[higherpurpose]

So you're okay with spy agencies (from all over the world) as well as drug cartels and other criminal organizations having the power to kill you in an almost untraceable way while you're on the highway?

Also, the US gov has been using these entertainment systems to spy on people for more than a decade...it's already been happening. Unfortunately, I can't find the link now, but it was a post from 2001 or 2003 on NYT and I think they were using Ford Sync to do it.

[jameshart]

Don't think I said that I was okay with that, no.

But to be clear, drug cartels, spy agencies and criminal organizations have been able to do that for quite some time. They've just had to send a person to plant the bomb or the bug or the location tracker in person. And it's not generally regarded as the car manufacturer's problem to deal with that threat.

So yes, there's a question of scale, which makes a difference here. Traceability can maybe be handled at the network level - who knows what information Sprint captures about traffic to these car systems?

But the way most people are talking about this you'd think that as soon as the method for doing this hits the internet, script-kiddies are going to start randomly crashing Jeeps into bridge pylons.

[dsfyu404ed]

>But to be clear, drug cartels, spy agencies and criminal organizations have been able to do that for quite some time. They've just had to send a person to plant the bomb or the bug or the location tracker in person. And it's not generally regarded as the car manufacturer's problem to deal with that threat.

But those sorts of methods require orders of magnitude less plausible deniability.

When people hear on the news that some controversial political activist (in any country) died during an armed robbery, from a propane explosion, suicide or a car crash which one do you think they'll question the least?

You're a fool if you think intelligence agencies (around the world) haven't been weaponizing these sorts of vulnerabilities (and they're fools if they haven't been). The major hurdle I see is that the people they'd risk exposing this sort of capability on, don't ride around in cars with the required features or live somewhere where it's more sensible to get them some other way.

[KeytarHero]

> But the way most people are talking about this you'd think that as soon as the method for doing this hits the internet, script-kiddies are going to start randomly crashing Jeeps into bridge pylons.

You mean the same script kiddies who think it's hilarious to sic a SWAT team on someone's house? It's not like script kiddies everywhere would start doing this - but all it takes is 1 before you've got a problem, and I'm sure that if it was easy enough for any script kiddie to do, at least one of them would.

Say the car manufacturer made no attempt at security whatsoever - all you had to do to take control of the car's critical systems was know its IP address and guess its 8 character max admin password. Would that really not be on the manufacturer?