I've never met anyone who's 'pro surveillance'. I've met ad tech executives and Googlers, though. Have you spoken to them about the world that's been built?
I'm not a big fan of the "silence is violence" view. Are we really going to blame looming surveillance dystopia on people who are working 60 hour weeks to heal the sick, address world hunger, or care for young children because they didn't become privacy activists?
> One thing i don’t understand is how pro-surveillance advocates don’t understand that the moment they are not behind the terminal, they are the target.
I think it's three things; (a) They're just being paid not to care, (b) short-termism, and (c) are naively hoping they get to stay in the club on the other end of the surveillance. Hard to convince nearly anyone to give up short term profit for long term societal benefits.
Cynically I worry we are seeing the decline of democracy and our new overlords are seeing that too (many accelerating it). Surveillance is necessary for control. The AI, mass surveillance, and drone combination is getting pretty scary TBH.
uniformed services and some kinds of professionals already have agreed to terms on conduct and records. The people who agree to that say "of course" when it comes time to subscribe Everyone Else to the same constraints. That is my own thinking, it might cover some proportion of the cases there...
If this tech was being used for traffic enforcement then I'm all for it. Unfortunately it seems like people will still be able to browse their phone behind the wheel and run over kids on bikes despite the surveillance
The unfortunate reality is we can expect more and more of our goods to spy on us over time, as there are both political and economic motivations to track and collect as much data as possible on everyone.
The best thing you can do is avoid products with trackers while they haven't taken over their entire market, learn to disable GPS, wireless, and cellular antennae once they do, and pray manufacturers take a while to insert dead-man switches as well.
Wouldn't disabling antennae on your car void the insurance? I would have assumed that was a basic thing insurance policies would have stipulated already over a decade ago.
> we can expect more and more of our goods to spy on us
strong disagree, this is complicit and defeatist nonsense given +100 years of active and successful consumer rights protection in lawful markets in the West.
I obtained my data via GDPR request from Audi. Despite having disabled telemetry and location services, remote access and so on on certain date, the car kept sending every destination address I wrote on the navigator to the motherbase. Other location tracking services did stop (i.e. no live positioning).
I'm still clarifying the purpose of this before making a complaint to the data authority.
Why rely on your car's built-in software for navigation? Smartphone navigation is going to be a lot better (in my experience) and Google, Apple privacy terms are greatly superior.
Huh? My 2019 vehicles have GPS that works completely without data uplink. Trouble is map updates (distributed on SD cards) are being discontinued in favor of cellular subscription services that don’t work in the desert.
I don't know if the above post had an edit, but it says "distributed on SD cards" now. My cheap ~5yo car is the same, I can only update the maps via USB. The navigation still works, but is a lot worse/more out of date than any smartphone app where I live. Although even google maps barely works around here.
Until last year I had a 2014 car that was like his. Not having map updates is fine. The tech companies have conditioned us to believe that if we don't have streaming maps with details updated every three minutes, we'll all get lost and die.
99.99999904% of roads don't change that much.
People used to navigate with decade-old paper maps stuffed in their glove boxes and nobody died because of it.
The few times when I found myself driving on I-11, which my car didn't know about, it was a novelty, not a crisis. I didn't drive off the road because the screen told me the road didn't exist. I used common sense and followed the signs.
I'd like to have a radio kill switch be required on all devices. The reason is that eventually, things that emit RF energy could be targeted by drones. That scares me.
I’ve been constantly telling everyone I know about this since the patriot act was signed and basically 100% of people don’t care in my experience
They just want to be able to connect their phone and have their music/video available and think that because they are “not doing anything wrong” they don’t “have anything to fear”
I’m glad this site exists so I can just send it to people directly
I recently sold my Lincoln Navigator and bought a used 2005 Honda Odyssey (single owner before me, 115K miles and well taken care of). Good luck trying to spy on me. It doesnt even have bluetooth let alone all the other smarttech crap. Good old CD player and Radio.
Cash is great for small purchases while out and about, and it feels good to not leave a digital purchase paper trail. Use cash before it gets outlawed!
It was a tongue in cheek comment. No one can win the surveillance battle with today's tech. I have given up on that a while ago but I do try to protect whatever I can.
Well, just the fact that you don't pay for the monthly cellular subscription these cars use should tell you all you need to know about who's the product in this situation.
The world IS getting mass surveillance. The havens for privacy are shrinking. We are becoming the ants in the ant farm.
One thing i don’t understand is how pro-surveillance advocates don’t understand that the moment they are not behind the terminal, they are the target.
I've never met anyone who's 'pro surveillance'. I've met ad tech executives and Googlers, though. Have you spoken to them about the world that's been built?
To me it feels like there's a flood of pro surveillance stories wherever I look.
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/police-say-license-pla...
https://www.alxnow.com/2026/10/02/license-plate-reader-helpe...
https://www.bakersfield.com/news/bpd-credits-automated-licen...
https://www.kcrg.com/2026/09/17/how-license-plate-readers-he...
https://turnto10.com/news/local/license-plate-cameras-help-s...
https://www.krqe.com/news/albuquerque-metro/albuquerque-poli...
Oh, I sure have. It’s not all ignorance, unfortunately.
everyone who posses knowledge of the level of surveillance they are subjected to and does nothing about it is implicitly pro surveillance
I'm not a big fan of the "silence is violence" view. Are we really going to blame looming surveillance dystopia on people who are working 60 hour weeks to heal the sick, address world hunger, or care for young children because they didn't become privacy activists?
> One thing i don’t understand is how pro-surveillance advocates don’t understand that the moment they are not behind the terminal, they are the target.
I think it's three things; (a) They're just being paid not to care, (b) short-termism, and (c) are naively hoping they get to stay in the club on the other end of the surveillance. Hard to convince nearly anyone to give up short term profit for long term societal benefits.
Cynically I worry we are seeing the decline of democracy and our new overlords are seeing that too (many accelerating it). Surveillance is necessary for control. The AI, mass surveillance, and drone combination is getting pretty scary TBH.
uniformed services and some kinds of professionals already have agreed to terms on conduct and records. The people who agree to that say "of course" when it comes time to subscribe Everyone Else to the same constraints. That is my own thinking, it might cover some proportion of the cases there...
If this tech was being used for traffic enforcement then I'm all for it. Unfortunately it seems like people will still be able to browse their phone behind the wheel and run over kids on bikes despite the surveillance
The unfortunate reality is we can expect more and more of our goods to spy on us over time, as there are both political and economic motivations to track and collect as much data as possible on everyone.
The best thing you can do is avoid products with trackers while they haven't taken over their entire market, learn to disable GPS, wireless, and cellular antennae once they do, and pray manufacturers take a while to insert dead-man switches as well.
Wouldn't disabling antennae on your car void the insurance? I would have assumed that was a basic thing insurance policies would have stipulated already over a decade ago.
Won’t your lack of data raise flags?
> we can expect more and more of our goods to spy on us
strong disagree, this is complicit and defeatist nonsense given +100 years of active and successful consumer rights protection in lawful markets in the West.
Discussed 2 days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49926628
It has been demonstrated repeatedly that modern cars can be remotely hijacked and controlled as well. We really do live in a dystopia.
[delayed]
This is why I buy cars older than 2015.
I obtained my data via GDPR request from Audi. Despite having disabled telemetry and location services, remote access and so on on certain date, the car kept sending every destination address I wrote on the navigator to the motherbase. Other location tracking services did stop (i.e. no live positioning).
I'm still clarifying the purpose of this before making a complaint to the data authority.
[delayed]
Nice work but I wonder whether the methodology is sufficient (and, yes, I skimmed through the paper's Section 3.2).
There are no specific opt outs. Either you allow everything or navigation doesn’t work etc.
Why rely on your car's built-in software for navigation? Smartphone navigation is going to be a lot better (in my experience) and Google, Apple privacy terms are greatly superior.
Navigation is one example. There are music/front/rear cameras/controls/others. Not all controls have physical buttons.
Huh? My 2019 vehicles have GPS that works completely without data uplink. Trouble is map updates (distributed on SD cards) are being discontinued in favor of cellular subscription services that don’t work in the desert.
> works completely ... Trouble is map updates
Do you hear yourself?
I don't know if the above post had an edit, but it says "distributed on SD cards" now. My cheap ~5yo car is the same, I can only update the maps via USB. The navigation still works, but is a lot worse/more out of date than any smartphone app where I live. Although even google maps barely works around here.
Until last year I had a 2014 car that was like his. Not having map updates is fine. The tech companies have conditioned us to believe that if we don't have streaming maps with details updated every three minutes, we'll all get lost and die.
99.99999904% of roads don't change that much.
People used to navigate with decade-old paper maps stuffed in their glove boxes and nobody died because of it.
The few times when I found myself driving on I-11, which my car didn't know about, it was a novelty, not a crisis. I didn't drive off the road because the screen told me the road didn't exist. I used common sense and followed the signs.
I'd like to have a radio kill switch be required on all devices. The reason is that eventually, things that emit RF energy could be targeted by drones. That scares me.
You envisage a world where drones are flying around shooting at cars and you're more scared about being targeted yourself than such a world?
Currently enjoying, and keeping alive, my 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan...
I’ve been constantly telling everyone I know about this since the patriot act was signed and basically 100% of people don’t care in my experience
They just want to be able to connect their phone and have their music/video available and think that because they are “not doing anything wrong” they don’t “have anything to fear”
I’m glad this site exists so I can just send it to people directly
I recently sold my Lincoln Navigator and bought a used 2005 Honda Odyssey (single owner before me, 115K miles and well taken care of). Good luck trying to spy on me. It doesnt even have bluetooth let alone all the other smarttech crap. Good old CD player and Radio.
Good luck trying to spy on me.
Unless your Navigator doesn't have tires, they're still spying on you.
The only way to mitigate that is to not use credit cards in the same place you drive. Especially malls, strip malls, and drive-through restaurants.
Cash is great for small purchases while out and about, and it feels good to not leave a digital purchase paper trail. Use cash before it gets outlawed!
It was a tongue in cheek comment. No one can win the surveillance battle with today's tech. I have given up on that a while ago but I do try to protect whatever I can.
Well, just the fact that you don't pay for the monthly cellular subscription these cars use should tell you all you need to know about who's the product in this situation.
Even if you pay, that doesn't change anything.
Implying that payment will stop the tracking is a red herring.
Well if you do have control over paying for it then you could conceivably stop and cancel it. I don't think they want to take that chance.