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Fun fact, as a owner of a GMC auto I got a innocent looking email about the discontinuation of the Onstar Smart driver service which was the service in question

Fun fact, as a owner of a GMC auto I got a innocent looking email about the discontinuation of the Onstar Smart driver service which was the service in question that violated many US laws and sent data to insurance companies without customers authorization. I hope this hits GM really hard as this type of behavior will never cease until massive amounts of money is extracted from the perpetrators(GM etc).

crest 2y ago
Executives behind bars and multiple times the revenue from their illicit deals should work as incentive to guide the industry.
fooqux 2y ago
And not just massive. It needs to be an order of magnitude more than they made from those deals. Too many times companies get slapped on the wrist for an amount considerably less than they made from their illicit activities. Which I never understood. Normal people that get caught doing things like selling stolen goods have to pay a fine on top of all money they may have made from selling it. Why aren't companies treated the same?
- Scaevolus 2y ago
  IIRC the amounts involved were absolutely pitiful compared to the reputational damage-- they were being paid on the order of $10/car/year.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    What reputational damage? I know it's a number that gets calculated on cybersecurity assessment sheets, but I've never seen it being in any way connected to reality. Best I can tell, the actual reputational damage is almost universally $0. Security breaches are non-actionable oopsies - unless your product is literally preventing such breaches[0], it's going to be seen as a random event that has no bearing on customers making their purchasing decisions. After all, it could've happened to anyone, and might just as well happen to any of the competitors, and it doesn't even impact any of the subjects directly. -- [0] - And not even then - see e.g. CrowdStrike, who're busy turning the greatest security fuckup to date into a net positive event for them.
    - tw04 2y ago
      They don’t exactly have a captive audience. Besides the corvette, their competitors pretty much universally have a drop in replacement. Changing cars is a heck of a lot easier than a corporation ripping out software that they likely have a 3-year contract on, and would require millions in services on top of just eating the cost of the contract itself.
      - bruce511 2y ago
        Only if you believe the competition isn't doing the same thing. My bank isn't a monopoly. They provide with terrible service. (Truely terrible). Trouble is all their competitors are just as bad. GM gets no blow-back from this. Firstly because "nobody" cares. Second because "I bet you they're all doing it" and thirdly because in 20 minutes I'll be outraged about something else. By the time I buy my next car I can't remember who had this issue, plus all the other complaints about all the other manufacturers. If I stopped buying from every company that has, or is, behaving badly, every company that had a security breach, or contributed to the wrong politician, or hired a racist, or whatever, I'd never spend a dime.
    - Tempest1981 2y ago
      Damage: I'm shopping for a new EV, and will now avoid the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Chevy Bolt. Or find some hack to kill cellular.
      - bruce511 2y ago
        Firstly, with respect, one purchase is not damage. Hacking the cellular is not damage to them (you bought the car.) But mostly, given that you have principles (which I applaud), tell me which brands you would consider. (I'm pretty sure I can Google a bad-news-day for them too.)
        ben_w 2y ago
        > Firstly, with respect, one purchase is not damage. In so far as the sense that anecdotes are not data. To the extent that Tempest1981 is a representative sample, it is an observation of damage to the brand's reputation.
  - Tempest1981 2y ago
    Even less... Hyundai: $0.61/car. Honda: $0.26/car. GM: unclear. I believe this is total/car, not per year. They did it for pennies. https://www.pcmag.com/news/senators-your-driving-data-may-have-been-sold-for-as-little-as-26-cents https://www.pcmag.com/news/senators-your-driving-data-may-ha...
    - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
      This is insulting and offensive. If you are gonna sell me down the river, at least get a good price!
- akira2501 2y ago
  > Why aren't companies treated the same? It's more of a hostage negotiation. You want to hurt the company and it's owners, but if you sue too hard, you're likely to just hurt it's workers and it's customers. It's why preventing companies from reaching _anything near_ monopoly size is so important for corporate jurisprudence. "Too big to fail" is just the tip of this insane iceberg we've allowed to grow into our economy.
  - trhway 2y ago
    >You want to hurt the company and it's owners No. What you'd really want if you really wanted to fix things is to hurt the top and mid-managers who decided to commit those offenses. Unfortunately it almost never happens.
    - AmVess 2y ago
      The only way to fix things is to drag the occupants of the c-suite into civil court and start dropping massive fines on their heads. Do that, and this type of behavior would vanish within days.
    - mrcsharp 2y ago
      Don't forget the board. Top managers are made to break the law due to demands of infinite growth.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > Top managers are made to break the law due to demands of infinite growth No, they’re not.
        BeFlatXIII 2y ago
        [ citation needed ]
      - tick_tock_tick 2y ago
        No they choose to because of the benefits it gives them. Realistically middle management are the ones who need to start going to jail to cleanup this kind of behavior.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Because this isn't Europe -- US government is essentially owned by corporate interests, regardless of party in power.
  - bruce511 2y ago
    If we take that as true, then we can ignore that aspect when we make our choice. While both parties are funded by corporate interests, they still are far enough apart on policy and personality for the choice to have an impact. Corporates are mostly caring about tax policy and industry regulation. They (mostly) have neutral stances on things like Healthcare, equality, racism, immigration, abortion and so on.
stainablesteel 2y ago
its not just that i don't want electronics built into cars i don't want data coming from my car i don't need a phone to be built into my car i don't need navigation to be built into my car they need to stay in their lane we need anti-enshittification laws
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  I absolutely want electronics built into car! Requirements for antilock brakes, electronic fuel injection, and other electronics in vehicles has made them safer and more efficient. The other items on your list I can agree with, though.
  - kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago
    [dead]
  - brendoelfrendo 2y ago
    And ECUs make it so easy to manage all of these things! I love 80s/90s Japanese sports cars, but I don't think we need to go back to the era of using a gazillion vacuum lines to control all kinds of esoteric valves and sensors. But I agree with everything else; I don't want my car to connect to the internet, I don't want my car to track my travel and driving habits, and I definitely don't want that data sent to the manufacturer to be sold. It really just smacks of greed and nothing else... selling cars has a long history of being a profitable business on its own. You don't need to steal your customers' data to turn it into another revenue stream, but it sure looks good on a financial report.
    - kaibee 2y ago
      > It really just smacks of greed and nothing else... selling cars has a long history of being a profitable business on its own. You don't need to steal your customers' data to turn it into another revenue stream, but it sure looks good on a financial report. Its not only greed, its also a race to the bottom. If you're GM, you might prefer not doing that, but if your competition starts doing that, then you're at a competitive disadvantage, because they'll have more money to invest in engineers/production optimization, etc. So the logic then goes that you might as well do it first. This is a case where you need government regulations to enforce mutual disarmament.
mjevans 2y ago
I'd be fine with letting the company get to choose between a sufficiently large fine, and board level executives who encouraged the behavior going to jail for real durations of time. They can pick one of three choices: Don't be evil. Pay more than they made. Go to jail for the same duration of time as having stolen Option 2's money, and not the scapegoats, people actually in charge.
tacocataco 2y ago
If corporations are people, why doesn't their corporate charter get revoked while they "serve their time"?
- 0xEF 2y ago
  Because laws exist to protect the wealthy, sadly.
  - PROMISE_237 2y ago
    [dead]
isr 2y ago
How about this. For criminal behaviour which crosses a certain $ threshold (as in, what size of fine is levied by the courts/fed authorities), the entire remuneration given to anyone who served on the board of directors is considered forfeit, and used to pay the fine. That means seizing secondary properties from current or ex directors, and other assets. Once that pool is exhausted, then you ding the shareholders (via draining the company's own coffers). Sure, this would give rise to some schemes of "how do I squirrel away my bonuses, in case they come after me tomorrow", but hubris & the unpredictability of this would still lead to some big, eye watering examples. Which would have the necessary deterrent effect. And yes, this WOULD be justice. Those who did the wrong, and profited from it, SHOULD pay.
- zo1 2y ago
  I'm a full-on free market freedom person, but even I'd agree with this kind of stuff at this point. One thing we really need to be careful to avoid whilst going down this proposed route, is to not mimic the failure mode of socialist/communist entities. I.e. Whereby performance is mandated (produce X amount of grain), along with constraints and other mandates that make the first or all mandates impossible to achieve at the same time, thereby guaranteeing failure and/or reporting shenanigans. E.g. in our current world context. Mandating increases in hiring as a percentage, but then also giving a mandate that we can only add female/non-white employees; all while existing in a male/white dominated pool of applicants. We have to give reasonable and understandable growth / performance mandates, and not pie in the sky stuff that takes generations to fix but we want it done by next quarter.
- account42 2y ago
  > Sure, this would give rise to some schemes of "how do I squirrel away my bonuses, in case they come after me tomorrow", but hubris & the unpredictability of this would still lead to some big, eye watering examples. Which would have the necessary deterrent effect. The simple solution to such games is the same as with other monetary fines for individuals: if you can't pay the fine, you go to jail.
PROMISE_237 2y ago
[dead]

crest 2y ago

Executives behind bars and multiple times the revenue from their illicit deals should work as incentive to guide the industry.

fooqux 2y ago

And not just massive. It needs to be an order of magnitude more than they made from those deals. Too many times companies get slapped on the wrist for an amount considerably less than they made from their illicit activities. Which I never understood. Normal people that get caught doing things like selling stolen goods have to pay a fine on top of all money they may have made from selling it. Why aren't companies treated the same?

Scaevolus 2y ago
IIRC the amounts involved were absolutely pitiful compared to the reputational damage-- they were being paid on the order of $10/car/year.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  What reputational damage? I know it's a number that gets calculated on cybersecurity assessment sheets, but I've never seen it being in any way connected to reality. Best I can tell, the actual reputational damage is almost universally $0. Security breaches are non-actionable oopsies - unless your product is literally preventing such breaches[0], it's going to be seen as a random event that has no bearing on customers making their purchasing decisions. After all, it could've happened to anyone, and might just as well happen to any of the competitors, and it doesn't even impact any of the subjects directly. -- [0] - And not even then - see e.g. CrowdStrike, who're busy turning the greatest security fuckup to date into a net positive event for them.
  - tw04 2y ago
    They don’t exactly have a captive audience. Besides the corvette, their competitors pretty much universally have a drop in replacement. Changing cars is a heck of a lot easier than a corporation ripping out software that they likely have a 3-year contract on, and would require millions in services on top of just eating the cost of the contract itself.
    - bruce511 2y ago
      Only if you believe the competition isn't doing the same thing. My bank isn't a monopoly. They provide with terrible service. (Truely terrible). Trouble is all their competitors are just as bad. GM gets no blow-back from this. Firstly because "nobody" cares. Second because "I bet you they're all doing it" and thirdly because in 20 minutes I'll be outraged about something else. By the time I buy my next car I can't remember who had this issue, plus all the other complaints about all the other manufacturers. If I stopped buying from every company that has, or is, behaving badly, every company that had a security breach, or contributed to the wrong politician, or hired a racist, or whatever, I'd never spend a dime.
  - Tempest1981 2y ago
    Damage: I'm shopping for a new EV, and will now avoid the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Chevy Bolt. Or find some hack to kill cellular.
    - bruce511 2y ago
      Firstly, with respect, one purchase is not damage. Hacking the cellular is not damage to them (you bought the car.) But mostly, given that you have principles (which I applaud), tell me which brands you would consider. (I'm pretty sure I can Google a bad-news-day for them too.)
      - ben_w 2y ago
        > Firstly, with respect, one purchase is not damage. In so far as the sense that anecdotes are not data. To the extent that Tempest1981 is a representative sample, it is an observation of damage to the brand's reputation.
- Tempest1981 2y ago
  Even less... Hyundai: $0.61/car. Honda: $0.26/car. GM: unclear. I believe this is total/car, not per year. They did it for pennies. https://www.pcmag.com/news/senators-your-driving-data-may-have-been-sold-for-as-little-as-26-cents https://www.pcmag.com/news/senators-your-driving-data-may-ha...
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    This is insulting and offensive. If you are gonna sell me down the river, at least get a good price!
akira2501 2y ago
> Why aren't companies treated the same? It's more of a hostage negotiation. You want to hurt the company and it's owners, but if you sue too hard, you're likely to just hurt it's workers and it's customers. It's why preventing companies from reaching _anything near_ monopoly size is so important for corporate jurisprudence. "Too big to fail" is just the tip of this insane iceberg we've allowed to grow into our economy.
- trhway 2y ago
  >You want to hurt the company and it's owners No. What you'd really want if you really wanted to fix things is to hurt the top and mid-managers who decided to commit those offenses. Unfortunately it almost never happens.
  - AmVess 2y ago
    The only way to fix things is to drag the occupants of the c-suite into civil court and start dropping massive fines on their heads. Do that, and this type of behavior would vanish within days.
  - mrcsharp 2y ago
    Don't forget the board. Top managers are made to break the law due to demands of infinite growth.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Top managers are made to break the law due to demands of infinite growth No, they’re not.
      - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
        [ citation needed ]
    - tick_tock_tick 2y ago
      No they choose to because of the benefits it gives them. Realistically middle management are the ones who need to start going to jail to cleanup this kind of behavior.
dboreham 2y ago
Because this isn't Europe -- US government is essentially owned by corporate interests, regardless of party in power.
- bruce511 2y ago
  If we take that as true, then we can ignore that aspect when we make our choice. While both parties are funded by corporate interests, they still are far enough apart on policy and personality for the choice to have an impact. Corporates are mostly caring about tax policy and industry regulation. They (mostly) have neutral stances on things like Healthcare, equality, racism, immigration, abortion and so on.

stainablesteel 2y ago

its not just that i don't want electronics built into cars i don't want data coming from my car i don't need a phone to be built into my car i don't need navigation to be built into my car they need to stay in their lane we need anti-enshittification laws

ensignavenger 2y ago
I absolutely want electronics built into car! Requirements for antilock brakes, electronic fuel injection, and other electronics in vehicles has made them safer and more efficient. The other items on your list I can agree with, though.
- kjrfghslkdjfl 2y ago
  [dead]
- brendoelfrendo 2y ago
  And ECUs make it so easy to manage all of these things! I love 80s/90s Japanese sports cars, but I don't think we need to go back to the era of using a gazillion vacuum lines to control all kinds of esoteric valves and sensors. But I agree with everything else; I don't want my car to connect to the internet, I don't want my car to track my travel and driving habits, and I definitely don't want that data sent to the manufacturer to be sold. It really just smacks of greed and nothing else... selling cars has a long history of being a profitable business on its own. You don't need to steal your customers' data to turn it into another revenue stream, but it sure looks good on a financial report.
  - kaibee 2y ago
    > It really just smacks of greed and nothing else... selling cars has a long history of being a profitable business on its own. You don't need to steal your customers' data to turn it into another revenue stream, but it sure looks good on a financial report. Its not only greed, its also a race to the bottom. If you're GM, you might prefer not doing that, but if your competition starts doing that, then you're at a competitive disadvantage, because they'll have more money to invest in engineers/production optimization, etc. So the logic then goes that you might as well do it first. This is a case where you need government regulations to enforce mutual disarmament.

mjevans 2y ago

I'd be fine with letting the company get to choose between a sufficiently large fine, and board level executives who encouraged the behavior going to jail for real durations of time. They can pick one of three choices: Don't be evil. Pay more than they made. Go to jail for the same duration of time as having stolen Option 2's money, and not the scapegoats, people actually in charge.

tacocataco 2y ago

If corporations are people, why doesn't their corporate charter get revoked while they "serve their time"?

0xEF 2y ago
Because laws exist to protect the wealthy, sadly.
- PROMISE_237 2y ago
  [dead]

isr 2y ago

How about this. For criminal behaviour which crosses a certain $ threshold (as in, what size of fine is levied by the courts/fed authorities), the entire remuneration given to anyone who served on the board of directors is considered forfeit, and used to pay the fine. That means seizing secondary properties from current or ex directors, and other assets. Once that pool is exhausted, then you ding the shareholders (via draining the company's own coffers). Sure, this would give rise to some schemes of "how do I squirrel away my bonuses, in case they come after me tomorrow", but hubris & the unpredictability of this would still lead to some big, eye watering examples. Which would have the necessary deterrent effect. And yes, this WOULD be justice. Those who did the wrong, and profited from it, SHOULD pay.

zo1 2y ago
I'm a full-on free market freedom person, but even I'd agree with this kind of stuff at this point. One thing we really need to be careful to avoid whilst going down this proposed route, is to not mimic the failure mode of socialist/communist entities. I.e. Whereby performance is mandated (produce X amount of grain), along with constraints and other mandates that make the first or all mandates impossible to achieve at the same time, thereby guaranteeing failure and/or reporting shenanigans. E.g. in our current world context. Mandating increases in hiring as a percentage, but then also giving a mandate that we can only add female/non-white employees; all while existing in a male/white dominated pool of applicants. We have to give reasonable and understandable growth / performance mandates, and not pie in the sky stuff that takes generations to fix but we want it done by next quarter.
account42 2y ago
> Sure, this would give rise to some schemes of "how do I squirrel away my bonuses, in case they come after me tomorrow", but hubris & the unpredictability of this would still lead to some big, eye watering examples. Which would have the necessary deterrent effect. The simple solution to such games is the same as with other monetary fines for individuals: if you can't pay the fine, you go to jail.

PROMISE_237 2y ago

[dead]