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Cars nowadays are packed with microphones and permanently connected to the internet on daily basis so that drivers can have remote assistance when the car breaks once every 5 years or so.
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And also so employees of said companies can spy on drivers and make fun of them: https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...
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Which just shows that consumers don't care. Tesla's camera surveillance wasn't exactly secret.
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Customers care, but not enough to actually change purchasing patterns.
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They care, but it is not in their top priorities
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Equating what companies get away with, as the clear signal to what consumers care about.

And billionaires and nine-day old alts wonder why they need a bunker.

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I keep hearing this one. But at least for EU, the eCall system requires external communication to be disabled until activated during serious accident. It cannot be used for tracking the vehicle in real-time.

Some parts of the legislation (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...):

> 2. The personal data processed pursuant to this Regulation shall only be used for the purpose of handling the emergency situations referred to in the first subparagraph of Article 5(2).

> Manufacturers shall provide clear and comprehensive information in the owner's manual about the processing of data carried out through the 112-based eCall in-vehicle system. That information shall consist of:

> the fact that there is no constant tracking of the vehicle;

That vehicle nowadays are equipped with always-on internet and microphones is not related to remote assistance.

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Kindly read point number 2 slowly.

There are two definitions: a) Personal Data and b) Emergency Situations

What is an emergency situation and how can a car determine it is one? These are "smart" cars which aren't nowadays smart enough to process all your data locally, so that data is sent to servers elsewhere which process if either points a) or b) apply.

It is your choice to believe that voice data is ever deleted once acquired by governments and entities thirsty to benefit from that information.

For security experts this is just another "I told you so" within a few years.

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This is such misdirection.

Your car if new enough, IS reporting its diagnostics including GPS via cell. All the time. This isn’t exactly personally identifiable so they get away with it just fine.

This is unrelated to the microphones and assistance systems.

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It becomes personally identifiable through correlations with other datasets.

That is the kind of thing people allow when they click accept or decline on those pesky ”we and our 195735 partners would like to…” dialogs.

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Which is exactly my point. Cars are reporting on you, but tying that to remote assistance is disingenuous.
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Happy to read your thoughts, can you elaborate on this?
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One of my favorite things about going EV is the forums tend to be full of paranoid nerds which means someone will be willing to try desoldering the cell modem off their boards to see what happens.
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