Is your car spying on you?

I think it was around 2005 I did some work for Toyota helping them to develop "Telemetrics", a system whereby a box of electronics with access to the mobile phone network sat on the vehicle's CAN bus and gathered data as it saw fit. This data was relayed to base and stored to be used... who knows how, when or why?

I wrote the software for the odometer for another manufacturer, this is *highly* confidential data because if it leaked out criminal enterprises would make a lot of money "clocking" cars. Although the way the odo data was stored was hack resistant and capable of some self correction it was also stored, and even I don't know where, in another microcontroller on the vehicle, thus the manufacturer had, at least?, two sources of data and if they didn't match something was amiss.

The average mid level and above car probably has upwards of 15 microcontrollers and they all sit on the CAN bus and can share data, storing things such as maximums and minimums of everything would be standard behaviour - how low have your tyre pressures ever been?

Unfortunately we live in an age where more and more data about us is available and more or it is being stored - for ever! I don't believe there is a solution, governments will never legislate it seriously, they like it. If you think it's bad now wait until quantum computing and serious artificial intelligence really get off the ground, they'll be no privacy left at all.

Same with smart tv's etc.

Most if not all smart tv's have cameras, I watched a docco on that, plus it comes up in other news feeds occasionally, good luck.

ps, I did watch one savvy computer tech explain how they can bee disabled you may have to do a google search. Perhaps Mike knows something.

pps did you see the recent article on camera equipped robot vacuum cleaners spying in households, apparently they are using gathered pics and video to train A1 programs without the customers knowledge.