Author Topic: How car telematics helped catch a murderer  (Read 5959 times)

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Offline AvaceeTopic starter

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How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« on: February 24, 2020, 05:20:14 pm »
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51466273

TL:DR - A murderer's wife's Land Rover Discovery sent back to Land Rover detailed information about its usage and put the vehicle in the vicinity of the murder at the time along with the times the engine was on+off, door opening+closing, boot(trunk) opening+closing, etc.
Even though the car was later burnt out Land Rover was able to provide all this information to the police from their servers.

The times tied in with the victim Sky's set top box also recording a loss of signal - the victim was shot while adjusting the satellite dish which the murderer had tampered with to get the victim outside.

Bet the murderer hadn't read the small print that paraphrasically said, "We record way more than you think we do."
 
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Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2020, 05:37:23 pm »
Great they caught a murderer, but why on Earth would you want your whereabouts and even when you open the trunk shared with the Landrover mothership? Apparently the location and events of every vehicle fitted with this technology are logged, not just that of vehicles of interest.
 
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Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2020, 05:43:08 pm »
Ahah, this is such a violation of privacy that it's almost funny. :-DD

Another question beyond why people would want this (assuming they actually know about it, which I'm not sure, this is likely written in ultra small characters on the 20th page of the sales contract ;D ), is how the hell can it even be legal in countries supposed to still protect privacy as a basic right? :palm:
 

Offline Domagoj T

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2020, 05:47:25 pm »
Great they caught a murderer, but why on Earth would you want your whereabouts and even when you open the trunk shared with the Landrover mothership?
Theft recovery?
The door/window/trunk details are most likely just because it can be done at next to no extra cost. There already are sensors all around the car, why not use the data available. :-//
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2020, 06:02:50 pm »
Theft recovery?
The door/window/trunk details are most likely just because it can be done at next to no extra cost. There already are sensors all around the car, why not use the data available. :-//
Why is that recording and transmitting data when the vehicle hasn't been reported stolen? Theft recovery isn't synonymous to having your life in your car recorded.
 

Offline Domagoj T

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2020, 07:08:01 pm »
Because by the time the car is reported stolen, it has already been disassembled and the manufacturer can't pull the data from the car. By sending the data live, you are maximizing the amount of available information.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not comfortable with it either, I'm just offering a possible explanation for the practice.
 
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Offline fcb

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2020, 07:21:52 pm »
So that would probably mean you can write to the “Data Controller” at JLR and demand to see a copy of ALL the data they hold on you (your vehicle).
https://electron.plus Power Analysers, VI Signature Testers, Voltage References, Picoammeters, Curve Tracers.
 
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Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2020, 07:25:35 pm »
Because by the time the car is reported stolen, it has already been disassembled and the manufacturer can't pull the data from the car. By sending the data live, you are maximizing the amount of available information.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not comfortable with it either, I'm just offering a possible explanation for the practice.
It still doesn't check out. You'd record data for one or maybe three days so someone has chance to notify the company. You'd keep what you have and start recording from there. There's no apparent reason to have weeks of detailed history of the owner on record other than that they can.
 

Offline langwadt

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2020, 07:29:54 pm »
Because by the time the car is reported stolen, it has already been disassembled and the manufacturer can't pull the data from the car. By sending the data live, you are maximizing the amount of available information.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not comfortable with it either, I'm just offering a possible explanation for the practice.
It still doesn't check out. You'd record data for one or maybe three days so someone has chance to notify the company. You'd keep what you have and start recording from there. There's no apparent reason to have weeks of detailed history of the owner on record other than that they can.

come home after week or two of vacation and car is gone, sorry data was deleted a few days ago ...



 

Offline Halcyon

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2020, 07:41:11 pm »
If you think this is a new thing, this has been happening for years now. Many new cars have factory-installed SIM cards (or eSIMs) which allow vehicle manufacturers to view vehicle data including in some cases the vehicle location (BMW is another of several examples). Many have agreements with law enforcement and security agencies (however I can't name which ones or the nature of the agreements).

Even cars without cellular connectivity will record a huge cache of information on an in-built flash storage device or hard disk drive installed somewhere in the vehicle (usually not anywhere the user can easily get to it without pulling the entire dash apart). There is a specialist market for vehicle forensics products out there and they are owned by some of the biggest players in the field.

I've worked on several "jobs for clients" which involve recovering data from vehicles. There is a very popular brand of vehicle, for example, that provides a treasure trove of information, including frequent GPS locations, harsh braking/acceleration events, loss of traction or when the driver disables ESC etc... all of that is logged and in some cases go as far back as when the vehicle is first delivered to the dealer.

It's an interesting field of cyber security, that's for sure.
 
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Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2020, 07:46:54 pm »
come home after week or two of vacation and car is gone, sorry data was deleted a few days ago ...
We can go round and round coming up with more exotic situations to justify the situation. Maybe someone takes a sabbatical and comes back three months later. Maybe someone goes to jail and comes back after 3 years to find his car stolen. It's a matter of diminishing returns and I'm not sure keeping data for two months is really justified outside of a murder inquiry.

Not to mention this whole things smells like the typical IoT shitfest. You need to disable the tracking when transporting the car by ferry or train to prevent it from thinking it's being stolen. When you buy a car you need the previous owner to release the car or he can track and even control the car from a distance. "Unbound" cars can be bound by people who have temporary access to the cars like valets have. There is zero mention how long the data is stored or who has access to this data which probably means they store it indefinitely.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/27/jaguar_land_rover_connected_car_privacy/
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2020, 07:54:34 pm »
If you think this is a new thing, this has been happening for years now. Many new cars have factory-installed SIM cards (or eSIMs) which allow vehicle manufacturers to view vehicle data including in some cases the vehicle location (BMW is another of several examples). Many have agreements with law enforcement and security agencies (however I can't name which ones or the nature of the agreements).

Even cars without cellular connectivity will record a huge cache of information on an in-built flash storage device or hard disk drive installed somewhere in the vehicle (usually not anywhere the user can easily get to it without pulling the entire dash apart). There is a specialist market for vehicle forensics products out there and they are owned by some of the biggest players in the field.

I've worked on several "jobs for clients" which involve recovering data from vehicles. There is a very popular brand of vehicle, for example, that provides a treasure trove of information, including frequent GPS locations, harsh braking/acceleration events, loss of traction or when the driver disables ESC etc... all of that is logged and in some cases go as far back as when the vehicle is first delivered to the dealer.

It's an interesting field of cyber security, that's for sure.
It seems the world is still quite oblivious. It doesn't really help that despite all this connectivity car security really hasn't been a field until recently. When some well-known researchers found worrying and basic flaws in the software just a few years ago most brands didn't even have responsible disclosure contacts. Only publishing about the issues got a response. It's worrying car makers are fitting vehicles with all kinds of gizmos well outside of their area of expertise.
 

Offline Domagoj T

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2020, 09:26:19 pm »
come home after week or two of vacation and car is gone, sorry data was deleted a few days ago ...
We can go round and round coming up with more exotic situations to justify the situation. Maybe someone takes a sabbatical and comes back three months later. Maybe someone goes to jail and comes back after 3 years to find his car stolen. It's a matter of diminishing returns and I'm not sure keeping data for two months is really justified outside of a murder inquiry.

...

probably means they store it indefinitely.
Regarding diminishing returns, sure, why not indefinitely? That kind of data volume is dirt cheap to store. One instance where it proves useful to have the data justifies years worth of storage for thousands of individuals.

Regarding justification of keeping the data for months inside or outside of murder investigation, the thing is that you don't know if data you have is relevant for murder investigation, and the law enforcement could make the relevant connection months or years after the murder took place.
Apparently this feature is not actively advertised and obviously not well known, so public isn't in an uproar over privacy concerns, but law enforcement knows about this and uses the system. The potential benefit for keeping the data is evident, so we could only discuss if it's justified to infringe on privacy of thousands in order to protect a handful of individuals, and perhaps if there is some nefarious usage of that data. I don't know answers to these issues, but I sure would be happy if data collected on me eventually turned out to be instrumental in righting a wrong done to me.
That's why I'm not as much concerned about data collection itself, only about potential misuse of it. I am fully aware that I can not expect to be invisible to the Big Brother, but I can expect that there is a system to keep Big Brother in check to prevent it from abusing the data, and making sure that storage is secure. Sure you can argue that if there is data to be used, it's going to be misused, but that is not the problem of data collecting itself.
 

Offline tom66

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #13 on: February 24, 2020, 09:50:14 pm »
Great they caught a murderer, but why on Earth would you want your whereabouts and even when you open the trunk shared with the Landrover mothership? Apparently the location and events of every vehicle fitted with this technology are logged, not just that of vehicles of interest.

This is just what modern cars do,  they all have apps now.  My car lets me pre-heat remotely, and start charging and other things like that.  I have no doubt that it logs the data, though given the reliability of the app in general usage (it constantly tells me doors are open when they're not, etc.) I would REALLY hope it wouldn't be used for a criminal prosecution.
 

Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #14 on: February 24, 2020, 10:03:59 pm »
Regarding diminishing returns, sure, why not indefinitely? That kind of data volume is dirt cheap to store. One instance where it proves useful to have the data justifies years worth of storage for thousands of individuals.

Regarding justification of keeping the data for months inside or outside of murder investigation, the thing is that you don't know if data you have is relevant for murder investigation, and the law enforcement could make the relevant connection months or years after the murder took place.
Apparently this feature is not actively advertised and obviously not well known, so public isn't in an uproar over privacy concerns, but law enforcement knows about this and uses the system. The potential benefit for keeping the data is evident, so we could only discuss if it's justified to infringe on privacy of thousands in order to protect a handful of individuals, and perhaps if there is some nefarious usage of that data. I don't know answers to these issues, but I sure would be happy if data collected on me eventually turned out to be instrumental in righting a wrong done to me.
That's why I'm not as much concerned about data collection itself, only about potential misuse of it. I am fully aware that I can not expect to be invisible to the Big Brother, but I can expect that there is a system to keep Big Brother in check to prevent it from abusing the data, and making sure that storage is secure. Sure you can argue that if there is data to be used, it's going to be misused, but that is not the problem of data collecting itself.
Your reasoning could be used to store almost anything indefinitely. If there's just a chance some of the data may be useful one day it could and should be stored. That's obviously flawed reasoning. Infringing on the privacy of thousands of innocents to maybe catch one perpetrator essentially means eliminating any and all protections the system provides. It opens the door for endless and gratuitous data collection. Stating the inevitable abuse isn't intrinsicly linked to data collection also seems naive as that very much seems to be the case. The best way of preventing abuse is to not have the data exist.

Why you don't want endless amounts of data on you exist is essentially the same reason you don't want to talk to the police whether you're innocent or not. Lawyers and investigators will tell you this. You're much more likely to be ensnared in something innocuous they think feel they can hold against you than to exonerate you.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2020, 10:09:39 pm by Mr. Scram »
 

Offline Domagoj T

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #15 on: February 24, 2020, 10:58:03 pm »
Your reasoning could be used to store almost anything indefinitely.
Sure.

If there's just a chance some of the data may be useful one day it could and should be stored. That's obviously flawed reasoning. Infringing on the privacy of thousands of innocents to maybe catch one perpetrator essentially means eliminating any and all protections the system provides.

No. Proper data analysis (both in scope and fairness) is the protection the system should provide.

Why you don't want endless amounts of data on you exist is essentially the same reason you don't want to talk to the police whether you're innocent or not. Lawyers and investigators will tell you this. You're much more likely to be ensnared in something innocuous they think feel they can hold against you than to exonerate you.
Your example of why you shouldn't talk to police is valid in a world where there is no such data collection and police are motivated to "solve" crimes and close cases, even at the cost of prosecuting the innocent, however, in a scenario where there is global, all encompassing data collection, assuming you are innocent, data collection will more likely help to prove your innocence, or even stop that line of investigation before the law enforcement approaches you, and if they do come for you, just tell them you were asleep in your bed, and your IoT, iBed 3000 will happily print out your sleep schedule, hearth beat and blood pressure charts for the night in question, corroborated by the TurboChill smart fridge that logged you opening the door for 67 seconds and picking up the slightly expired orange juice, prompting you to buy new juice, which you agreed to by scanning your fingerprint, just as the murder was happening 20 city blocks away. Also, you were filmed drinking the juice straight from the carton, by your toaster.
It would also help finding the real perpetrator before innocent people are accused of the crime.
 

Offline legrady

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #16 on: February 24, 2020, 11:02:50 pm »
If you had a real option, I would risk losing my car if I don't use it every day, considering that 99% of thefts of that model car would be solved.
 

Offline angrybird

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #17 on: February 24, 2020, 11:07:17 pm »
Ford, GM, Chrysler, and other OEM's are working and have been actively working on selling this information for more than a decade.  Ford has been selling this data from all of their SYNC enabled cars all over the place, State Farm is a big buyer.  They are currently engaged in a large scale project to further parse and monetize this information.

IMHO, this site needs a section dedicated specifically to this type of hack.  I've been through my SYNC system out of some boredom.  It's collecting... Everything... Including pictures from the front mounted camera.

FYI to connect to it you need to connect a rather generic USB-to-ethernet adapter to the USB port.  From there... You can figure it out ;-)
THE CAKE IS A LIE AND THESE NUTHATCH ARE WAY TOO DISTRACTING
 

Offline amyk

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #18 on: February 25, 2020, 04:19:07 am »
Let's just put everyone in prison the moment they're born, lest they possibly do something illegal... :palm:

This article is just a propaganda-piece for conditioning people to become used to constant surveillance...

"Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither."
 
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Offline angrybird

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #19 on: February 25, 2020, 04:36:40 am »
Who is John Galt
THE CAKE IS A LIE AND THESE NUTHATCH ARE WAY TOO DISTRACTING
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #20 on: February 25, 2020, 06:02:16 am »
Because by the time the car is reported stolen, it has already been disassembled and the manufacturer can't pull the data from the car. By sending the data live, you are maximizing the amount of available information.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not comfortable with it either, I'm just offering a possible explanation for the practice.
It still doesn't check out. You'd record data for one or maybe three days so someone has chance to notify the company. You'd keep what you have and start recording from there. There's no apparent reason to have weeks of detailed history of the owner on record other than that they can.

The real world explanation could be rather mundane - and typical of management, especially in systems development .........

After the capture, transmission and recording of data was operational, stage 2 - the long term storage policy - got caught up in "discussion".  Once it was determined that a couple of hundred dollars spent on storage could hold years of data, the whole exercise got shelved, "for later".
 

Offline rdl

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #21 on: February 25, 2020, 06:21:23 am »
I don't see how the car companies or insurance companies or anyone else has a right to this kind of information by default. Surely the owner of the vehicle has to authorize it first, otherwise how could it even be legal?
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #22 on: February 25, 2020, 06:39:17 am »
It's called: "small print".
 

Offline JPortici

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #23 on: February 25, 2020, 07:17:00 am »
It's funny though, i didn't receive a GDPR consent form :P (from the mfg. However i did give consent, to the insurance company for the black box i installed)
« Last Edit: February 25, 2020, 07:18:41 am by JPortici »
 

Offline Halcyon

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Re: How car telematics helped catch a murderer
« Reply #24 on: February 25, 2020, 09:30:16 am »
I don't see how the car companies or insurance companies or anyone else has a right to this kind of information by default. Surely the owner of the vehicle has to authorize it first, otherwise how could it even be legal?

Yep, you do. If you don't read contracts before you sign, you can only blame yourself.
 


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