The Government is Tracking You Through Your Vehicle as You Drive if You Have a Newer Vehicle Connected to the Internet
By Brian Shillhavy | HealthImpactNews
I have been warning our readers for the past few years that the Government has the ability to track you through your vehicle if you own a later-model vehicle that is connected to the Internet.
But today, we now know that this is not just a theory, but that it actually has been happening, as two U.S. Senators have discovered that eight automakers will give up users’ location data to police without requiring a court-issued warrant.
From PC Magazine:
Senators: Car Companies Are Giving Location Data to Police Without a Warrant
A pair of US senators have discovered that eight automakers will give up users’ location data to police without requiring a court-issued warrant.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) publicized the finding in a Tuesday letter that urges the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the car makers: BMW, Kia, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, and Volkswagen.
The senators allege the companies “deceptively pledged that they would insist on warrants or other court orders before turning over location data” from customers to the police. In 2014, the auto industry pledged to uphold privacy principles, which included only handing over such sensitive location data to law enforcement when a warrant or court-issued order was provided.
However, an investigation from Wyden and Markey finds that only six car companies—Ford, GM, Honda, Stellantis, Tesla, and (to a lesser extent) Hyundai— require police to submit a warrant when requesting users’ location data.
The eight other automakers will turn over location data to government agencies “with a mere subpoena, which does not require a judge’s review and approval,” the senators write to the FTC.
“These companies are not just less protective of their customers’ privacy. Their policies directly contradict the public commitment the companies made and invited the FTC to enforce. As such, these companies may have engaged in deceptive conduct, which is prohibited by Section 5 of the FTC Act,” the senators allege.
“Vehicle location data can be used to identify Americans who have traveled to seek an abortion in another state, attended protests, support groups for alcohol, drug, and other types of addiction, or identify those of particular faiths, as revealed through trips to places of worship,” the senators note.
Another concern is that hackers or foreign spies could access the same location data from today’s connected cars to snoop on consumers. The senators’ letter says Hyundai “routinely collects and retains vehicle location data for up to 15 years, Toyota for up to 10 years, and Honda for up to 7 years.” (Full article.)
We already knew that these car companies tracked and stored this data, as last September I published a report published by the Mozilla Foundation on every brand of car sold in the U.S. and reported:
“All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label — making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed.”
They concluded that your car spies on you more than your cell phone and smart home devices. See:
This announcement by the Senators follows other recent announcements that the government has passed legislation that new cars in the future must be outfitted with a “kill” switch that allows law enforcement to disable your vehicle.
Of course the technology to give government agents (and others) the ability to hack your car and disable it has been around at least since 2015, as this report published back then and picked up by several corporate media outlets demonstrated:
Big Tech and Big Automotive are already developing and will soon be installing cameras into vehicles that will record you as you drive, scanning your eyes and head motions to allow the government to turn off your vehicle if they deem you are violating any of their orders.
The automotive industry is moving quickly now to take away one of the last freedoms most Americans still have: the ability to get in one’s own vehicle and drive anywhere one wants, whenever they want to.
In an announcement this week, Biometric Update reported that almost all of the major automakers have either recently announced or have already patented facial recognition technologies that will require drivers to supply a scanned image of their faces in order to use their autos in the near future.
This is happening in Canada as well:
A Canadian company is creating anti-drunk driving technology that monitors your eye movements and alcohol levels via cameras and infrared sensors that can trigger a kill switch in your car.
As reported by Drive.com, at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show, the Canadian company Magna International unveiled the latest in drunk driving prevention tech.
This includes a camera that monitors a driver’s eye and head movements 24/7 to see if they may be intoxicated or drowsy, as well as infrared sensors that can measure and analyze the breath of a driver to determine the carbon dioxide and alcohol levels to calculate whether they’re above the legal limit.
If your car decides you’re over the legal limit, your car shuts down.
Despite ostensibly being intended to increase safety, the myriad ways that this sort of technology could be expanded, manipulated, and abused are obvious—not to mention it could get things wrong even when it does work as advertised. But that isn’t stopping countries around the world from mandating this technology be installed in all new vehicles.
This technology will soon be required in the US.
In fact, the Biden regime in the US has done just that through an infrastructure bill, and as of 2026, if you buy a new car, it will be equipped with anti-drunk driving technology complete with a kill switch. (Source.)
The immediate solution to this, is to only buy older vehicles that are not connected to the Internet. But then you also need to make sure that you have a good, local mechanic to service it, so that you do not have to take it to the manufacturer’s dealership for service, where they may install tracking devices to older vehicles as may be required by law for dealerships sometime soon.
The other way your location can be tracked while you are driving is through you cell phone, and the day may soon come where it is illegal to drive your vehicle without carrying a cell phone.
Jacob M. Thompson, writing for Wine Press News, just reported about a case in Texas where law enforcement stated that if people turn off their cell phones they are either victims of a crime, or in the process of committing one.
An Austin, Texas, police officer claims that if you turn off your phone or it is not connected to a network, then that might strongly suggest you’re a “victim of a crime or you’re probably committing one.”
This statement was made during a tenuous investigation into the murder of a popular up and coming cyclist Anna Moriah “Mo” Wilson earlier this year, when in January her killer, Kaitlin Armstrong, was convicted and sentenced to 90 years in prison.
Though the murder made national headwaves, one of the lead investigators involved in the case from day one, Detective Jonathan Riley made an intriguing statement in a lengthy report/interview with CBS News.
When compiling the evidence and piecing together the string of events to determine who the murderer was, how, when, and why it was committed; apparently one of the tip-offs was the murderer lied about her phone’s battery dying the night Armstrong carried out the murder. However, this was found not to be true and that the phone was deliberately turned off.
This was a red flag for the detectives when this was discovered. But Det. Riley took it a step further by making the statement that in this day and age if someone turns off their phone or takes it off of a network, then it most likely means that person is a victim of a crime or is a criminal themselves. (Full article.)
Big Tech’s Goals to Use Technology for Total Control of Humanity will Fail
As concerning as this news is that Government agents can now track you in your vehicle, and that there are many other ways to track your activities, especially on Social Media where it was recently reported that Facebook shared the contents of users’ private direct messages to Netflix for nearly a decade, the goals of Big Tech to collect all the data in the world on human beings and store it in databases, are failing, and they will continue to fail, because their technology is not sustainable.
We are seeing this happen in real time right now with the automotive industry, and the goal to convert everyone into Electric Vehicles (EVs) which are the most traceable and controllable vehicles on the road.
The Globalists seeking to control humanity through technology still needs the cooperation of the masses, and the masses are increasingly speaking with their spending, and rejecting EVs.
The entire industry is falling apart very rapidly, led by Elon Musk’s company, Tesla.
China now has an EV for under $10K that is rapidly taking market share away from Tesla in China.
Musk was in China earlier this week, where it was announced by the corporate media that he had received approval to roll out his Autopilot technology in Tesla vehicles in China.
Tesla received some encouraging news during CEO Elon Musk’s two-day visit to China, overcoming a major data security hurdle and sealing a deal to use maps created by China’s biggest search engine, moving it one step closer to being able to use its Autopilot technology in the country. (Source.)
Tesla stock prices jumped immediately, but on closer examination there is no evidence that China has agreed to anything yet in regards to Tesla.
Maybe Elon Musk should visit China more often. Today’s 15% rally in Tesla stock follows his quick visit there on Sunday . The big news that came out of the visit, according to Bloomberg, was that Tesla got tentative approval from the government to deploy its driver assistance tech in its cars in China, thanks in part to striking a mapping deal with China’s Baidu.
That seems important. Musk has made autonomous driving central to his hopes of reviving Tesla’s growth. And this driver assistance tech—which Tesla calls Full Self Driving—is a step toward autonomous driving.
But investors may be overreacting. It’s not clear what approval Tesla actually got from Chinese authorities, as this analyst pointed out on Musk’s X. Indeed, the Teslarati blog quoted Tesla China as saying that “there is currently no timetable for FSD to enter China.” It’s times like this when Tesla shareholders suffer from Tesla’s lack of a formal communications function: The company relies on Musk’s tweets, which right now aren’t helpful. The market remains uninformed about the state of play for Tesla and China right now. (Source.)
As I reported in the 4th quarter of 2022, the idea of fully autonomous self-driving vehicles is DEAD, after decades of investing $BILLIONS into this technology, with several major car manufacturers pulling their funding on these types of vehicles. See:
Do people really believe that China is so stupid that they don’t have the ability to do their own research and learn that Musk’s fantasy of self-driving vehicles is facing criminal probes in the U.S. due the increase in accidents and fatalities?
Earlier this month it was announced that Tesla was laying off 10% of its global staff.
Tesla laying off more than 10% of staff globally as sales fall
Tesla is laying off more than 10% of its global workforce, an internal memo seen by Reuters on Monday shows, as it grapples with falling sales and an intensifying price war for electric vehicles (EVs).
“About every five years, we need to reorganize and streamline the company for the next phase of growth,” CEO Elon Musk commented in a post on X. Two senior leaders, battery development chief Drew Baglino and vice president for public policy Rohan Patel, also announced their departures, drawing posts of thanks from Musk although some investors were concerned. (Source.)
This week brought more bad news for Tesla investors, as more senior executives departed, and now all of a sudden Musk is demanding more “cost reduction” measures.
Musk Plans More Layoffs as Two Senior Tesla Executives Depart
Frustrated by falling sales and the pace of layoffs carried out by his lieutenants, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinning his senior management team and laying off hundreds more employees.
In an email late Monday to senior Tesla executives, Musk said Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of the company’s Supercharger group and Daniel Ho, head of new products, would leave the company as of Tuesday morning.
In the email, which was seen by The Information, Musk said he would dismiss everyone working for both executives though a few employees would be reassigned. In Tinucci’s Supercharger group, roughly 500 people will be laid off, Musk wrote. Musk said he was also dissolving the company’s public policy team, which formerly reported to Rohan Patel, who left the company on April 15 along with Drew Baglino, senior vice president of powertrain.
Around the same time, Musk ordered the layoffs of 10% of Tesla’s 140,000 employees. Last week, the company reported a 9% decline in first-quarter revenue, and many analysts have forecast that the company’s 2024 vehicle deliveries will decline from last year.
In Monday’s memo, Musk seemed to intend the dissolution of the teams as a strong signal that he is serious about cutting Tesla’s staff. Starting 10 am ET Tuesday, Musk said, he would ask for the resignation of any executive “who retains more than three people who don’t obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test. … I have been super clear about this.” (Source.)
Then it was reported earlier today that an executive in the Supercharger Team had assured other members that their jobs were secure just days before Musk made this move.
A Tesla Executive Reassured Supercharger Team Days Before Musk Fired Its Staff
Earlier this week, Elon Musk laid off a 500-person team overseeing Tesla’s Supercharger Network, a move that stunned many employees and industry observers who consider the electrical charging stations one of Tesla’s key advantages. But just a couple weeks ago, one of Musk’s lieutenants reassured members of Tesla’s energy organization that Musk believed that Superchargers were critical to the company, according to an email viewed by The Information.
The email from Tesla senior director Mike Snyder raises questions about the strategy behind Musk’s surprise decision to fire the Supercharger team, including its top Rebecca Tinucci, along with most of her team. The Superchargers replace gas stations for Tesla users and form the backbone for high-profile partnerships that Tesla has struck with the likes of Ford and GM to allow other electric vehicle owners to recharge their cars.
In the April 16 email from Snyder, he outlined a new leadership structure for the team, which was previously overseen by senior vice president Drew Baglino. Baglino left Tesla on April 14 ahead of Tesla’s announcement a day later that it would lay off more than 10% of its employees. (Source.)
This is huge news!
As I reported last summer, Tesla had convinced rival automakers, AND the U.S. Government, to standardize ALL EV charging stations to adopt Tesla’s charging system over competing ones. This would allow total control of who are driving EVs, when and where they charged their vehicles (which has to be done over the Internet, and can NOT be paid by cash), and even more significantly, could take down all EV vehicles and keep them off the road simply by disabling these charging stations.
But again, to do this, you need the masses to comply and switch from petroleum-based vehicles to electric ones, and the masses aren’t buying it. (At least not in the U.S., but China may have more success in doing this where the masses are much more compliant.)
Not Enough Energy to Run the Technology
But when it comes to the woes of Big Tech and their massive layoffs the past couple of years, declining EV sales are just the tip of the iceberg concerning the Big Tech Crash that I have been warning about since the end of 2022.
The U.S. electrical grid just is not capable to support all the $billions that are being invested into supporting the technology, and besides the strain on the electrical grid that EVs produce, an even larger drain on the grid is the new AI technology, and their new power-hungry computer chips.
How Big Tech Is Consuming America’s Electricity And Water
As federal net-zero policies attempt to shift transportation, heating, and other essentials onto the electric grid, one of the hottest growth sectors of America’s economy is poised to increase electricity demand exponentially, further straining an energy infrastructure that is being pushed into the red.
Data centers, the so-called “brains of the internet,” are industrial warehouses packed with rows upon rows of servers. They process, communicate, and store the data behind everything from bank records, online retailers, and social media platforms to Netflix shows and your personal iPhone videos.
“Data centers are essential to cloud computing and its ability to give users remote access to data,” a 2023 Federal Reserve report states, quoting a Science article that calls them the “information backbone of an increasingly digitalized world.”
Many analysts laud data centers as one of the fastest-growing sectors of the real estate market, but the industry may soon find itself hitting a wall as local communities put up increasing resistance to the industry’s seemingly insatiable appetite for power and water.
“While other commercial real estate sectors are experiencing a decline in construction pipelines, data center development has reached an all-time high,” according to a January report by Newmark, a commercial real estate advisory.
“However, growth is increasingly constrained by land and power availability, supply chain challenges and construction delays, not to mention increasing resistance from some local jurisdictions.”
The report said the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies is fueling the demand.
The industry is led by cloud computing behemoths like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Meta. It also includes digital landlords, called co-location companies, which rent storage space out to third parties. These include Equinix, Digital Realty, and CyrusOne.
Electricity Demand From Data to Double by 2030
Data warehouses consumed 17 gigawatts of electricity in 2022, or about 4 percent of total U.S. consumption. This is projected to double to 35 gigawatts by 2030.
Eric Woodell, who holds a doctorate of science in information systems and communications and is the founder of Amerruss, a tech infrastructure management company, referred to data centers as “energy hogs.”
“But now your data center for AI applications is no longer a hog, it’s an elephant and it’s living in your backyard,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Woodell has been managing data centers for 25 years, formerly for Vanguard, the world’s second-largest asset manager.
A mere 10-foot-square space within the average data center consumes about 10 times as much electricity as the average home, he said. (Source.)
Even Larry Fink of BlackRock acknowledges this problem of a shortage of energy, admitting now that “to power these data companies you cannot have this intermittent power like wind and solar.” (Source.)
One solution they believe may help this, is to recommission nuclear power plants that have been decommissioned over the years while at the same time building new ones. California is already in the process of doing this, but how realistic is it that decades-old nuclear power plants can be repaired and put back into the power grid at the pace this technology is growing?
The other main issue I wrote about last year, is that the location of these huge data centers owned by Big Tech is common knowledge, and can be looked up on the Internet, which is what I did. See:
Take out a few of these, either by “enemies” of the U.S., or more likely by our own CIA and other covert agencies as a false flag attack, and there goes the grid AND the Internet.
Conclusion: The Technology is Dangerous, but not Sustainable
As someone who has been trained in technology and has earned my living from teaching and using the technology for over 30 years now, I can assure you that most of the dreams of the technocrats will never come to pass.
The technology today is largely built on hype and fear, and it is doomed to fail. It is all built on fiat currency and the strength of the U.S. dollar, and those days are soon coming to an end.
The latest hype, the Large Language Models “AI”, is not only not sustainable due to its need for energy, and not only not sustainable because at some point the masses have to use it AND pay for it (called “scaling” in the financial world), but is also unsustainable because there just are not enough publicly available data to train them so that they can eventually work properly as advertised, rather than producing “hallucinations” consistently.
Are We Running Out of Training Data?
I was catching up with the new AI Index Report from Stanford’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute when one section caught my eye. That was a forecast that we’ll likely run out of high-quality language data needed for train AI models sometime this year.
That’s a worrying timeline. So far, AI companies have improved their large language models by training them on lots of data combined with increasingly more computing power (a strategy otherwise known as the “scaling laws”). If the supply of high quality data is about to disappear, LLMs may soon hit a quality wall. (Source.)
So I urge you to please stop listening to all the fear mongering over the technology that I see almost daily in my newsfeed, where so many publishers in the Alternative Media want us to believe that robots will replace humans, and that Big Tech will soon be able to create “trans-humans.”
This is science fiction, not reality. Resist the click-bait when you see articles like this.
Instead, start thinking about how you are going to live in the natural world when the technology fails, because it will.
February 6, 2023 report, accusing me of posting child pornography.
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