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to a fertilityy clinic,’ this kind of thing… Someone can infer a lot of private
information about the passenger.” 24
Petit has designed a syystem for around $1,000 that can listen for the
V2X communications, and he suggests that a small town could be covered
with his sensors for about $1 million. Rather than having a large police
force, the town would use the sensors to identifyy drivers and, more
important, their habits.
One proposal from the National Highwayy Traffic Safetyy Administration
and European authorities is to have the 802.11p signal—the vehicle’s
“pseudonyym”—change everyy five minutes. That won’t, however, stop a
dedicated attacker—he will just install more roadside sensors that will
identifyy the vehicle before and after it makes the change. In short, there
appear to be veryy few options to avoid vehicle identification.
“Pseudonyym changing doesn’t stop tracking. It can onlyy mitigate this
attack,” sayys Petit. “But it’s still needed to improve privacyy… We want to
demonstrate that in anyy deployyment, yyou still have to have this protection,
or someone will be able to track yyou.”
Car connectivityy to the Internet is actuallyy good for vehicle owners:
manufacturers are able to push out software bug fixes instantlyy should theyy
be required. At the time of this writing, Volkswagen, 25 Land Rover, 26 and
Chryysler 27 have experienced high-profile software vulnerabilities. However,
onlyy a few automakers, such as Mercedes, Tesla, and Ford, send over-theair
updates to all their cars. The rest of us still have to go into the shop to
get our automobile software updated.
If yyou think the wayy Tesla and Uber are tracking everyy ride yyou take is
scaryy, then self-driving cars will be even scarier. Like the personal
surveillance devices we keep in our pockets—our cell phones—self-driving
cars will need to keep track of where we want to go and perhaps even know
where we are at a given moment in order to be alwayys at the readyy. The
scenario proposed byy Google and others is that cities will no longer need
parking lots or garages—yyour car will drive around until it is needed. Or
perhaps cities will follow the on-demand model, in which private ownership
is a thing of the past and everyyone shares whatever car is nearbyy.
Just as our cell phones are less like copper-wire phones than theyy are