[treesknees]

It could be a move to have parity with TikTok, where they claim it’s for safety reasons. I’ve been seeing advertisements for Instagram touting their child/teen protection features. Seems like they’re really trying to beat the allegations that Instagram is bad for children’s health.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47241817

[dmix]

Protecting kids and Terrorism, always the reason why nobody is allowed to have privacy on the internet.

[nunobrito]

Cars nowadays are packed with microphones and permanently connected to the internet on daily basis so that drivers can have remote assistance when the car breaks once every 5 years or so.

[youknownothing]

And also so employees of said companies can spy on drivers and make fun of them: https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...

[stephbook]

Which just shows that consumers don't care. Tesla's camera surveillance wasn't exactly secret.

[nobodyandproud]

Equating what companies get away with, as the clear signal to what consumers care about.

And billionaires and nine-day old alts wonder why they need a bunker.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Customers care, but not enough to actually change purchasing patterns.

[mounram]

They care, but it is not in their top priorities

[Sayrus]

I keep hearing this one. But at least for EU, the eCall system requires external communication to be disabled until activated during serious accident. It cannot be used for tracking the vehicle in real-time.

Some parts of the legislation (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...):

> 2. The personal data processed pursuant to this Regulation shall only be used for the purpose of handling the emergency situations referred to in the first subparagraph of Article 5(2).

> Manufacturers shall provide clear and comprehensive information in the owner's manual about the processing of data carried out through the 112-based eCall in-vehicle system. That information shall consist of:

> the fact that there is no constant tracking of the vehicle;

That vehicle nowadays are equipped with always-on internet and microphones is not related to remote assistance.

[SV_BubbleTime]

This is such misdirection.

Your car if new enough, IS reporting its diagnostics including GPS via cell. All the time. This isn’t exactly personally identifiable so they get away with it just fine.

This is unrelated to the microphones and assistance systems.

[cluckindan]

It becomes personally identifiable through correlations with other datasets.

That is the kind of thing people allow when they click accept or decline on those pesky ”we and our 195735 partners would like to…” dialogs.

[Sayrus]

Which is exactly my point. Cars are reporting on you, but tying that to remote assistance is disingenuous.

[nunobrito]

Kindly read point number 2 slowly.

There are two definitions: a) Personal Data and b) Emergency Situations

What is an emergency situation and how can a car determine it is one? These are "smart" cars which aren't nowadays smart enough to process all your data locally, so that data is sent to servers elsewhere which process if either points a) or b) apply.

It is your choice to believe that voice data is ever deleted once acquired by governments and entities thirsty to benefit from that information.

For security experts this is just another "I told you so" within a few years.

[Sayrus]

Emergency situations are defined by two situations: severe accidents and manual press of the button. Article 6 covers the data being sent, Article 5 covers the manufacturer's obligations. Your audio during the accident and your last three locations may leak, but the eCall system is not designed for a permanent phone-home system. If I remember correctly, you can't even use the eCall SIM for tracking as that'd encourage people to disable safety features.

All the things you are talking about, permanent phone-home, tracking of location, audio and video, driving habits, are tracked, sent and resold. That's what smart cars do. But it is not done through the eCall system. See it from the company perspective: why would they risk penalties for non-compliance when they can gather and resell all personal data with no risks using their own system instead of a safety one?

[nunobrito]

That is assuming the eCall system is used at all.

I stated that the microphone and network access installed on modern car for emergency situations can and will be used 24/7 when deemed "necessary" for your "security".

Different things, same hardware.

[officeplant]

One of my favorite things about going EV is the forums tend to be full of paranoid nerds which means someone will be willing to try desoldering the cell modem off their boards to see what happens.

[hackingonempty]

Also drug dealers and money launderers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

[maqp]

The sad part is, Instagram is exceptionally damaging to kids for a disjoint set of reasons.

[throwfaraway4]

As is social media in general. I highly recommend reading the Anxious Generation

[plagiarist]

It certainly is unsafe for their AI training corpus. Win / win if they can also lie about protecting children as a motivation.

[butlike]

It's bad for EVERYONE's health. Try to limit your usage and you'll feel better. I promise you'll feel better.

[jszymborski]

Protect your kids from whom? Surely not Meta, which is my main concern.

[PunchyHamster]

More like excuse

[varispeed]

How these protections are working when I get served literal porn every couple of shorts on Instagram?

[subscribed]

Hard to say other than usually the feed is tailored to the user's interests, or so they say ;)