[noduerme]

I object to driving any car with a built-in GPS or an internet connection, on basic privacy grounds. It amazes me how many advocacy groups and organizations [edit: and bicycle fans right here on HN!] are willing to completely demolish essential rights like privacy and freedom of movement, in the name of preventing speeding accidents.

[Gigachad]

I object to people operating dangerous vehicles in areas I walk without proper safety equipment. Feel free to drive whatever you want on your own private property.

If you want privacy and freedom, you are free to walk or ride a bicycle unidentified. Which is fine as there is essentially no risk of killing people.

[noduerme]

First of all, I hope you don't walk or ride your bike on the interstate. Secondly, being prohibited from using any form of transport faster than a bike without providing GPS location and personal identifiers is, for all intents and purposes, a total ban on freedom of travel. It's not like I think my freedom to drive without a GPS gives me a right to run over bikers. But the fact that you're willing to sacrifice all privacy and put any controls imaginable on free navigation to prevent stupid people from being stupid is extremely myopic. How long do you think it will be before every bike has to have a GPS and a personal identifier too? Ultimately that may not matter to you, but then again you might be just as happy with a bigsceen TV and a hamster wheel as going out, if they told you it was better for ya.

[athrun]

The counter-argument to this is that driving a 2-ton machine capable of killing people is not a fundamental right either.

I'm not saying that this isn't a privacy overreach and I think there are other things we can do to limit speeds (road design, etc.), but I think there's a reasonable balance to be found here.

[noduerme]

Then take away the need for "real ID" to board planes and trains. Without the ability to travel freely, you end up very quickly with this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-61793149

[athrun]

AFAIK there's no need to show IDs to board a train in Europe (maybe some EU countries have other rules there, I don't know).

For planes it will depend on whether you're crossing a border or not. Sometimes you get ID checks on domestic flights but that's because of airline policies (ie: fraud, insurance) rather than internal border control.

[noduerme]

In the US, passport or biometric ID is now required for all domestic flights and intercity trains. YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE.

Of course it is required in Europe. Where it is not required, you are already known. For example, if you live in Berlin you have no possible hope of getting to Brussels to attend a protest without every movement you make being put into a database.

In America, we do still have one method of transportation which is not entirely watched - if your car doesn't broadcast its GPS location. Of course there are cameras everywhere, but it is possible to visit a lover or a brothel or whatever without being tracked and blackmailed if you take proper precautions. You? You have no hope. Don't ever think about meeting a lover if you want to run for office one day.

The only people who can run for office in a state with no privacy are the people with access to erase their data from the database.

But of course, we should give up this one method of obfuscation of our movement -- because we might be speeding in the car. If we did so we would be in a complete prison.

[CaptainZapp]

> Of course it is required in Europe.

That's just outright wrong.

On the last dozens of flights (it may be well in the 100s) within the Schengen area I hardly ever had to show id. And if so it was due to airline policy and checked at the gate.

You badge in automatically by scanning your boarding pass into the secure transit area and then once again fully automatically at the gate.

If you're admitted to the flight by ground staff on airports without automated gates they hardly ever check your id.

[bufferoverflow]

GPS is not a tracking technology. It's read-only. It allows you to determine your coordinates by listening to satellites. GPS receivers don't send your location.

[judge2020]

I think they mean the advent of sending that GPS data over a cellular modem back to some home server. Due to the advent of GDPR+CLOUD Act[0], no US company can legally own a subsidiary in the EU and collect any PII-linked data from EU citizens; in other words, the GDPR's goal is to localize all citizen data within the country's borders. With this, it'll be super easy for a country to obtain that locally-stored information for the purpose of police 'investigations' (possibly via europol/similar for cross-country intel).

This should apply to GM, Ford, Stellantis, Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid, as all of them offer some sort of app functionality for seeing the location of your car.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31853276

[noduerme]

I specified either/or GPS in conjunction with an internet connection.

[thematrixturtle]

GPS is one-way, the satellites just broadcast their time signals and have no way of tracking you.

GPS & internet, on the other hand, is a great combo for tracking people.

[BFLpL0QNek]

It’s near impossible to buy a new car that doesn’t have some “smart” feature. Sadly electric is synonymous with “smart” features so it’s only going to get worse.

Things like ABS, radar controlled cruise control for distance, blind spot mirrors, auto levelling mirrors are all fine in my book, even heads up display for speed. Blind spot mirrors should be regulated as a requirement on all new vehicles.

The connected GPS’s, mobile connections, digital touch displays all seem a backwards step, especially the new thing manufacturers are doing by installing hardware but soft locking the feature until you pay extra.

[throwntoday]

Good thing you're not carrying one into the car either

[noduerme]

when I want to. Point is, when I don't want to I don't have my car auto-braked because someone decided I was driving to a protest.

[cm2187]

It’s funny because most recent crime movies have become implausible when you know the level of monitoring and forensic (whether electronic, DNA, CCTVs, etc). It kinds of ruin the story to me.

[hindsightbias]

You surrendered when you put a seat belt on.

[bjt2n3904]

That's their excuse. It's very "think of the children".

[atoav]

Contrary to other "think of the children"-scenarios this one has an actual death number tacked to it.

And you might not be surprised, that children dying in traffic accidents does happen.extremely frequent. But forget the children, this also infringes on rights of regular people like me. Your right to drive around 2 tons of steel and plastics don't outweigh my right to not get killed by any stretch of the imagination.

[noduerme]

For the last time, my comment is not about the privilege of people to drive (which you seem to want to abolish?) it's about the right to move around without being tracked. Also, it is about your rights to privacy if you should want to exercise them.

[atoav]

I am not sure how you extrapolate me being against people driving from me being against people speeding. You can drive very well without speeding.

Tracking is a different issue sure, but there is nothing in this problem that relies on tracking. You need to read the current map data and the position of the car via GPS. You need to write nothing (and given the privacy laws in Europe, I don't really see why we would).

[noduerme]

Your assumption that no data will be written, about where/when/why your car automatically brakes, is incredibly naive. Everything is written the moment your car has a GPS tied to a wireless service. If you think European privacy laws are preventing that from happening, you're utterly insane. Even if your country doesn't store the data, the Americans are storing it and your country may ask for it at any time.

[atoav]

What do you know about how GPS works?