[Troop139] FW: Renault will remotely lock down electric cars

Sun Dec 1 14:25:20 EST 2013

Hi Folks!
Here is a question for Citizenship in the Nation, Community and World Merit
Badge-studying Scouts:

Would you want a car manufacturer or a government to be able to remotely
control your car's ability to charge, or even go?  

If you indicate, "Yes:", then under what conditions and with what
limitations?

Answer carefully because it will reflect on your thoughts about what freedom
really is to you and to others.

Thanks & 73,

Gordon Beattie, W2TTT

201.314.6964

  _____  

From: Richard Bianchi [mailto:wb2wpq at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Sunday, December 01, 2013 1:32 PM
To: Chuck Perillo
Subject: Fw: Renault will remotely lock down electric cars

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Headhamster <headhamster at verizon.net>
To: 
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2013 11:09 AM
Subject: Renault will remotely lock down electric cars

Renault will remotely lock down electric cars

Posted by gerloff on Thursday, October 31st, 2013

<https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2013/10/31/renault-will-remotely-lock-down-e
lectric-cars/#comments> 0

image.jpeg

For a long time, cars were a symbol of freedom and independence. No longer.
In its  Zoe electric car, car maker Renault apparently has the ability to
remotely prevent the battery from charging. And that's more chilling than it
sounds.

When you buy a Renault Zoe, the battery isn't included. Instead, you sign a
rental contract for the battery with the car maker. In a Zoe owner's forum,
user Franko30
<http://www.goingelectric.de/forum/renault-zoe-batterie-reichweite/fussangel
n-des-zoe-batteriemietvertrags-in-deutschland-t1396.html#p21829> reports
that the contract contains a clause giving Renault the right to prevent your
battery from charging at the end of the rental period. According to an
<http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/elektroauto-renault-kann-aufladen-der-ba
tterie-stoppen-a-930066.html> article in Der Spiegel, the company may also
do this when you fall behind on paying the rent for the battery.

This means that Renault has some way of remotely controlling the battery
charging process. According to the Spiegel article, the Zoe (and most or all
other electric cars) collect reams of data on how you use them, and send
this data off to the manufacturer without your knowledge. This data tells
the company where you are going, when, and how fast, where you charge the
battery, and many other things besides. We already knew that Tesla was doing
this with its cars since the company's
<http://www.engadget.com/saga/tesla-vs-times/> very public spat with a
journalist who reviewed one of their cars for the New York Times. Seeing the
same thing in a mass market manufacturer like Renault makes clear just how
dangerous this trend is.

This sort of thing fits well into the dystopian picture which Cory Doctorow
paints in his 2011 talk " <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYqkU1y0AYc> The
coming war on General Computation" (which you really must watch, if you
haven't already), where he argues that "we don't have cars anymore, we have
computers we ride in". The question then becomes
<https://lwn.net/Articles/523537/> who is in control of this computer: You,
the manufacturer, or someone else?

If there is a mechanism to remotely control what your car does, some will
make use of this mechanism at some point. This could be the manufacturer,
shutting down your car as you fall behind on the battery rent because you
just lost your job, meaning that it becomes harder for you to find work. It
could be the government, compelling the manufacturer to do its bidding. In
his forum post, Franko30 predicts that at some point, governments may simply
ask car manufacturers to block charging near controversial political events
(e.g. a G8 summit), in order to prevent you from participating in
demonstrations. Or it could be
<https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/a-court-order-is-an-insider-attac
k/> any random criminal out there, gaining access to this mechanism by
bribing a Renault employee.

The only way out of this is to stay away from cars and other computers that
you can't fully control; and to build systems that put users in charge. At
the Free Software Foundation Europe, we are empowering and supporting people
who build systems where you, the user,  are in control.
<https://fsfe.org/donate/donate.html> Please help us with a donation.

Engineers design things, Technicians make them work.

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