Yves here. Note that the biggest hook for spy cars has been the introduction of simple but largely unneeded services, such as GPS and entertainment systems. However, cars are also full of sensors used for diagnostics; this goes back to at least the early 2000s. And as Tesla’s warning form suggests, these systems are increasingly designed to brick the car if franchise owners go out of touch. Faraday cages for cars seem to require the car to stop.
Written by Thomas Neuburger. It was first published in the book God’s Spies
“Neoliberalism as an economic system involves rent extraction over industrial production.”
– Yours truly, here
Two of the most revolutionary inventions ever made by man were created in the 20th century, one at the beginning and the other at the end. Both offered the same innovation: a quantum improvement in individual freedom and power.
I’m talking, of course, about the car, personal transportation, and the PC, your personal computer.
Cars and computers
If you have a car, you have your own transportation; you don’t rent it or borrow it. You can argue the merits of “having” personal transportation – there are weather, pollution, and traffic congestion arguments against it – but there is no question about the freedom it gives people. Want to go now? He just jumped in the car and left.
If you own a PC, it’s the same thing. Before the PC, some calculations and modeling were very painful and time-consuming to do, and many were impossible. Think of the most complex spreadsheet you’ve ever created — could you do that by hand? Or better, if you he can do it by hand, would be do you have
Before the PC and its corporate equivalent, the UNIX-based Sun Workstation, access to computing power was through IBM-style mainframes and minicomputers, such as those made by DEC. None of this could be considered “personal”; it was very expensive, and although they could accommodate many users at the terminals, the computer itself was centralized and owned by the company.
Keep this in mind: Before the PC, computing was centralized and corporate. After the PC, computing power was inside the box you worked on, and had a price per sale. Now Thanks to Windows 11, everything is back.
Cars and computers, each a revolution in personal power and control. Now both will be removed. Your car will no longer be yours, and your PC will no longer be.
Soon You Won’t Own Your Car
The above statement is true in many ways. The car you have already purchased will be licensed, a license that you can revoke.
Your New Car Is A Spy
Cars have become computers in the last few years. And that means cars have become spy machines. Here is one review, by the Mozilla Foundation, of the automotive industry from a privacy perspective, written in 2023. Its main theme is:
It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We’ve Ever Reviewed for Privacy
All 25 car brands we researched received our *Privacy Not Included warning label — making cars the worst legitimate category of privacy products we’ve ever reviewed.
The link to each product review is here. Their sins are many; these are important:
- They collect too much personal data (all of them)
- Most (84%) share or sell your data
- Most (92%) give drivers little control over their personal data
- We have not been able to verify that any of them meet the Minimum Safety Standards
Recipients of your data sales can include your insurance company, which can buy everything recorded about your driving habits.
And you can’t turn off these things, because it’s not hardware, but software, and the car needs it the software they will run. Here’s Tesla’s warning about its software, and from 2023 (emphasis mine):
However, “if you no longer wish us to collect vehicle data or any other data on your Tesla vehicleplease contact us to close the connection. Please note, certain advanced features such as over-the-air updates, remote services, and interaction with mobile applications and in-vehicle features such as location search, Internet radio, voice commands, and web browser functionality are dependent on such connectivity. If you choose to opt-out of vehicle data collection (other than in-vehicle Data Sharing preferences), we will not be able to identify or notify you of issues operating in your vehicle in real-time. This can cause your vehicle to suffer from reduced performance, serious damage, or malfunction.”
It has gotten worse since then; Tesla is just getting started.
Biden-Endorsed Bill to ‘Kill Change’
Watch the Breaking Points video above; describes, from respected journalists, the next dystopian “feature” of cars built in 2027 and later – a “kill switch” that turns off your car if it thinks you shouldn’t be driving.
Details are here. Basically, under Joe Biden, Section 24220 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act “requires all passenger vehicles to eventually include factory-installed technology that detects driver impairment and prevents or limits the vehicle’s operation.”
Implementation falls under NHTSA, which writes the law. Barring a ban or a change in Congress, the kill switch is expected to appear on all newly produced (but not used) vehicles from late 2026 or early 2027.
Privacy and Control
In today’s America, two things are true. 1) Once privacy is removed, it doesn’t come back; and 2) when power is gained by corporations and governments, they twist it as quickly as possible.
The main example is this war – because Congress long ago gave up its power to fight, the Executive stepped in slowly, so that today there is not even a pretense of getting congressional approval. Trump wants war anywhere, that’s what he’s doing. Or consider the definition of the word “terrorist” — today it’s “anyone the feds want to hurt, anywhere.”
So how much damage can a “new car” do? Your driving is monitored by AI; data is properly processed and stored; anyone who wants to can buy it for any purpose, including increasing your insurance, or denying payment.
Furthermore, whoever controls the software – the manufacturer, the FBI (at first under subpoena, but later, who knows?), the police, Homeland Security, or anywhere law enforcement, whatever that means – they can lock your car if they want, or (why?) take full control, lock you in, and drive you wherever they want. Remember, eventually all new energy is perverted.
It starts, as always, with calls to Save the Children (MADD is crazy about this rule).
The next expansion is to advance the War on Crime. (“Remember the OJ Simpson highway chase? What if they just turned the car off? You want to catch OJ, right? you do you hate the police?”)
Then it turns into … what? Whatever the security world wants, because it’s “keeping you safe.”
Change of License
You will not own your car for another reason. You may have noticed a trend: what you used to be able to buy, now you can only rent.
• Apple does not sell music, it uses licenses.
• You no longer own your software. TurboTax, for example, sells a “personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Software valid only for the period of use provided in the ordering and activation terms”.
• Similar to ebooks and audiobooks on Amazon.
• Same with Microsoft Windows. (More on that later.)
It is not transferable again can be revoked licenses. Renting your life.
The benefits of License Reform are many for those in charge. The biggest is social control. If Amazon wants to remove a book from “your” library, it has every right to do so – and it has. Think of a Trump-owned Amazon “fixing your books.” Or Tipper Gore-style Apple removing “violent” songs you’ve already “purchased.”
Another major benefit of the business is the multi-billion dollar revenue. You used to be able to buy Adobe Acrobat. As of 2020, the license must be renewed. That’s hundreds of dollars per user per year, forever — or until customers simply leave. With hundreds of millions of users, that’s billions a year.
You can walk away from Adobe. Maybe from Apple. You can’t walk away from your car and still hold a job.
What To Do, What To Do?
Every new car made after the approved date will have a built-in software that monitors and controls your usage. In addition, these vehicles will increasingly not be able to be used without software licenses for each feature, which must be renewed.
What to do? Simple: Don’t buy a new car. Forever. You won’t be alone, and the used car market is booming.
Windows and the ‘Personal’ Computer
I said several times that computers have already gone where the car will go soon. They no longer belong to you, but to the software companies that control the OS, and that control the “trust chip” (Trusted Platform Module, or TPM) contained in most new computers. The privacy and control issues with the TPM chip are many; the same with Windows itself. This will be the subject of Part 2 of this set of articles.
But the main difference is this: With Windows 11, you no longer own your computer. You bought a terminal, where most of the software and data resides somewhere else, and most of the processing happens in the “cloud” — that is, on machines controlled by someone else.
So yes, we are brought back to:
The PC was set back, the revolution backfired, like so much else we endured. Stay tuned for details.
