for Flock license plate reader cameras tells police not to talk about the cameras:

When cops use Flock to arrest someone in Wapello County, Iowa, they don’t want them to know. A usage policy for the automated license plate reader cameras in the county tells police, in no uncertain terms, to keep them a secret: “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE,” the policy document reads. “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.”

This reminds me of IMSI-catchers (Stingray was the most popular) a couple of decades ago. Police would go to even more extremes to hide their usage…

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Axon Is Another License Plate Surveillance Company

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Governments are switching, but I’m not sure it makes a difference:

…some municipalities, including Denver, Colorado, are ditching their Flock arrays. But keep in mind that if they’re only switching from Flock to another brand of license-plate readers, like Axon, it’s like a gambling addict trying to kick the habit by switching from FanDuel to DraftKings.

[…]

Despite what you may read on the Flock website, Axon cameras are pretty effective when it comes to hoovering up personal details that can go far beyond your license plate numbers. That means a municipality that opts for Axon cameras instead of Flock units won’t necessarily reduce the amount privacy its citizens lose through their use…

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On Flock License Plate Tracking Cameras

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A recent story of a writer who was mistakenly identified, tracked, and arrested using data from Flock cameras has gone viral.

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw …

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