Cars in China Transmit Location Data to the Government

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

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A report by AP claims that automobiles from over 200 manufacturers transmit location data to the Chinese government. Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and NIO are among the manufacturers in the list, and AP says it generally "happens without car owners' knowledge." Location sharing is common in new vehicles around the world, but manufacturers are normally the only ones that have access to this data.

Check out the AP video report here.

The Shanghai Electric Vehicle Public Data Collecting, Monitoring and Research Center sits in a grey tower in suburban Jiading district. One floor up from the cafeteria, a wall-sized screen glows with dots, each representing a single vehicle coursing along Shanghai’s roads to create a massive real-time map that could reveal where people live, shop, work, and worship. Click a dot at random, and up pops a window with a number that identifies each individual vehicle, along with its make and model, mileage and battery charge. All told, the screen exhibits data from over 222,000 vehicles in Shanghai, the vast majority of them passenger cars.
 
Given how many cars they have now that's a lot of data to mine...wouldn't surprise me if they start selling it to the business community. Just don't park near the porn shops (do they have those in China?) so you don't get your social score reduced.
 
I want a way to turn off sharing the position of any vehicle I buy period. Manufacturers should include instructions on how to disable this by default.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
The entire current GPS system sends your location to American government satellites.

The Chinese are playing catch up, it's only 1982 there.
Click to expand...

HUH??...... GPS is 1 way only, and that is your device receiving location data from the satellites..... Your phone is not physically capable of transmitting data back that far to a satellite.....
 
Biznatch said:
HUH??...... GPS is 1 way only, and that is your device receiving location data from the satellites..... Your phone is not physically capable of transmitting data back that far to a satellite.....
Click to expand...

But, your device sends the location based on the GPS data through other means, network, cell.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
The entire current GPS system sends your location to American government satellites.

The Chinese are playing catch up, it's only 1982 there.
Click to expand...

Uh no it doesnt. Do you even know how GPS works?

Biznatch said:
HUH??...... GPS is 1 way only, and that is your device receiving location data from the satellites..... Your phone is not physically capable of transmitting data back that far to a satellite.....
Click to expand...

Actually you dont receive location data. You receive a signal with a timestamp, preferably from multiple satellites. The precision of the timestamp depends on what frequency you have access to (some bands are encrypted for military use only). Your GPS receiver then uses a database of known satellite positions to calculate the positions of the satellite(s). It then does some math to figure out where on earth you must be to get that signal with that amount of delay in transmission. More satellites means your semi major/minor axis are smaller (i.e. you have less error and a better idea of your position). With some really tricky math you can locate yourself within a very large sphere with only one satellite. But most GPS units need to talk to at least three. Higher quality ones like Aviation talk to five so they can get altitude data within a five foot accuracy as well.

That was all very high level of how GPS works. Any GPS experts please don't be offended at anything I glossed over or omitted as it was mostly not pertinent to the discussion. My knowledge on the topic comes from years of flying with GPS in addition to having actually written ground control systems for satellites as well as written systems that use these signals to locate objects...
 
Nukester said:
But, your device sends the location based on the GPS data through other means, network, cell.
Click to expand...

Thats not a problem with GPS, that's an implementation of a different system on the same device. The OP of the comment said "the entire current GPS system sends your location"....

Its not the GPS systems fault what your device does with the data after youve determined your location.
 
The lust for full control of its citizens is pretty terrible. What do they really need to track people's cars for other than to oppress them further....
 
SomeoneElse said:
The lust for full control of its citizens is pretty terrible. What do they really need to track people's cars for other than to oppress them further....
Click to expand...

Same reason why it keeps coming up here? Taxes. Oh and fines for speeding.

Congress floated the idea of requiring mandatory GPS in cars so they could do a usage based tax on roads.
 
SomeoneElse said:
The lust for full control of its citizens is pretty terrible. What do they really need to track people's cars for other than to oppress them further....
Click to expand...
I'm just guessing but I think it may have to do with that social credit score system they just put into use... after all, some of the infractions that can lower your score are speeding and illegal parking and whatnot.
 
China this, China that. What is this, kindergarten?

Most people these days have smartphones and we know for sure Google sells that data, not to mention most apps that ultimately do the same under one pretense or another

Dunno what media you (hardliner) guys consume but it's not good for you. If you keep it up, in a few years you'll be shocked to learn Chinese people have legs, drink water, eat food. AND you'll complain about it, too. What the fuck
 
dgz said:
China this, China that. What is this, kindergarten?

Most people these days have smartphones and we know for sure Google sells that data, not to mention most apps that ultimately do the same under one pretense or another

Dunno what media you (hardliner) guys consume but it's not good for you. If you keep it up, in a few years you'll be shocked to learn Chinese people have legs, drink water, eat food. AND you'll complain about it, too. What the fuck
Click to expand...

How dare they!
 
Biznatch said:
HUH??...... GPS is 1 way only, and that is your device receiving location data from the satellites..... Your phone is not physically capable of transmitting data back that far to a satellite.....
Click to expand...

kju1 said:
Uh no it doesnt. Do you even know how GPS works?
Click to expand...

Turns out it was one of the supposed replacements that was going to be two-way. I don't know if any will ever take off, the current one is the perfect price.

This is one of those things I'm really glad to be wrong about.
 
dgz said:
China this, China that. What is this, kindergarten?

Most people these days have smartphones and we know for sure Google sells that data, not to mention most apps that ultimately do the same under one pretense or another

Dunno what media you (hardliner) guys consume but it's not good for you. If you keep it up, in a few years you'll be shocked to learn Chinese people have legs, drink water, eat food. AND you'll complain about it, too. What the fuck
Click to expand...
I usually take media reports with a grain of salt, but I usually equate whats going on in another 1st world nation with what is already happening here. The difference with what Google is doing and what China is doing (right now) is that Chinese government is using it against its citizens outright. The US isn't quite there yet they still use corps. to do the dirty work.
 
kju1 said:
Uh no it doesnt. Do you even know how GPS works?



Actually you dont receive location data. You receive a signal with a timestamp, preferably from multiple satellites. The precision of the timestamp depends on what frequency you have access to (some bands are encrypted for military use only). Your GPS receiver then uses a database of known satellite positions to calculate the positions of the satellite(s). It then does some math to figure out where on earth you must be to get that signal with that amount of delay in transmission. More satellites means your semi major/minor axis are smaller (i.e. you have less error and a better idea of your position). With some really tricky math you can locate yourself within a very large sphere with only one satellite. But most GPS units need to talk to at least three. Higher quality ones like Aviation talk to five so they can get altitude data within a five foot accuracy as well.

That was all very high level of how GPS works. Any GPS experts please don't be offended at anything I glossed over or omitted as it was mostly not pertinent to the discussion. My knowledge on the topic comes from years of flying with GPS in addition to having actually written ground control systems for satellites as well as written systems that use these signals to locate objects...
Click to expand...
It looks like your data is 18 years out of date. GPS data is not encrypted. Both the military and civilian populations have had access to the same data since May 2000. https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ It is amazing what you can find out with 2 minutes of Googling ;).
 
Don't think this BS isn't already happening in USA.

Got OnStar? You got tracked!

Heck, Ford's new CEO said one thing they're going to try to "do better" now is to monetize all their location data by matching it against all the other yummy bits of info they collected from you when you bought the car like marital status, income bracket, job industry, owner age, when you last bought a car from them, amount of loan financed, etc

oh here's an interesting report by GAO: https://www.gao.gov/assets/660/659509.pdf
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Turns out it was one of the supposed replacements that was going to be two-way. I don't know if any will ever take off, the current one is the perfect price.

This is one of those things I'm really glad to be wrong about.
Click to expand...

ADSB? Kind of curious which system you were thinking of.

[21CW]killerofall said:
It looks like your data is 18 years out of date. GPS data is not encrypted. Both the military and civilian populations have had access to the same data since May 2000. https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ It is amazing what you can find out with 2 minutes of Googling ;).
Click to expand...

Both the L1 and L2 bands still contained encrypted data when I worked with them 8 years after that went into "effect".
 
kju1 said:
Same reason why it keeps coming up here? Taxes. Oh and fines for speeding.

Congress floated the idea of requiring mandatory GPS in cars so they could do a usage based tax on roads.
Click to expand...
Here in Illinois, they are trying to get this in the system. They want to charge people by the miles they drive on the roads......which is insane. If they want a revolt here that will be the quickest way to starting it.
 
[21CW]killerofall said:
It looks like your data is 18 years out of date. GPS data is not encrypted. Both the military and civilian populations have had access to the same data since May 2000. https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ It is amazing what you can find out with 2 minutes of Googling ;).
Click to expand...

Hey now, no picking on people's preconceived notions.

We have a proud history of knowing far less than we think we do then running our mouths like we're all knowing wizards. Not to mention the general lack of critical thinking.
 
kju1 said:
ADSB? Kind of curious which system you were thinking of.
Click to expand...

There were two European ones that were supposed to be for-pay services, super accurate but... not free...

I don't know which was which but I see one is actually putting hardware in orbit.

Super accurate GPS for Europe makes me smile though, most of their maps are abso-fucking-lutely terrible.
 
kju1 said:
Uh no it doesnt. Do you even know how GPS works?



Actually you dont receive location data. You receive a signal with a timestamp, preferably from multiple satellites. The precision of the timestamp depends on what frequency you have access to (some bands are encrypted for military use only). Your GPS receiver then uses a database of known satellite positions to calculate the positions of the satellite(s). It then does some math to figure out where on earth you must be to get that signal with that amount of delay in transmission. More satellites means your semi major/minor axis are smaller (i.e. you have less error and a better idea of your position). With some really tricky math you can locate yourself within a very large sphere with only one satellite. But most GPS units need to talk to at least three. Higher quality ones like Aviation talk to five so they can get altitude data within a five foot accuracy as well.

That was all very high level of how GPS works. Any GPS experts please don't be offended at anything I glossed over or omitted as it was mostly not pertinent to the discussion. My knowledge on the topic comes from years of flying with GPS in addition to having actually written ground control systems for satellites as well as written systems that use these signals to locate objects...
Click to expand...
Thanks, it's rare when someone questions a person's knowledge, then procedes to educate. Normally only the first part happens
 
And everyone in China is ok with this and thinks it is a good idea... shortly after the social score became live
 
Ultima99 said:
We have a proud history of knowing far less than we think we do then running our mouths like we're all knowing wizards. Not to mention the general lack of critical thinking.
Click to expand...
HEY! I REALLY DO know everything. I.....just....can't....remember it all at once.....
 
darckhart said:
Don't think this BS isn't already happening in USA.

Got OnStar? You got tracked!

Heck, Ford's new CEO said one thing they're going to try to "do better" now is to monetize all their location data by matching it against all the other yummy bits of info they collected from you when you bought the car like marital status, income bracket, job industry, owner age, when you last bought a car from them, amount of loan financed, etc

oh here's an interesting report by GAO: https://www.gao.gov/assets/660/659509.pdf
Click to expand...

Let them try to track my 85 Jeep Cherokee and my non-GPS flip phone :p
 
jedijeb13 said:
Let them try to track my 85 Jeep Cherokee and my non-GPS flip phone :p
Click to expand...

Without even having to break a sweat: license plate trackers, red light cameras, all sorts of fun stuff with your phone like triangulation.

Then there's the issue of if they decide to pass the law saying GPS is a REQUIREMENT for all vehicles by X date or they are not street legal. Because you know if they ever did pass the law to do usage based road tax (ala congress in the 80s/90s tried) they WILL mandate GPS installs in ALL cars. Thinking your immune because you refuse to move into the 21st century isn't going to work. If nothing else they will track you by the absence of your data ;)
 
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