[rabeener]

There’s a larger concern (at least for me) not being discussed here. There is conflicting information from Honda: the customer support rep stated (allegedly) that Honda did have the location of the car while the spokesperson later denied that Honda ever had the location of the car. If the customer support agent is correct, the driver was in a vehicle, owned by him, that had surveillance technology in it without his knowledge and that could be activated by Honda, a private company, without his consent. That’s not ok.

[devtul]

We might have two possibilities, if the car is sending "I'm alive!" then it's ok, the rep could say they have the vehicle online, maybe the rep wasn't so accurate with his words and said they had the location. But if it's "I'm alive, my coordinates are X, Y" even without an active subscription, then this is a big issue.

[rabeener]

I only have this article to go off of which has the customer service rep saying:

> An employee at a call center operated (or contracted) by Honda reportedly confirmed that they had the vehicle's location, but declined to share it

But even if it’s just pings, the pings have to leverage some sort of network which can be used to establish a general location if not an exact one. That’s still too much for me.

[davengh]

At a certain point, it is incumbent on the buyer to do some research and understand something about what they're buying. The availability of these systems is not a secret.

We just put up a Ring doorbell on our house. I know that making the (surveillance!?!) video available to my phone requires something be stored somewhere and transmitted over some network. Storage and transmittal mean other people will have it at some point. Should I be surprised or offended about that at some point in the future? Or offended that after some trial period I may have to pay somebody for that service?

[rabeener]

I disagree. Even if the vehicle has a built in system for tracking, the tracking should always be opt in and with consent of the owner. If not, at some point, all cars will have this capability built in to it and drivers who don’t want it won’t have an option to buy a car without it. Not wanting to be tracked shouldn’t mean you can’t buy a car.