Oh dear lord, more fecking idiots writing laws on stuff they have no clue. Can we make them go sit in the "Stupid Corner" with Feinstein and her ilk? Luckily that law would only apply in Michigan. But monkey see, monkey do, other states will be right behind them.
Daft draft anti-car-hack law could put innocent drivers away for life
Two state senators in Michigan, US, have proposed a set of laws that promise life imprisonment for anyone fiddling with a car's software. Security researchers are crying foul because the rules as they stand effectively outlaw not just hacker hijackers but also legitimate tinkering with engine and dashboard electronics. The …
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Saturday 30th April 2016 05:48 GMT Updraft102
Politicians write laws on things of which they have no clue all the time. Nearly all of the laws they make on any topic are like this!
It's been said that when all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail, and the legislator's hammer is the making of laws. No matter what the issue, they just know that the world will be better if they make some laws about it, whether they truly understand it or not (and it's almost always not). Does anyone really think politicians have better understanding of things they make policy about other than tech? The only skill that we know most politicians have is the ability to manipulate people, as that's how they were elected in the first place. Anything else? They seldom understand any of it-- and they don't know (or care) that they don't understand it, which is what makes them even more dangerous.
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Saturday 30th April 2016 06:48 GMT John H Woods
"They seldom understand any of it-- and they don't know (or care) that they don't understand it, which is what makes them even more dangerous." -- Updraft102 [my emph]
This is the key point. Nobody expects legislators to be experts in everything. The truly worrying this is that they have so many resources at their disposal to learn the things they need to know, and so much facility to consult, and so many of them still behave like this.
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Saturday 30th April 2016 07:16 GMT billse10
"Nobody expects legislators to be experts in everything. The truly worrying this is that they have so many resources at their disposal to learn the things they need to know, and so much facility to consult"
and yet they choose not to listen to those they could, listening only to focus groups & journalists .. and its so daft it could only be either a deliberate choice or the sort of incompetence that should see them in court ... and as far as expertise in anything goes, it's clearly lacking ....but these two are hardly the only politicians to be like ghats, are they. ... idiots .....
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Saturday 30th April 2016 12:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Doh
Ignoring the absurdly wide scope of the law for the moment, wouldn't it be more sensible to make the law prevent manufacturers from selling cars with glaring security holes in them in the first place.
It would be somewhat easier to enforce, since there are far fewer manufacturers than hackers, and they know who they all are and where they live.
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Saturday 30th April 2016 04:21 GMT raving angry loony
Car lobby?
Wondering how strong the car lobby is in that state? Wonder if this is just the latest tactic in the claim by some nitwits that since the car has software, you don't actually own it but are only licensing it, and they can therefore tell you what to do with it, when, and how?
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150421/23581430744/gm-says-that-while-you-may-own-your-car-it-owns-software-it-thanks-to-copyright.shtml
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Saturday 30th April 2016 07:24 GMT billse10
Re: Car lobby?
"there's probably just a wee bit of lobbying going on.."
Of course: you can almost here the conversation among the Car execs?
"if any potential competition is going to rely on self-driving or just "clever" cars, let's cripple the scope for creativity & innovation in the automotive software sector ..... go find me a politician who is gullible enough to fall for it ..."
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Saturday 30th April 2016 14:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Car lobby?
let's cripple the scope for creativity & innovation in the automotive software sector ....
The driver for this is (as you'd expect) money. Even now, there's optional extras that are enabled through software (such as those rather pointless "steering" foglights. My VW group car has foglights, all the necessary sensors and switching, but because I didn't pay for that option, the configuration file has something along the lines of "steeringfoglighten=nicht". Some enthusiasts have hacked the software and it can be made to turn on this facility, and other things that VW want people to pay for. My favourite absurdity is that the rear foglights are in the clusters on eacdh side. But even though the wiring is there, the reflector is there, even a bulb is fitted, the nearside foglight is disabled through software on the cheaper variants.
And the car makers are worried that in future more and more capability will be standard on the car (to reduce component count and production complexity) and enabled or disabled through software configuration. But even though the buyers will have paid for all the parts, if they haven't "paid" for the right to have the capability turned on, the makers want to make sure they can't enable it.
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Sunday 1st May 2016 00:03 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: Car lobby?
Thank you for the attempted explanation.
I've a Mercedes E-class; the single rear fog lamp is immediately adjacent to the left (Canada) brake light. If I had dual rear fog lights, there's no 'placement' distinction at all from the brake lites. The *only* distinction would be the middle 3rd Brake light, but that's not trustworthy due to older cars not having it. Keep in mind the fog.
The Child-driven Owner-modified (often-BuMWipes) that I've seen with dual rear brake lights similarly had no distinctive placement. The dual rear fog lights were indistinguishable from brake lights. The symmetry was pleasing, but the overall effect was negative.
Please keep in mind that I'm referring to owner-installed symmetry-enhancing additional bulb hacks.
They're immediately adjacent to the brake lights. There's no 'placement'.
YMMV.
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Saturday 30th April 2016 18:12 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Car lobby?
Some options can be disallowed by statute and will be locked out for vehicles sold into those regions. I find it handy that the wiring, connectors and other fittings are in place even if an option isn't installed. A quick trip to the junk yard and I can buy the missing components for a pittance compared to what I would have been charged for the "package" of options I would have had to get for the one thing that I might find useful. It makes a lot of sense for auto manufacturers to have all of the wiring and connections in place since the added cost is very low, it decreases parts counts and dealers can fit many of the options to suit a buyer.
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Sunday 1st May 2016 06:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Car lobby?
A quick trip to the junk yard and I can buy the missing components for a pittance....
For a car using yesterday's technology yes. But modern cars increasingly use Canbus electrical systems. This controls how things work, and it does stop retrofit of certain parts. So I can buy the car new with LED lights as an expensive option, or Xenon headlights, but if I retrofit the parts (junkyard or brand new from the dealer) the system will as a minimum persistently nag me that I have a failed bulb, or simply refuse to operate the "unknown" piece of kit.
To be fair, there's some considerable upside in the overall package of the best modern cars (safer, faster, more economical, more reliable, more comfortable, less maintenance), but the price of that does appear to be that the owner has less opportunity to tinker. And coming back to the original point, you pay for something, but there's an extra charge to use it.
Another example is the ECU mapping. More than a few vehicles use ECU mapping to offer different performance from the same engine. The buyer of the cheap variants aren't allowed to access the higher performance. On older models you could have the car "chipped" to remap the ECU, but now that's far more difficult as the electronics are more complex and more integrated. You might say that chipping was a bad thing (insurance, emissions, safety) but that's not the issue - I'm just pointing up another example where you pay for something, but you only get to use it if you've paid extra for it to be configured as "on".
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Sunday 1st May 2016 20:15 GMT Awil Onmearse
Re: Car lobby?
"This controls how things work, and it does stop retrofit of certain parts. So I can buy the car new with LED lights as an expensive option, or Xenon headlights, but if I retrofit the parts (junkyard or brand new from the dealer) the system will as a minimum persistently nag me that I have a failed bulb, or simply refuse to operate the "unknown" piece of kit."
That's what "recoding" software is for *ahem* "allegedly".
Also, VW/Audi for example use QNX RTOS Getting into the guts of that is a piece of piss with a disk image, VirtualBox and a disassembler.
My A4 onboard computer is running quite happily (and faster!) with an IDE->mSata conversion that I can replace for pennies instead of a 2nd mortgage to VAG in the case of failure.
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Saturday 30th April 2016 04:39 GMT 404
Precedent
Need to have legal precedent set before self-driving cars can be sold publicly - can't have terrorists disabling critical safety features such as remote control for the 'Safe Emergency Vehicle Brake and Lock' software for Public Safety Officers...
If you wear a full set of medieval armor on a daily basis, does it qualify for tin foil hat membership?
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Saturday 30th April 2016 18:35 GMT Charles 9
Re: Precedent
No, if it's made of aluminum, it's aluminum foil. Tin foil MUST be made of tin or it's false advertising (and that's why you never see the term in America--aluminum was basically perfected here in the late 19th century so tin foil never really took root). Besides, like I said, you MUST go tin or bust. ONLY tin blocks the brainwaves according to them.
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Saturday 30th April 2016 04:44 GMT Bill Stewart
They appear to be mixing up using electronics to disable the car dangerously when somebody else is driving (which might count as attempted or actual murder, things that are already illegal and very serious)
with using the electronics to vandalize or steal a car (which are also already illegal, but are much less serious crimes.) Maybe life in prison is justified for wrecking a moving car; hot-wiring a car to steal it doesn't have any justification for more serious penalties than any other method of stealing a car.
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Saturday 30th April 2016 11:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Steal/knick/hot-wire 3 cars
go to jail for life, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
How long will it be before prosecutors (who delight is proclaiming to the press that they will press for the maximum life sentence even for jaywalking) cotton on to the fact that stealing a car is in violation of this law. Any law that has a possible life term is subject to the 3-strikes rule and an automatic life sentence is passed. IANAL etc but these idiots who get elected need to be humanely put down ASAP.
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Monday 2nd May 2016 14:33 GMT Eddy Ito
Re: Steal/knick/hot-wire 3 cars
That's an easy one. They hire it out. Contract prisons are a big thing these days since they aren't subject to the red tape that a municipality would be required to go through and they could likely get tax breaks for bringing jobs into an area. It's one of the reasons that minimum sentencing guidelines are always on the increase as the lobbyists know the "tough on crime" package sells well with voters and if a congress critter isn't going to play ball his opponent in the next election will. The Incarceration Industrial Complex has become a huge problem in the U.S.
Here's just one example.
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Thursday 19th May 2016 13:53 GMT kiwimuso
@ Bill Stewart
"which might count as attempted or actual murder,....."
That raises the point of why do we need yet another pointless law? In most jurisdictions, if you made ANY modification to a vehicle which differed from standard, and the result caused death or injury, do you think that the lack of a specific law outlawing said modification would prevent you from being charged with murder/manslaughter etc?
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Saturday 30th April 2016 04:53 GMT a_yank_lurker
Serious stupidity
These two yahoos are well beyond Congress critter levels of stupidity. The problem that everyone is concerned about is the insecure wifi/bluetooth/etc. rf connections in many cars not owners modifying the code. The correct solution is for the automakers to fix the security issues not to pass an idiot law that even the dimmest Congress critter would run from.
To extend Mark Twain - God created idiots for practice, then He created school boards - still for practice, then perfection of stupidity God create the Michigan legislature. I think Mark would approve.
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Saturday 30th April 2016 07:29 GMT King Jack
Future Global Laws
Seeing as US laws apply to everyone on the planet (their thinking), what happens when somebody torrents a method of car control (10 years in UK) and hacks a car in 'merica? Is that instant death penalty? This is the new global punishment escalator. Looking forward to the brave new frontier.
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Saturday 30th April 2016 07:36 GMT Sgt_Oddball
what of the home mechanic and the professional garage?
So any one that uses a tool to diagnose issues using an odm port would be illegal? What of aftermarket alarm systems and immobilisers?
They're really thinking on going there? Do they not understand how these tools work for the benefit of the free market economy? (just talking the language they might understand).
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Sunday 1st May 2016 14:22 GMT DavCrav
Re: Summary Execution
"In Star Trek the next generation there was a planet where the death penalty was used for everything. Wesley Crusher tasted that justice first hand for falling on some flowers. Maybe these law makers are fans?"
In Wesley Crusher's case, it was the right punishment, but for the wrong reasons.
I mean, seriously, what a dick.
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Saturday 30th April 2016 10:18 GMT BurnT'offering
Read the PDF
The addition to the bill says, "ACCESS ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS OF MOTOR VEHICLE TO OBTAIN DATA OR CONTROL OF VEHICLE".
Nothing about illegally, unlawfully, etc. IANAL but wouldn't that cover just driving the flipping thing? I believe they are proposing to make it illegal to drive your own car (unless of course it has no electronics, so your Stanley Steamer is safe).
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Saturday 30th April 2016 11:12 GMT EveryTime
Imprisonment culture?
Today I propose lifetime imprisonment for jaywalking.
"I hope that we never have to use it," said Kowall. "That's why the penalties are what they are. The potential for severe injury and death are pretty high."
Millions of people that parked on the other side of roads without marked crosswalks will thank me for my legislative foresight.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
