Europe @feddit.org zaxvenz @lemm.ee 3w ago

Brussels is ‘behind the curve’ as Chinese spy-EVs become commonplace

www.euractiv.com Brussels is ‘behind the curve’ as Chinese spy-EVs become commonplace

US cited security concerns before effectively banning Chinese EV sales

China’s secret services could use sensors and cameras in the cars to monitor secure areas, wiretap passenger conversations and access phones that are plugged into the vehicle, CSRI senior policy director Sam Goodman said.

34 comments

All EV vehicles are spying. Teslas are rolling cameras with central cloud storage and Volkswagen was busted recently for leaking all locations of their cars. We shouldn't label that as "Chinese spy-EVs", but should enforce the GDPR for all cars
- Automotive Grade Linux project is going to become way more important in time
  
  Software is like encryption. you can't trust it if it's not auditable.
- This is a horrible take. VW are diligent in following GDPR and as an owner (yes, I am) you are constantly asked for exactly which permissions you want to give what service.
  
  They had a misconfigured S3 instance. While bad, that's not intentional - but you're comparing it to "At Tesla we wank to your in-car video feed" and "BYD spies for the Chinese government" which is just a whole different thing.
  
  This is a horrible take. VW are diligent in following GDPR and as an owner (yes, I am) you are constantly asked for exactly which permissions you want to give what service.
  
  "I'd like the variant without a SIM card please."
  
  Misconfigured to the point that all the data was collected, centrally stored and then accessible from the outside. These are at least two misconfiguration and one mayor architecture issue (central storage).
- At this point, all Vehicles are spying. It's not exclusive for EVs. Anything built in the last ~15-20 years have exactly the same sensors, regardless of the engine technology.
  
  While I agree that it's not exclusive to EVs, I'm pretty sure it was not as bad 15 years ago. For example my Toyota Yaris from 2010 certainly cannot transmit to the outside world (even Bluetooth was an extra back then).
Spy-EVs? How is that not fear mongering?
- It literally says why up in the blurb. Do you want it to be normal for any state to have covert access to security cameras you own?
  
  If I had to own a car right now I would be extremely annoyed. Seemingly every major production car right now is a data nightmare.
  
  I think calling it fear mongering against EVs is right in the sense that it's not exclusive to EVs. All cars have cameras, microphones and sensors these days and are connected, so legislation should deal with that properly.
- It is pretty much true for all modern cars.
  
  Yes, but not all modern cars are made in countries with a dictatorial government seeking to spread their system across the globe. As others already wrote, the data collected by cars must be enforced in some sort of GDPR, but I doubt that governments like China's are even willing to comply.
That's just the US government doing everything to sell more Teslas.

34 comments