Unlikely to happen, but possible (not 100% safe, but good enough).

But remote controlling the car is something different.

That’s…terrible

Can you explain why these protections are not sufficient for privacy?

> 112 eCall is not a black box. It does not record constantly the position of the vehicle, it records only a few data to determine the position and direction of the vehicle just before the crash and these data are only transmitted to emergency call centers if there is a serious crash.

> eCall cannot be used to monitor motorist's moves. The SIM-card used to transmit the eCall data is dormant, i.e. it is only activated in case the vehicle has a serious accident (e.g. the airbag is activated).

That statement is factually inconsistent. Either 112 eCall incorporates a time travel device or it must constantly record the position and direction of the vehicle and other data. In theory, that data is then deleted, but you have no way to verify that it is - and it would only require a trivial, unnoticeable software update to modify this.

Thankfully, we're safe. Car software is notoriously high quality and rarely hacked. All governments are fully trustworthy, especially around espionage and privacy, and have a perfect track record of never lying to the public.

Look, the European Commission stated that it cannot be hacked; "hackers cannot take control of it", from ec.europa.eu. They built an unhackable device. I am not sure what you could be worried about. If the government tells you something cannot be hacked, then it cannot be hacked. Furthermore, none of the EU member states have been found using other infrastructure to violate privacy laws.

It's not. It just stores the last speed/wheel position/brake state data that it receives when the "collision imminent" condition activates. In some cars this can be literally the same signal that deploys the airbags.

> Look, the European Commission stated that it cannot be hacked

Pretty much. It's just a normal LTE radio, that is normally inactive. It technically is hackable, but I'm not aware of any hacks of baseband firmware of this severity.

And come on. Car manufacturers, which are notorious producers of insecure software, are legally mandated to make an inexpensive device which includes an LTE radio and a connection to the vehicle buses, and you think that is... unhackable? I can't tell if you're trolling me, but your average blackhat only needs 1 of (shitty car OEM software/LTE radio/vehicle bus connected device) to break into a system. This system is a trifecta of hackable crap. To call that, of all devices, "unhackable" is priceless.

The original standard version defined only one location datapoint, the more recent version defines two additional _optional_ points ("recentVehicleLocationN1", "recentVehicleLocationN2"). It also allows specifying the number of passengers.

The mandatory datapoints include the location and direction of the vehicle, but they can be acquired as needed.

> I can't tell if you're trolling me, but your average blackhat only needs 1 of (shitty car OEM software/LTE radio/vehicle bus connected device) to break into a system.

I'm not aware of black hats hacking into a modem that is passively tracking the mobile networks. It's theoretically possible, but I'm not aware of such feats.

The modem does not have to passively track the mobile networks; it can do what it wants. The common OEM implementation these days is that the physical device that does eCall does several things, including eCall, over the same cellular radio. There's nothing stopping the OEM from connecting to a random website and eval()ing the result.

You seem confident in the security of this unhackable system so I will point out some of its other security weaknesses. Several eCall device implementations include Bluetooth modules (both "unused" as part of hardware and implementations that use Bluetooth.) Bluetooth is as secure as a wet cardboard box, so you could take BlueBorne or one of the six million other Bluetooth exploits that work on a non-discoverable device just sitting on the shelf, get in that way and boom, you can transmit whatever you want over the cellular radios. Vehicle infotainment systems are pretty insecure on average and are frequently hacked, so you could take over the infotainment system, get into the CAN bus that way and then send bad data to the eCall system, which is in the business of processing and responding to CAN data.

But those are just a few of the million ways; you could write up attacks all day long and you wouldn't scratch the surface. The facts are: this is a system with cellular radio(s), a CAN bus connection, sensors that constantly listen and interpret data; this is a large attack surface, built by OEMs that write notoriously insecure software. It is, by any reasonable judgment of those facts, a pretty hackable system. And yet, the European Commission goes around telling people that it "cannot" be hacked.

Anyway, this will be my third comment in a row here telling people that their comment is plain incorrect, so I'm going to have to leave the discussion here. I hope that my words provide some food for thought - for the next time that a system that could track you becomes legally mandatory.

I have the standard open, and I don't see it.

> The modem does not have to passively track the mobile networks; it can do what it wants.

Sure. So just choose an automaker that doesn't provide data subscription services and/or don't pay for them. The eCall requirement in itself doesn't require tracking.

It's been a while since I've seen the pro-surveillance argument of "well, you can just do this uncommon or difficult thing if you want to evade surveillance!" In several European markets, for several vehicle types, there _are_ no vehicles without OEM-connected cellular radios. Some OEMs don't even advertise it; it is used for activating features, or "security." Other OEMs will not _fully_ disable cellular connectivity even if you stop paying. If you're an OEM mandated by EU law to include a cellular modem and a location recording device, you might as well make some use of that - and they do.

I know some carriers have strange quirks in their SIM provisioning systems. For instance, it may take more than a few minutes or require a specific type of coverage (like UMTS) for an otherwise "dormant" SIM card to activate from limited service on short notice.

I found an article about eCall Callback that confirms this is a known problem: https://eena.org/blog/resolving-the-ecall-callback-issue/

Hopefully those same people know what ANPR is and how does it affect them.

Other than having some vested interest in denying people's right to choose between positive and negative aspects of progress, or having a Stockholm syndrome towards those who have such interest, I got no plausible explanations to this psychological phenomenon

You seem to be wasting your precious “armchair psychologist skills” here on hn.

And “modern” is going back over a decade. So most cars on the road.

And of course it's a tracker. It reports my location to a third party. There is no other definition for it. That it purportedly only does this during an "emergency" is not something I can verify nor trust.

Yes: it reports your location to a third party. When you have an accident. So you can get help.

And of course it can be verified. At the end of the day it’s a sim card in a passive mode. Maybe you don’t know how to verify it. There are millions of them driving around. I’m sure someone more qualified than you would have already reported if they were tracking in real-time. The system is nearly a decade old.

Storage is cheap. We know the NSA hoovers up everything it can and puts in a database. This is facile reasoning.

> So you can get help.

How many accidents resulted in fatalities because 911 couldn't find the victim? What's the percentage on that you think? Is there _no other way_ to get help other than this system?

> I’m sure someone more qualified than you would have already reported if

You're just full of confidence. Pray tell where it comes from. What makes you believe this is true?

I trust in people who look for this stuff as a daily job, or because „they’re here to get you”. Because you know a sim card in the open is really easy to verify. And there are thousands of them driving around but also easily approachable sitting targets in every possible setting.

But you double down. I find this discussion pointless.

> How many accidents resulted in fatalities because 911 couldn't find the victim?

You’re missing the point of the eCall system. Think out of the box. What if there is no witness? What if everyone in the car cannot get help

Everyone who could reach out for help, received it. Can you tell the same about those who weren’t able to contact first responders in time? Maybe they’re still missing! It’s called survivorship bias.

Sounds like you are trying hard to be obnoxious.