I’ve written several columns about how new and late model vehicles equipped with what’s styled “connectivity” – the capability to send and receive data, like a smartphone and not necessarily with your knowledge or consent – are being used to create real-tme records of your comings and goings and many other things besides.
Well, now we know it’s not just the corporatocracy – the vehicle manufacturers, the insurance mafia, etc. – that’s mining your data. It is also the FBI. “The FBI is buying up information that can be used to track people’s movement and location history,” according to Politico, which quoted FBI Director Kash Patel as follows:
“We do purchase commercially available information that’s consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us,” Patel said during testimony before Congress last week.
Italics added.
“Commercially available” sounds innocuous – like commercially available stuff you might pick up at the Dollar Store. It’s the available part that’s not-so-innocuous. It is not “available” in the sense that the owner of something puts it out there for people who might be interested in buying it. Like a For Sale sign taped to a car’s windshield by its owner, to indicate he’s wanting to sell his property. What Patel is talking about is the property – your data – that is being taken from your vehicle and sold to other parties (such as marketing firms that want to know more about you so as to be able to fine-tune their pushy selling to you, as well as the insurance mafia, so they can more effectively mulct you) without your consent or even knowledge.
There is a an important difference there.
You buy a new vehicle and you think – reasonably – that you are now the owner of the vehicle. For this word to have any substance, it must be the case that no other person or party can obtain data collected by your vehicle without your explicit prior authorization. Even people who rent apartments have a legal right to privacy; i.e., the landlord cannot just enter the renter’s apartment any time he wants to and filch through his tenant’s desk drawers or have a look at his tenant’s computer’s history. Were he to do that, it would e considered a crime.
More finely, if he were caught doing that, it would be considered a crime.
Well, it is common knowledge the vehicle manufacturers mine – and sell – data collected without people’s explicit consent and now it’s been revealed they provide this data to the federal government’s primary law enforcement agency. They have been caught, in other words. Yet no one has been charged, much less arrested.
Again.
Isn’t this astounding? Isn’t it a measure of the extent to which the people of this country have been beaten down, psychologically? A quarter century has passed since Nahhhhhhhhhnlevven and the subsequent conditioning of Americans to accept living in a panopticon that encompasses everything, just about – including their vehicles.
No one asked them whether they wanted to “share” – what a vapid and treacly term – their “data” with anyone. It was just “shared.”
Oh, of course, the guilty will say that when someone buys a new vehicle, they agreed to all of this. It is right there, in the fine print. Never mind no one reads that fine print. Never mind that the manufacturers (as well as the dealership sales staff) know no one reads it – and that they depend on that fact. They certainly don’t tell people they really ought to read it – or why.
Just sign here.
It’s a form of suborning “consent” – as happens when you “agree” to submit to DWI breath testing (and thereby agree to provide evidence that can and will be used against you) when you “agree” to get the driver’s license the state requires you to get in order to be legally allowed to use what used to be the public right of way and exercise wat was once your right to travel freely.
Well, never mind all that.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is among the few who appear appalled. He – along with Senator Mike Lee of Utah – want to make it illegal for the FBI and other law enforcement entities to buy your “data” from those who stole it. “Doing that without a warrant is an outrageous end run around the Fourth Amendment,” Wyden says. “It’s particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information.”
It’d be even better if it became a crime to steal it in the first place.
Naturlich, there are defenders of this buying what someone else stole, such as Tom Cotton of Arkansas. He says “The key words are commercially available. If any other person can buy it, and the FBI can buy it, and it helps them locate a depraved child molester or savage cartel leader, I would certainly hope the FBI is doing anything it can to keep Americans safe.”
A better summary of the Stage 5 metastasis of America into a Homeland would be hard to write.
Cue the Lee Greenwood song.
Meanwhile, if you want to drive a vehicle that isn’t something like a an ankle bracelet with wheels, buy one that was made before vehicles got “connected.” A good way to know whether a vehicle is – or is not – is to see whether it has a shark fin antenna on the roof. If it does, it is. If not, it probably isn’t. Most vehicles made before 2005 or so are safe.
Most vehicles made after about 2015 or so so are not.
. . . .
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I don’t want to be too much of a Debbie Downer, but I wonder if this incremental, intrusive, overbearing ownership of the people by the government and corporations will ever be reversed.
You cannot miss what you have never had.
The younger generation has never known a cohesive high trust culture, pre Patriot Act freedoms (or at least the illusion of), the ability to raise a family on one paycheck, etc.
If this continues without major push back, the vast majority of the native population will eventually look back at the ideas of freedom, limited government, ability to associate with your own kind, etc as quaint old timey ideas.
Perhaps the only way out is to have the whole thing collapse under its own weight similar to the Soviet Union and see what arises.
What I don’t want to see is having to make the choice meeting the Soviet analogue in the downstairs hall or burning in the camps, but it may very well come to that.
Anon
Since the TSA union is soliciting and, much worse appears to actually be receiving, donations for their out of work molesters in blue shirt from gullible rubes you already know the answer.
The only way out is forward through the crucible. Hopefully by bringing attention to it and showing parallels to other authoritarian failures we might avoid the absolute worst case path and maybe shorten the length of the downfall.
Make no mistake, though, we can’t actually stop momentum that built up over decades.
All correct and true, however it’s even worse than this portrays…
Any smartphone device is trackable by the (((authoritahs)))… wherever and whenever, even when turned off….
How many drivers and passengers know this?
Long kive CB radio and handheld 2 way radios!!
YippyKiYahhhaaa!!!
You make a good point, Anon. It also explains why the younger generation believes that Communism equals “free stuff forever”. They were not around during the “duck under your desk” exercises in school, much less around for anything else. Free Stuff Forever is a powerful motivation to destroy whatever is left of a once-free country.
It’s bigger than the telemetry device in a car. If you have a cell phone the FBI, the local and state police toadies and pretty much every military and civilian government has Stingray device to mimic cell phone tower to intercept and track your movements and snoop your calls and data. I detest the sneaky sniveling little rat faced dinks who make crap like this. Just walk away, don’t help the petty, smug little people in government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
I thought the average age of vehicles on the road was over 13 years. I would figure about half are not connected to the spy-net. But if you carry your smartphone with you in your 1987 jalopy, they are spying on you regardless.
There is no way we are going to stop government from collecting every scrap of info on everyone. That’s what El Trumpo is doing building data centers all over creation and connecting them to Palantir, when he is not busy waging war on the world.
So you catch the FBI spying and collecting or buying illegal data? Who or what is going to stop them? They will do it behind our backs no matter what. The courts are not going to do anything as they too are in on the depopulation agenda…which is where this all leads to if you connect the dots of death.
Here’s the key in the legal sense that taking people’s private data actives within their private vehicles is not legal. The contracts Eric noted is illegal because it’s written in “lawyer language” where the; average person of reasonable intelligence can not be expected to understand. A nice class action on the vehicle manufacturers and the buyers buying illegally obtained private data.
However don’t count on the laws to actually work in the people’s favor. Because walking into any courtroom civil or even criminal. Is walking into a closed Union shop.
Let’s just say we plebs “win” a class-action lawsuit regarding our private data on these computers-on-wheels we call cars and trucks. I can see where-in order to even drive the new vehicle off the lot, one has to agree to be surveilled, data mined, and tracked for the “privilege” of driving said vehicle off the lot.
Let the free markets deal with that. If the free markets refuse to. Another class action for, antitrust violations.
Eric,
Not only do I appreciate you for automotive knowledge, libertarian attitude, and sense of humor, but your knowledge and use of the English language.
I want to scream every time someone ties himself into knots trying to use the word “share” when there is an entire thesaurus of more appropriate terms. Thanks to you I now have a more intelligent response: “…that’s a ‘vapid and treacly term!’…” I love it!
It’s worth a donation by itself.
“So”…how do you “feel” …about the use of “reaching out”?
You can “reach back out to me” to “share” a reply.
Thanks, Rod!
Kind words (and support) much appreciated!
For Eric: Ben Gvir toured Arad–his body guard is wearing black ball caps and black “covid” masks.
https://x.com/EyeonPalestine/status/2035509541169709072
AI: “security details and guards associated with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have been observed wearing black masks to conceal their identities.
Masked Security Details: Reports and video footage, such as from an April 2025 visit to Ar’ara, show Ben-Gvir flanked by bulky guards wearing black masks that create a tight barrier around him.
Context of Usage: These masks, described as black medical or tactical masks, are used to cover the faces of guards and members of security details, sometimes alongside body armor, creating what some critics have described as a “mafia enforcer” appearance.
Soldier Involvement: In some instances, such as interactions with Palestinian detainees or during incidents involving the “Force 100” reservists, personnel accompanying Ben-Gvir’s political allies have been documented wearing masks to conceal their identities.
The use of masks by security personnel in this context is often linked to the protection of their identities from potential scrutiny.
Speaking of the FBI …
“[Former FBI director] Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!” — Donnie Fubar on Truth Social
Hypocrisy disclaimer: I feel the same way as Donnie. However, my day job is not serving with dignity as president of the United States.
Trump’s tasteless post is more objective evidence that he has lost his sense of judgement, probably due to worsening mental illness.
Twothree words: Amendment XXV. Today.Well said, Jim H!
I have NEVER in my life heard any figurehead- much less a PRESIDENT- speak the way this childish psycho speaks! Not a hint of humility; not an iota of maturity or dignity; not a hint of sanity. What an embarrassment to this country- even above the last few scumbag presidents. It’s truly terrifying that such a man can occupy such an office. Even if I were a statist, I would understand that this is proof that “the system” has failed and the United States is over.
And remember: EVERY successive president has always been worse than the one he succeeded….so imagine what will come next!!!
It’d be nice to hear from any auto engineers on this. How can we disable this communication with the hive. Is it just a matter of disconnecting the gps antenna?
Disable the modem.
Be prepared to lose other functionality depending on the system architecture.
I’ve looked into this. Changing out the brain most definitely violates the vehicle’s warranty. Doing it at a later date good luck being out of town and the new brain has an issue, good luck. The manufacture must have an op out for the buyer. Buy used, an op out should be as easy as a flip of a switch.
The simple answer is of course to refuse to buy any car loaded with these “features” , Yes I know most Americans are braindead sheep but it would really only take less than 10% of us to stop. A 10% drop in new car sales would be devastating. At that point the corporate CEO’s will put on the pressure. Congress does what they are paid to do and I do not mean paid by us the poor tax slaves. The donors control them.
I cannot help thinking that a truck sized asteroid right in the middle of the beltway would solve 90% or more of the country’s problems.
‘Commercially available’ [pace Kash Patel] is simply a subterfuge in which the government hires third parties to do what Govco is prohibited from doing directly.
Automotive companies are beyond redemption, They are enemies of the people. I buy nothing from them. I want to see them destroyed, put out of business, liquidated. I want to encounter a disheveled Lightning Jim Farley, holding a cardboard sign at a freeway on-ramp as he croaks out a plea for donations.
‘Here’s a quarter, Jim. Call someone who cares.‘
That shark fin antenna could also be disconnected from an obsolete Howard Stern receiver but left on the car to cover its hole? Appearances can deceive.
Since goofle maps currently owns nav/radar detect functionality any factory installed GPS is a non clever throwback disguise for an insidious surveillance network as Eric describes. Why else does a car need to be part of a panopticon?
Evil emasculated auto corporations will increasingly use warranty cancellation to enforce and maintain the panopticon. 90% of current junk is leased and banker parasites control the both auto corporations and grovelling dupes who lease whatever shiny shit they’re fed next.
Im still gonna hack evil Onstar out of a 21 soon. . . Then Im gonna tell everyone exactly how, free of charge. A human responaibility.
Stay tuned
Let us know. I’m looking at a 2015 Lexus ES that is “connected” but uses 3G, which AI says is largely gone. I don’t know.
As Garfield would say, “Welcome To My World. Did You Bring Food”? Never thought I would see this crap in the good ole, US of A, but here we are. Who would have thought that growing up under this would come in handy in the future.
But this is something anyone can opt out of….but as with flying commercially, very few seem to care or actually step back and say no thanks. Many are just blissfully unaware; many just don’t care; But what worries me are the ones who know and bitch about it, but who refuse to suffer the least little inconvenience to preserve their privacy, and ultimately their liberty.
The battle is already lost. They never had to test who would fire the first shot or head for safer climes; who would be the one to stand up and resist getting on the train Auschwitz. They walked right into it, because they couldn’t put down the smart phone; because the wife won’t drive an old car; because taking a day to drive to Detroit to visit the in-laws takes so much longer than the 12 hours it takes for the three-hour flight that taskes 12 hours after you have to arrive at the airport 2 hours early to get gang-groped, and renting a car, and getting to and from.
It’s the 21st century version of the guy who worked in aerospace or the “defense industry” voting for the candidate who held the best prospect for perpetuating war or the space hoax.
These excellent articles of Eric’s are great; but only if we actually use the information they contain, not if we’re just armchair libertarians.
You think it’s bad now, just wait till Palantir and all of these Trumpian “data centers” come online. They got the public to accept and use all of this spyware, to the point where it has become normal, and now that 99.98% of the people are onboard, they’re going to turn the dial from the barely perceptible “1” up to “10”, because they know damn well that few will care and almost none will opt-out at this late date, no matter what “they” do, because the public has become used to it and dependent upon it.
We libertarians used to be the .02% that would opt out, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
“Because his wife refuses to drive an old car”
Root of the problem
“Many are just blissfully unaware”
Many are just lazy stupid, or support it outright. Tell your “fellow citizens” about the Amerikan Police State and nine times out of ten they’ll say “I ain’t got nothing to hide” and think YOU’RE crazy.
Remember, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were criminals, traitors, and “terrorists.” The would have been hung if they lost. The Sons of Liberty committed capital crimes during the Boston Tea Party — they committed piracy and theft.
The typical American today is a Loyalist would have ratted out all of them the same way Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver.
Exactly. It’s this way because the majority tolerate it and even cheer for it. But I see so many who identify as libertarian are also apathetic?
This x1000 It’s so very apparent now why Randy W moved to the woods
Yes, there is nowhere to hide within the borders of Babylon. Go out on your own and you make yourself an easy target. Once upon a time you could be quite free in the biggest cities, because it’s so easy to fall through the cracks in a big crowd- but now thanks to the technocracy, that’s no longer a thing…but quite the opposite.
I moved to a rural area where it’s still quite free, and you can still blend in without appearing any different than any other small farm/acreage. I’d like to be somewhere more remote, but I can only imagine… If you’re the lone house in the midst of the woods, the helicopters, drones and military planes are literally going to have you on their radar, and who’s to say there wouldn’t be some exploratory fishing trips?
They set Weaver up; They made Kaczynski into a criminal; Today, they don’t even need those pretexts…. “Sorry, wrong number”- there are no consequences to them, so they don’t care.
There hasn’t been truly off grid and remote for decades. The tax man has a record of who’s who for every parcel and if there’s development on property. Of course you could squat or own land that isn’t on record as developed, but then you’re living in a low profile way. If you want lights and water you will have a dead giveaway infrared signature.
Be a grey man in a beige sedan. Hide in plain sight. Be rural but not unusually rural. Average height, average build, no logos on your hoodie, no unique bumper stickers, mud on your license plate.
Yrp. That’s about the size of it. Living in a county with no building department or any of that crap helps. Other than minimal property taxes, it’s about as much as one can do. Driving is the most “dangerous” thing one can do….that’s how they’ll get ya. Keep a low profile (Not always easy- old driving habits are hard to break) and have your papers in order.
“Have dinner ready by the time I get home with the new car, mmkay? And where’d you get those shoes!”
I need to write a book, ‘Sparkey’s Guide to Male Success in Marriage’
“ We libertarians used to be the .02% that would opt out, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.”
This
Very clear to me having visited this site for over a decade that people are all talk, no action.
Hi Tex,
Thats unfair. Because it’s not true. Not in my case, certainly. I never once wore the stupid mask or played Kabuki. I openly defied the idiocy – and would have gone to jail over it. There are other acts of defiance I am proud of as well. And I promise you I will not bow to the New Order, either.
Eric, we know you’re “O-K”- but seriously, I’ll bet if you conducted a survey, it would show that at least 80% (if not more) of the people who post on here donned a mouth rag at least on a part-time basis “When it was necessary”. (That’s like wearing a swastika “only when it’s necessary”).
I’ll bet a fairly good percetile here even took the clot shot, or at least have been rendered so impotnet by the state that they allowed their families to (e.g. wifey insists the kids “get their shots”).
Thankfully, it is encouraging to come here and see the ones who drive old vehicles, and operate on the gray economy; or who have flown the coop to a lesser tyranny, etc.
Hi Arthur,
There is truth in what you’ve said. One of my oldest friends – someone I have known since we were teenagers – who is very “conservative” – put the damn rag on because he just had to get his liquor at the ABC store. It reminded me of the people who flew when they dd not have to back when the TSA first came online. I pleaded with them. I said: Look, if even 30 percent of us who do not have to fly just refused to for six months, the airlines would put immense pressure on the government and the TSA would go away. No, going to Disneyland was more important.
That said, I have hope that enough have finally come to understand that we are not going to comply our way out of this and that – while it will suck, bigly – resistance is the only hope.
True words, Eric!
In a way, I don’t have too much of a problem when I see statists complying and rolling over, because…well…they don’t get it, and that’s the nature of the animal; but when those who speak of liberty, and who know who our enemy is, and who spend countless hours perusing liberty-minded videos and articles can’t even be bothered to endure one inconvenience in their life, for their own good and the good of us all, that is what really discourages me.
And speaking of Disneyland… Ironic- as a long-time friend of mine who spent decades pursuing degrees and working in a liberal field, started waking up in her 40’s and was extricating herself from past entanglements and was really “getting” libertarian ideals, recently volunteered to get a gold star- i.e. signed-up for “Real ID”….because she occasionally flies for the purpose of going on cruises or to the loathsome aforementioned home of the soprano-voiced black mouse.
I’m so disgusted by this, I really don’t think I can continue to be friends with this lady anymore. Not mad at her…just disinterested [We’re just platonic friends], as it seems that she is just mouthing the words of libertarianism- like someone who advocates rescuing stray animals…but who has never actually taken in so much as a lost kitten. I mean, I know statists who are even resisting “Real ID”.
It seems these days that many people just jump on a bandwagon when they know it’s right, or to feel good- but they don’t actually practice even the most basic tenets of what they advocate. They won’t lift a finger to retain a little liberty of their own; won’t suffer an inconvenience, much less actually stand for what they believe if there is even the slightest cost involved. They won’t lift a finger for their own liberty, so how much sooner would they sell our liberties down the road?
I was very encouraged when the internet came along, and I discovered that there were others who thought as I do- Everyone from Rothbard to you, to many of the posters here. Just to know that there were others who had come to the same conclusions; who “got it”. But after 20-something years of this, I’m seeing that it really is no different than before the interwebz. We ARE on our own; and in-fact, there seems to be less actual pursuit of liberty now…despite there being more talk about it.
there’s no way to know what the anonymous arm chair bloggers really did or did not do. i tend to believe peters because he’s willing to use his real name, real email and has admitted to being duped on dump-a-trump. how could you know anything for a pseudonym?
most normies were not all-seeing, all-knowing sages. so what if they participated in the kabuki before they realized the lie? takes a big person to admit mistakes and change their world view. a person who is honest earns some respect and trust. ‘yeah, I fucked up but I learned’ goes a long way and tend to create decisively better logic than someone who’s biases are reinforced without a challenge.
wonder if libertarians who think they know it all up front are potentially dangerous simply because they stopped questioning things. We know the ny times and nbc lie but how do we know ron unz is really telling the truth?
in the early days rfk, robert malone and peter mccullough were telling us things we wanted to hear but it sure looks like they are controlled opposition, either always were or sold out (the wellness company, anyone?). you need to wonder about someone who arrives suddenly, all at once, saying things that seem to be spot on. tptb know there’s always going to be some number of skeptical and contrarian people and they will offer up a manufactured leader for them to fall in behind. it’s easy to see with hannidy, beck, levin but they are just the most obvious.
Well-said, Cat –
I am far from omniscient – but I do my best to be fair and put facts ahead of feelings. I got rolled by Trump – but the upside is (for me) that it will never happen again. Not that I expected or wanted a savior. I was just hoping for something better than Biden – which isn’t a very high standard, I realize.
One really doesn’t have to know much at all. A love of liberty, and drawing lines that one won’t allow to be crossed comes quite naturally; One doesn’t need to know the details of all the philosophy of libertarianism and the workings of politics and the realities of the world we live in…one just has to have the desire not to be controlled by someone else against their own will (a desire that most people possess innately from childhood…until they let it be driven out of them), and a basic respect for others and their right to the same thing (a.k.a. The Golden Rule).
Heck, I didn’t know what libertarianism was when I was a child, but I put up a good fight vs. the government school, and saw even then the injustice of “the draft” and taxes, etc. Even when we’re 9 years old, when we hear that Millard Fillmore advocated slavery, we knew that it was wrong and very scary that someone seeking to exercise authority over us could advocate literally enslaving some.
Eric served as a great example, especially during the scamdemic- an inspiration that probably swayed many and encouraged all. As opposed to many libertarians I know, both in real life and online, who basically buckled without even a moments thought or hesitation, with their behavior and acceptance of being forced to do something they did not want to do, even though in most cases there would be no or very little cost to them for resisting. If we can’t resist when it easy, we certainly won’t when it gets tough.
Tex, I’ll bet 10 years ago there was at least a little more resistance, eh? But as time marches on, the propaganda and bread & circuses, and ‘benefits’ of the Orwellian state take more and more of a toll…until we’re all gone. I wish I knew of someplace outside of our borders to go, because things are not going to go well here- and soon. And we have virtually no support or help. We’re a few scattered nuts who can easily be ignored until they happen to find us and crush us.
The FBI has the ability (and history shows they will do it) to harass, intimidate, and blackmail people with the info they collect.
Walmart doesn’t have this ability.
It is entirely clear these days that the government fashions itself as the king and we all are subjects.
Like this?
“My legal fees are over a half a million. I’m a guy who grew up in a trailer park, so it’s a lot. We lost everything there. We lost our children’s college funds, and we lost our house. We had to move. Not just because of the financial impact, but because of the violence that was threatened and the people who were sitting outside my house while I was recovering from cancer, throwing pebbles at my window to keep me up at night.”
“It isn’t just financial costs. It’s the death threats and the strange, weird surveillance by citizens as they’re following you,” he said. “I can tell you, beyond the financial costs, the opportunity costs—I lost the most profitable years of my career, 52 to 61. And we’ll never recover.”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2026/03/20/trump_ally_michael_caputo_says_fbi_investigation_into_him_and_others_spanned_entire_biden_presidency.html
The surveillance web that we all live under is simply unbelievable, and it’s something the FBI or CIA couldn’t have built if they tried. Everything you buy goes into marketing databases, and it’s not just the stores themselves which do it, but the credit card companies, the cash register makers, gas pumps, everything. When you have your cell phone with you, this can be correlated with your location, and web browsing history, etc.
No single company has enough data to uncloak you and your habits, but together, when the data from several companies can be purchased and cross referenced (which is a tricky problem), you can be uncloaked in all this anonymized data with high certainty. This is what doubleclick.net does when you visit any website to show you ads, and this is what Palantir does and sells the data to governments for their evil reasons.
I won’t defend car companies secretly collecting data, it’s awful. I’ve seen some of it, though, and what I saw worried me a lot less than the surveillance advertising we live under. It was aggregate trip statistics, the behavior of the car in various situations, etc. The car company does, of course, have your specific routes available at a point in time, but so far, I’ve not seen a way to decloak any one person from that data. What’s really stunning is that in the EU, privacy is protected via the GDPR, so they work really hard not to run afoul of that law, but in the US, they just have a setting internally that turns off all those protections.
Senator Tom Cotton: “….if it helps locate a depraved child molester..” Don’t need the data for that, start at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Two corporate names that are appearing in the news with increasing frequency are Flock (traffic surveillance camera networks) and Palantir (data collection and application). There are reports of some local communities raising objections to Flock system installations. Palantir, among many other activities, apparently offers significant personal data to local law enforcement.
I was at VW yesterday getting my 100k maintenance done on.my 2018 Atlas. I requested that the ASS be disabled. I reminded them that it wasn’t a requirement anymore. They refused. I’m not sure if 2018 has the “connectivity”. I stopped using smart phones 2 years ago so the car doesn’t connect to that. I asked the service guy a few pointed questions that is leading me to believe that it is not connected. I’ll research it further but I ran across this the other day.
A very good reason to avoid any new car.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/20/cyberattack-on-vehicle-breathalyzer-company-leaves-drivers-stranded-across-the-us/
Evidently it can but they make you pay for it.
Without an active Car-Net subscription or app connection:
The vehicle does not continuously upload driving data remotely.
Basic onboard systems (like the Event Data Recorder for crash info) record locally but don’t transmit routinely.
No ongoing telemetry to Volkswagen servers for aggregation happens.
Volkswagen’s privacy practices (as outlined in their statements and third-party analyses like Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included and Consumer Reports) indicate that connected vehicles collect and can share data for service delivery, aggregated/de-identified research, legal compliance, and (with opt-in) insurance purposes. Many modern cars, including VWs, upload some data when connected features are enabled, often for diagnostics, improvements, or features.
Angry customers demanding warranty service is more than enuf telemetry for Heinz to figure out wuz up. Im not buying yr excuses for evil emasculated corpiraye behavior.
It occurs to me that when you’re second or third owner of a car or computer, that you never did have to accept a EULA. If you buy a connected 2016 car, especially from a private party for cash, you never signed a contract.
Though I’m sure if it were a popular work around the scumbags will just make a new “law” to use against you.
No warranty to fk the mavericks perhaps?
“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” – Peter Drucker, village idiot
If the data was worthless they wouldn’t bother collecting it. Fact is, someone with cash money wants to know all the intimate details of your pathetic little life. Mostly so they can sell that information to their business partners in order to justify their consultation fees.
American businesses have convinced themselves that their primary duty is marketing. Because it’s a cakewalk compared to actually building products that people desire. No need to deliver what you promised, that’s not your job. You’re the Chief Turd Polisher.
But you’re not going to blow out the quarterly earnings estimate by selling shineola. So you need to get additional revenue coming in. So why not sell your customer’s comings and goings? Market it as valuable “insight” into someone else’s marketing scheme. Much easier to sell to someone just like you too. You all speak the same language. The language of shit polish.
Does anyone really care that I drive to work 5 days a week, drive to the grocery store once or twice a week, and sometimes spend the weekend in Moab? No. Of course not. But package it up with a few million other people and suddenly someone’s going to run it though an AI looking for “insight.” Meanwhile, I get pre-roll ads for female adult diapers on YouTube. Who made that connection? Is there some thread in all that data that shows women who commute 5 days a week and go out to the desert on weekends somehow need adult diapers? Can they not tell that I’m a male (probably not, since collecting that data would be sexist).
“Everyone is innocent until proven otherwise…” – Rahm Emanuel, chief arm twister for the Democratic Party regime.
So why does the FBI want access to this data? After all, it’s supposed to be anonymized and scrubbed of anything that can be associated with individuals. Maybe to build a baseline for “normal” activity. More likely because they can go back after the fact and add known data (such as a suspect’s home latitude/longitude) to the scrubbed data and turn it into admissible evidence, without needing to get a warrant for the car company database. Because prosecutors have become pretty lazy over the years. If they can connect dots without needing permission, makes life easier for them.
The fix is someone needs to take a data collection case to the supreme court. But that becomes tricky because there’s no indication of harm or damages. It just doesn’t pass the sniff test for most of us who enjoy our privacy.
I would not hold my breath waiting for the nine, gods-in-robes to validate, defend, or protect American’s privacy. They killed off the 4th Amendment long ago, and are now working on the other nine. Between the Flock cameras, the tracking devices in vehicles, and the Smart Metres that can tell when you are home or not, Big Brother is making great strides in enslaving the masses. All the while telling them it either does not exist, or is for your own good.
“Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is among the few who appear appalled. He – along with Senator Mike Lee of Utah – want to make it illegal for the FBI and other law enforcement entities to buy your “data” from those who stole it.”
It’s cute that you still don’t recognize that these clowns are just controlled opposition intended to give the appearance that someone is looking out for “freedom”.
Hi Wonki,
I guess you missed that I wrote he appears appalled.
the constitution and supposed ‘laws’ are the last thing we should have worry about. The crazy bastards are bombing each others nuke plants. Never let it be said we didn’t elect the smartest and most qualified.
Morning, Ken –
I put the odds of this going nuclear at 50-50 and I am likely being optimistic.
The fact that Israel won’t publicly acknowledge their nuclear weapons program would make it much easier for them to set off a bomb in Tehran and blame Trump. So much for the Nobel Peace Prize, even if it wasn’t his fault. In fact this might be the only way nuclear weapons could be used without causing global retaliation. It’s all Trump’s fault.
Do you think someone in his inner circle might tell him that?
Truman was set up as a fall guy for the Manhattan Project after FDR’s death. I sort of doubt FDR would have gone through with dropping bombs on civilians (but then again, Dresden), but did more to demonstrate the capabilities by destroying atolls or something. I wonder if they really explained to Harry exactly what Fat Man was capable of, in a way that a hat salesman from Missouri could understand? Will they explain the Israeli’s take on Iran and what the Jewish state really encompasses to Trump in one syllable words so that he understands?
After Hiroshima the world changed. The United States changed. Regions and states became homogenized and power was centralized. I always assumed the next use of nuclear weapons would be to quell a state uprising in a new Civil War, but this is starting to look like a plausible way to deploy and pretend that “Not Me” did it. What a way to usher in a New World Order and bring Islam into line.
Speaking of being set up, I’ve seen several posts claiming the recent “Iranian” missile attack on Diego Garcia was actually a false flag and the missiles were launched by an Israeli submarine, since Iran doesn’t have any missiles with that long a range. Never underestimate the perfidy of our bestest ally.
Showing what a strong hold Israel has on US politicians, the government ignores the foreign assistance act and pretends Israel doesn’t have nuclear weapons (which they stole from the US), and continues to give them economic and military aid.
Meanwhile they keep claiming Iran has the bomb.
this may be the script:
https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/component/content/article/old-posting-from-4chan-outlines-current-iran-war-too-well?catid=17&Itemid=101
Here’s an idea. Let’s abolish the FBI, and make Cash Patel unemployed (or incarcerated). While we’re at it, let’s abolish every regulatory agency that wants our cars and household appliances to monitor everything we do. This is 1984.
Yeah, I just don’t see the paragraph in the Constitution authorizing the existence of any secret police agency. Can someone help me find it? Perhaps its next to the machine gun exemption in the 2nd amendment.
“Meanwhile, if you want to drive a vehicle that isn’t something like a an ankle bracelet with wheels, buy one that was made before vehicles got “connected.”
They have ALPERS and Flock for that…
True, but at least they won’t be able to shut your car off remotely. It helps if you leave the phone off.
Any current “phone” is only “off” in a proven Faraday bag.
Yes “they” can.
Keeping looking like old cars will increase in value more as new ones get more trash added and prices go up I don’t want a car that’s a spy but most people have a phone so they car still track you but I could see them taking over cars to take out people they don’t like and make it look like a accident or use the car cameras to spy without been seen or known.
Eric: “The FBI is buying up information that can be used to track people’s movement and location history,”
Years ago I was called paranoid when I pointed this out to people I know. Funny thing is that while they don’t call me paranoid anymore they just accept that everything they do is monitored but make no effort to cut data leakage. No use of VPNs, using a stand alone GPS or paper maps instead of asking Loogle how to get somewhere. Paying cash? My reward points!!!
Nope, while I don’t know how much it helps to buy used at estate sales for cash, barter, pick items out of the trash or what have you to minimize what AI can search but I’m of the opinion it helps but of course you can’t post that sort of stuff then on social media.
If you actually like your privacy you’re going to have to learn how to compartmentalize things. For example; shots of your Man Cave you post on social media are all fine and well but does the world and by extension GovCo need to know that you’ve got enough equipment to outfit an infantry battalion? Somehow I doubt it.