TX LEO here.

I've worked lots of fatality traffic accidents.

Since our vehicles know what roads we travel on, and how fast we are driving, I'm looking forward to vehicles limiting vehicle speed to the posted speed limit. Oh, unless it's raining, foggy, etc, and then the max vehicle speed would drop due to driving conditions.

While I'm at it, 10-80s (vehicle pursuit) are dangerous, so I can't wait for the "remote vehicle disable" feature to roll out.

The technology for these features already exists, so implementation should be easy, and the rollout shouldn't cause any concern because they will save lives.

 

(note to mods: sorry in advance if I'm straying too far off topic here...)

Sorry, WAY too dangerous from a computer security perspective. Once you have access to "limit speed" and "remote disable", a malicious actor could also....

• "Limit all first responder vehicles to 5mph"
• "Remotely turn off all windshield wipers and headlights during hard rain"
• "Put everyone's transmission in neutral when a heavy trailer is connected and a downhill slope is detected"
• "Remote disable all airbags, set throttle position to 100%, and steer right"

... and I'm not a super creative type.

Sensors and controls exist to cause all these conditions today, if you've got enough of the right tech options in the truck and you're directly connected to the CANbus network: these guys proved it and then these guys expanded on it, so I'm not being alarmist here. A cell-network-connected TCU means that level of access is now extended to whoever controls that TCU's software, and all the mobile networks in between it and Ford's datacenter/cloud. Or whoever manages to break into them, be that the random 4chan crazies, ransomware groups, state actors...

We're depending on the programmers who built the TCU and the other various networked modules to have thought out all the possible failure conditions, and made sure you 100% couldn't activate these settings while in motion remotely. I'm a programmer myself, and there's no way I'd trust it to me or the people I work with. that's for sure. I'm sure Ford's got a whole team of (really, not sarcastically) highly competent security engineers working on all this; they can reduce the risk a lot but there's no eliminating it.

One of the only things that's preventing a widespread vehicle hack like this right now, is that there are no standards; every manufacturer does their own thing so they all have to be hacked independently. Make it standard and the attack surface just shrank dramatically. Don't particularly like it, but that standard is in the works too, it's called C-V2X. Luckily it's mostly to let vehicles broadcast information to others (and traffic control systems) at the moment.

Long story short, I'm just unplugging my TCU.

 

Not if he has a brain... And no. You can't see mine either lol

 

Good advice. The only benefit I can see is it’s cheaper for Ford & easier for the customer to get computer updates. Not worth the risk for me either. Thx for the sage advice.

 

There is no reason to be concerned about either of the ideas I have proposed (automatic speed limiting and remote vehicle disable).

We should welcome my ideas in the same spirit that we have welcomed in-house listening devices and phone and vehicle based tracking systems. After all, the latter of these is used daily in "criminal investigations", and the same will be the case with the former very soon.

We can definitely trust all current and future people that will use these technologies to always do the right thing.

I mean, let's get real: It simply does not happen that promises of increased safety can be used as cover to restrict our freedoms.

 

 

Spoken like a true Do as I say, Not as I do .. Elitest !!
Some of the worst offenders I have seen, Speeding without Lights or Siren, Cell Phone Use, ECT. Have been LEOs !!

 

Surely this is all in jest, right? No one is this naïve, right?

 

The oil life is tracked through Ford Pass which is connected to your truck.....

 

HERE'S ANOTHER IDEA to add to the automagic speed limiting and remote disable capability:

In New Zealand, citizens can install a groovy app on their phones that will track the movements of them and other subjects citizens and store that data in a personal "Digital Diary". Wow!

I used to play a bit of golf, but hadn't in quite a few years. But I recently did, and decided to rent a golf cart. Well, I'll be darned if that golf cart didn't have a GPS receiver in it, and if you tried to drive the cart onto the green or other forbidden locations, the cart would cut power until you backed her up onto the cart path. Isn't that something!

So my idea is that we should show those pansy New Zealanders how to implement a proper quarantine!

Thanks to technology already present in our vehicles, an easy OTA update could be rolled out that would require that we obtain approval ahead of time for any trip in our vehicles. We simply go online, enter our desired destination, and the Ministry of Health, Safety, and Happiness will (maybe) send a code sequence to our vehicle to allow it to go to the desired destination.

Try to detour off the pre-approved path, and the vehicle will be disabled, a citation issued, and an entry will appear in your Permanent Record!

Some people (that live in bunkers) might object, but if it saves just one life....

OMG!!! I thought I'd tack on a link to the New Zealand app. I Google'd it, and I'll be darned if the freaking thing isn't a product of The New Zealand Ministry Of Health (here's a link) !!!! I had named my fictitious gov agency the Ministry of Health, Safety and Happiness as a joke (from Orwell's 1984)!

I'll also add that the Ministry of Health Tracking App is not yet mandatory, but they're thinking about it...

 

Obviously 7.3F350 I being sarcastic to make a point. Another example of why I don't trust software developers, I was recently on a long road trip using Google maps and my route kept changing and increasing time by 20%. I kept reloading the route and it kept switching until it happened without me noticing and I took a wrong turn committing to the longer route. Come to find out, Google now defaults to the "greenest" route that the app thinks will produce the least CO2 emissions. You can not change this setting and it will change your route without your approval unless you put your phone in airplane mode. They don't advertise this feature and don't allow you to change it because they know better than you. I'm sure there is a whole department of developers thinking up ways to make "improvements" on your trucks software. No thank you

 

Misinformation.

 

You can turn on or off the features you won't or don't want. Insurance data is not on by default you have to "opt in."

 

Your first post slipped right past my sarcasm/trolling detector, This one hit dead on. Bravo to both

 

My last post on the subject of my Big Brother wet dreams:

The last piece of the puzzle (which I bet will happen one of these days) is for new vehicles to eventually stop working after a period of time of not being able to connect to Mother Ford for OTA upgrades. Unplug your modem? No problem, but after X days/weeks/months, your vehicle will no longer operate unless connectivity is restored or you have it towed to service department so they can hook it up to download data and apply updates.

Of course, your purchase agreement will mention "required updates" along with happy talk about vehicle safety, etc, and it will all sound very benign. But if they can force you to have your vehicle updated in order for it to function, you are subject to the whims of the king and you will not be able to refuse the things that I have "proposed".

So how far are we from these things being possible? The technology is already there. And acceptance of these things is almost there too. Most can't imagine any downside to "new technology", and can only offer insults to those that have read a little history and express concern.

My opinion? We should have said H*LL NO to this path we have been put on well before now. No doubt automatic OTA updates should never have been accepted.