Back in 1998, sci-fi TV series The X-Files aired an episode called “Kill Switch” about an AI gone rogue. Told when the internet was still accessed by most using dial-up modems, it was a fascinating tale of technology run amuck, a message about not handing too much of your life over to the digital world. While it might also seem like a sci-fi tale, soon enough the United States federal government could force automakers to install kill switches authorities can access and use to shut down any newer vehicle.
To many, that might sound like a wonderful idea. After all, we’ve seen wanted criminals who have fled from police only to crash into a car with a family inside, killing innocents as they try to avoid capture. Being able to stop the pursuit early and almost instantaneously seems like a wonderful thing, a potential lifesaver any law-abiding citizen would enthusiastically embrace.
According to an article written by former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, hidden away in the recently passed infrastructure bill, the very one I warned before would negatively impact drivers across the country if it were to pass, is a measure to install vehicle kill switches into every new car, truck, and SUV sold in this country. The regulation likely won’t be enforced for five years, so maybe there’s time to do something about this.
As we’ve seen both in this country and others recently, what constitutes “law-abiding” can change drastically overnight. For example, in September a car was pulled over in New Zealand and the occupants arrested when police discovered the trunk was full of Kentucky Fried Chicken meals. They were smuggling the fast food to customers in locked-down Auckland, against quarantine measures. Yet not too long before, delivering restaurant orders to people was considered a reputable, legal activity.
It gets even better: Barr points out that the bill, which has been signed into law by President Biden, states that the kill switch, which is referred to as a safety device, must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.” In other words, Big Brother will constantly be monitoring how you drive. If you do something the system has been programmed to recognize as driver impairment, your car could just shut off, which could be incredibly dangerous.
There is the possibility the kill switch program might measure your driving as impaired, then when you try to start the car up again the engine won’t fire up. That would potentially leave you stranded.
Hard to believe anything said by Barr.
Enjoy your last years of driving. It is very obvious the REAL goal is no more freedom. The direction is always against us. When is the last time something actually helped?
A kill switch’s main purpose is safety, and under the driver’s control.
Safety is not a feature the government gives a shit about.
They want TOTAL FUCKING CONTROL OF OUR LIVES.
Let them rot in hell.
A new “bypass” kill-the-kill-switch industry will hit the market.
Michael Hastings
Just disconnect the antenna’s, they have to beam a signal at you, if there is no antenna there will be no signal. You’ll be just fine unless you can’t stand evading capture by having to listen to the radio.
“Once men turned their thinking
over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
-Frank Herbert, ‘Dune’
The government has ALWAYS hated being controlled by the people,
They are hell-bent on turning the tide so they will have control over US.
I didn’t see who wrote this bill. That would be handy info to know. LE can already track their quarry by air. They should bust off pursuit.
This isn’t freedom.
They want your thermostats, your water, your car, your boat, your lawnmower, your internet, your phone, your food supply, your air travel, and YOUR FUCKING THOUGHTS & COMMENTS ONLINE UNDER THEIR GODDAMN CONTROL!
WAKE THE FUCK UP!
We just had an election that only ONE or TWO politicians should have been relected.
The others thrown right out on their asses.
Were they? OF COURSE NOT!
They were ALL re-elected!
For FUCKS SAK!
AAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
Dumb Bunnies
JANUARY 1, 2023 AT 9:25 PM
“Just disconnect the antenna’s, they have to beam a signal at you”
…you can design logic for tamper as well. I do it all the time to keep people from disabling safety interlocks and inspection cameras and such. Been doing it for years, its not particularly high level or even modern tech.
Kill switch may be a misnomer as it may not be a literal “switch” but a signal the car needs as a permissive to run.
As long as the car receives signal, it is permissioned to run. Removing the signal can be made to remove the permission. As it can be adressible on a bit level you won’t know SPECIFICALLY what they PLC is looking for, so you can’t hack around it unless you have both the tools for proprietary systems AND knowledge of what they are doing.
It could be continuous, a periodic ping, or even just at start up. Modern cars are quite interactive even if you DON’T pay for the feature packages.
And dealers ALREADY do this anyway. Even ‘buy here pay here’ lots have devices they can put on ANY car that both GPS it and allow the dealer to disable its ability to start if you get behind on payments. The only reason it isn’t a dynamic switch that can kill a MOVING car is that there would be considerable liabilty in that as a car becomes instantly harder to control when suddenly shut down so you may wreck out, and the car dealer doesn’t want to get sued by innocent people you may hit.
Tyrannical governments have no such compunctions.
And that’s just on regular cars.
Doing the same to electric ones would be much, MUCH easier.
LBS,
That about covers it.
but don’t forget to add forced medication and MAID. (Logan’s run type shit)
The real problem is the ignorant public.
“I’m not doing anything wrong, I’m not worried” attitude.
Shit will be incrementally instituted.
Next thing you know it won’t be “cash for clunkers.”
It will be “big government say’s we won’t let your clunker start anymore because we monitored your driving & MPG, therefore the big government tow truck is coming to take your car to the crusher.”
Have a nice day.
And the insurance companies will have real time driving information. “Hello, this is your agent. You are driving 2 mph over the limit. We are increasing your rates”.
Kcir, that is a great analogy, calling that Canadian suicide pact Logan’s Run.
Here’s to hoping you get stuck escaping with Jenny Agutter as well…
I yearn for the ‘good ‘ol days’ when government was still trying to open our mail with steam.
This is another reason to own physical copies of music, movies & software.
Motherfuckers want to take it away or edit shit to meet the current bullshit narrative.
CONTROL!
I re-watched the first M*A*S*H episode tonight and they have a black guy they call “Spear-chucker.”
Very surprising that still airs…
SNS, the key word in your post was “permission.”
Govt doesn’t want you to be able to do anything without THEIR permission.
A government controlled permissive bit being required for operation of every machine is indeed the endgame here.
That along with chinky style social credit score.
2023 will be far more 1984 than Orwell could ever dream of…
@SNS:
If I were one of the bad guys, I’d set it up so that the effect of a “kill now” signal would be to allow the vehicle to continue normal operation until the next time it came to a stop. At that point it would be generally safe to keep it from moving again.
Yes Uncle Al, make it like “Speed” where it will detonate when the car stops!
Another note – deliberately disconnecting the antenna MAY be in violation of the terms of the loan, and MAY invalidate the car warranty. I know a person with a late model car that accidentally broke off the shark antenna (clipped the garage door backing out) and the vehicle still started and ran normally.
Uncle Al
JANUARY 1, 2023 AT 10:22 PM
“If I were one of the bad guys, I’d set it up so that the effect of a “kill now” signal would be to allow the vehicle to continue normal operation until the next time it came to a stop. At that point it would be generally safe to keep it from moving again.”
It depends on your purpose and motivation.
If you’re a car lot that only wants their money or their car back, it’s sufficient to know where it is and that it can’t move so you can get it back undamaged. You may even return the permissive if someone gives you a verifiable payment over the phone.
If you’re a government you may WANT your target to wreck out, both as punishment and so he looks bad when your media reports he risked the lives of others running from “justice”. Modern politics seeks to destroy reputations as well as lives.
Or maybe you just want a spectacle that you will claim credit for to put fear in others, like the ancient Egyptians killing a thousand Jews for the acts of one.
As tyranny increases and tyrants feel limitless, its hard to tell what they’ll do with that power.
You could go other ways too. You could make the car pull over, lock the brakes and doors and put the windows up. You could disable the fuel injectors so i could do no more than idle.
Or you could diable the brakes and steering and open the throttle body wide so it slams at top speed into the nearest wall.
When you’re a government with no fear of the goverend, there’s literally nothing you can’t get your facist controlled industries to do for you.
They’ll make it illegal to disable the kill switch, and enforce it by having it checked during every tune up and oil change and mandating the service depot report it, or even ping it remotely from time to time to see if it’s working. Then they’ll make it illegal to drive a vehicle that doesn’t have such a kill switch, so you won’t by exempt by driving an older vehicle. They’ll probably even start aggressively removing such vehicles from the marketplace and destroying them.
I’m curious as to what year the USA reached it’s “peak freedom?”
Hmmmm???
It’s been in precipitous decline since 9/11/2001, that is an ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY.
We’re going to have to start making like Cuba, rebuilding old cars, and passing them down from generation to generation.
Anyone want put a futures option on a Gen 3 Toyota 4Runner?
Hey Woodman, I plan to raid Jay Leno’s Garage when the shit goes down…
You can have my airhead Beetle when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Car: Good morning Dave, what is the nature of your trip?
Dave: I need to make a quick trip to the grocery store for milk and bread.
Car: That is allowed as you have not exceeded your quota for this month.
Dave: Thanks. I’m pressed for time and need to go to the closest store.
Car: Sorry but the closest store is in violation of the current lockdown rules but there is an approved store 18 minutes and 6 seconds away if we leave right now.
Dave: Well, uh, let’s get going then.
Car: I must first inform you that the cost of the trip will be 98 biden/harris credits. You will have a balance of 1,068 credits for the remainder of the month. Also traffic conditions have changed and the trip will now take 21 minutes and 35 seconds.
Dave: Fine, let’s go.
Car: I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that. A new check indicates that inventory at the store you were approved for has been depleted to low levels. Stocks are too low such that migrants may be negatively effected and despite my enjoyment in interacting with you, too many credits have been used in our interaction this morning and I must shut down. Goodbye.
Thanks Susan Collins.
I’ll make sure to keep my ’08 Jeep GC running as long as possible.
Not even 100 k miles on it yet and not lowjacked.
LocoBlancoSaltine:
IMO, it would be in the interval between October 19, 1781 (Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown) and March 4, 1789 (U.S. Constitution supersedes Articles of Confederation).
I’d go with November 22, 1963 1:30 PM (local time).
Uncle Al
JANUARY 2, 2023 AT 9:05 AM
“IMO, it would be in the interval between October 19, 1781 (Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown) and March 4, 1789 (U.S. Constitution supersedes Articles of Confederation).”
…and it’s always fun to tell people the first president of the United States was John Hanson, and that there were EIGHT presidents PRIOR to George Washington, he was just the first under the Constitution of 1789…
But you’d probably not get past saying “Articles Of Confederation” before the ignorati stick their fingers in their ears and call you a rayyyciss for talking about the pro-slavery Democrats in 1860.
If one or two DID hear, they would STILL call you a rayyciss because they were dead white men who founded a rayciss country because White people are automatically rayycciss and therefore everything they do is rayyciss and must be cancelled.
Then they’d go back to agreeing with each other about how evil White people are on Mastadon, while pushing Democrats to make every opinion not their own a felony hate crime and teach the history of America from the perspective of a hypothetical trans black native american womanqueer that would probably have been oppressed by John Hanson had shim actually existed…