Nah, the NSA doesn't need to bug your car. All cars after 2016 or so come pre bugged with an OnStar/StarLink/BMW Assist Remote/etc Telemetry System continuously sending data over 3G or LTE. Conveniently, the manufacturers already sell this data in an "anonymised" form. (cough Otonomo cough Wejo).
Private companies are so much scarier than the NSA when it comes to privacy -- you have none -- your life's data is to be mined, brokered, and sold to the highest bidder.
The NSA only cares about you if you are talking to a small number of known hostile foreign people who are already a party to a FISA warrant.
Welp, my car is now effectively bug free. It shipped with 2G, got a free upgrade to 3G, because 2G was being shut down. It has an optional upgrade to LTE but the features don't justify the cost and the mounting is derpy (new modem is a different shape, so it's velcro + double sided tape)
> Private companies are so much scarier than the NSA when it comes to privacy -- you have none -- your life's data is to be mined, brokered, and sold to the highest bidder.
Intel agencies privatize their spying to get around warrants. Private companies spying on you are not a far step from the NSA spying on you directly.
> The NSA only cares about you if you are talking to a small number of known hostile foreign people who are already a party to a FISA warrant.
Hah. If you have any political aspiration at all, you are a potential target. FBI lied to attain FISA warrants, and the lawyer responsible got a slap on the wrist. DC juries will never convict one of their own, there is zero accountability at this point.
I wonder how those telemetry systems work for EU customers. Cause that sounds pretty much illegal under GDPR (non-consented tracking, data stored overseas...)
Do you have a source for these claims? Without informed consent, they would be significant breaches of both national data protection legislation and the GDPR.
People tend to VASTLY overstate what sort of protections you get under the GPDR, to the point that I tend to assume nobody has actually read the regulations built off it.
In this case, there is no protection for data from your car, beyond the fact that carmakers don't want to share it. Writing regulations to cover it is being done now, and the tug of war is between giving any company who wants it access and giving companies the car manufacturers themselves select and get paid by access to it.
Read the article I linked yourself, no misinformation.
Quoting:
The contest is entering a pivotal phase as EU regulators look to hammer out the world's first laws for the ballooning industry around web-enabled vehicles, pitting carmakers against a coalition of insurers, leasing companies and repair shops.
[...]
Car manufacturers, guarding their gatekeeper role in accessing data from their vehicles, have resisted specific regulations for in-vehicle data, saying that protecting consumers is paramount.
"Europe's auto industry is committed to giving access to the data generated by the vehicles it produces," said a spokesperson for the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA). "However, uncontrolled access to in-vehicle data poses major safety, (cyber) security, data protection and privacy threats."
And this is exactly why I have a manufactured in 2016 Subaru. I saw this regulation going into effect, investigated what vehicle would last the longest, and purchased the last available non-snitch personal vehicle generation.
We're in the initial stages of a new dark age for humanity. Surveillance Capitalism and our generalized Adult Immaturity is going to swallow the free world, and it may be hundreds of years before actual human maturity develops to allow whatever comes after.
For several months, keyless entry stopped working on my car. It fixed itself. My unlikely conspiracy theory is I was being tracked and interference kept the keyfob from working.
If this is America, it would be the FBI who has jurisdiction. If this was outside America, CIA would be more likely to be installing hardware on a vehicle. If you hear the guys breathing on your phone line, that's probably the NSA ;)
You make it sound like the NSA can never fail. If it's monitoring you then you are likely doing something deserving of monitoring. They can be wrong though and you'll still have been spied on and information collected for future use. Consider a career in politics, perhaps?
They are imagining being part or the target of a conspiracy. It's a paranoid quirk of American politics, all sides see scheming and conspiracy.
Catholics, Communists, Woke subversives, or white supremacists. If you are part of American politics there is a mainstream conspiracy theory that your group has.
