A phone in every car gains hard-won GSMA support The GSMA has, unsurprisingly, come out in support of the EU plan to fit a mobile phone in every car, valuing each life saved at over fourteen million quid. The eCall system dials 112 (the EU-wide emergency number) after an accident in order to summon the emergency services, and the Commission reckons that it could save 2500 …
... how long before someone from the Security Services has a quiet word in their ear and persuades them to add a facility which allows them to eavesdrop on the conversations in all cars, for the public good and prevention of terrorism etc, of course...
(Naturally since every car will automatically be giving off a signal, it will also help in the introduction of road pricing too)
Surely the UK government wants it, along with the additional functionality to remotely order the phone to dial MI5 and report location and what is being said? Even without remote control surely MI5 would want it as everything they need to bug a 'terrorist' is already there in the car already, just needs an undectable software patch.
Sorry shouldn't I be giving them ideas?
This box will be completely open and transparent though right? I mean, we'll know exactly what's happening to the GPS data at all times and it will only call 112 after an accident won't it?
Nothing to worry about then, as long as it's got no way of relaying our GPS coordinates at any given time over a (badly) encrypted wireless network such as, oh I dunno, GSM to organisations and governments that ask for it and only keeps the current location in memory we'll be fine...
What's that buzzing noise? Why can I see ropes outside the windows? What was that smashing noise? wha...
Hi,
here are some things I believe to be, hmmm... inacurate in the article. But despite that, I do agree with the reporter's view.
- 200m X 100 = 20bn, not 40bn
- they said they'd fit "new" cars with phones so the 200m cars figure is way too high.
- even at 40bn this year, the savings (26bn) are yearly so the project _might_ be cost effective in 2-3 years.
Anyways, nice article really.
Syldra
Mine's the one without the cell phone in the pocket.
How much will it cost us all if oiks who go joy-riding, then deliberately prang the stolen car into a brick wall or ditch 'for a larf', automatically summon the emergency services ?
Will all three services automatically turn up to every call-out ?
Then there's the downside of services not being available for others whilst dealing with what turns out to be a non-emergency call.
It all sounded so great when the idea was scribbled on the back of a fag packet.
>>The GSMA has, unsurprisingly, come out in support of the EU plan to fit a mobile phone in every car, valuing each life saved at over fourteen million quid.<<
Meanwhile
>>The Department of Health has commissioned research to help it understand what the public wants the NHS to pay for health gain in the knowledge that it has limited resources and pays for care from taxes. This estimates willingness to pay at £30 000 to £70 000 per QALY.<<
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/section_pdf/337/dec23_2/a3056.pdf
In other words Joe Public may be prepared to pay up to £70K for an (extra) year of good quality life [the actual figure the NHS decide on is not in the public domain - but is likely to be less]. So as long as each person saved by the eCall system survives more than 200 (top quality) years we are quids in.
On the other hand this might be an excellent pretext for installing surveillance and road-usage payment tracking gear on every vehicle. I would have imagined Gordo well up for this.
This post has been deleted by its author
If it only costs 100euro (which sounds optimistic given that a stereo with an MP3 input was a £250 option on my last car) then at £120 for each automatic speeding fine it should pay for itself very quickly.
Oh -except the buyer pays for the system and the fine goes to the government.
yet soldiers are worth 500 a piece according to the iraq compensation payouts.
how much extra on false alarms? i've seen airbags deploy when the driver forgot to handbrake and tapped a wall.....certainly ads to my never buying a new car, despite scrappage and such schemes, i dont want anyone to be able to track my route to work, what about the "ghost plate" vehicles the undercover plod use? will parliamentary vehicles have it? so mr gaddafi can track them?
I wondered how GPS monitoring of every car was going to be brought in.
At least it shouldn't be too hard to break \ take out of a new car.
Soon of course it will be made illegal to remove the locator device, because for your safety, they will have to know what you are doing and where you are at all times.
They don't need a camera in your house or car, if they know your travel patterns and location, they know if you are at work, the shops, your relatives, a location within a radius of incident "X", somewhere near terrorist suspect "Y" and can soon be alerted if you are behaving outside of your normal paramiters.
Also, I don't see how (in reality) this will save thousands of lives.
Equipping every car with an integrated phone means that the authorities will be able to track the movement and location of every car. Enter by-the-mile taxation (not necessarily a bad idea), 24x365 speed-limit enforcement with no escape (yuk), and the state acquiring a log of everywhere you visit for the rest of your life (say goodbye to the last vestiges of privacy, and hello to guilt by data-mined association).
The acid test will be whether there's an OFF switch and if not, whether physical removal or sabotage of the phone unit causes the car to fail its MOT (or worse still, is deemed to be a criminal offense). Technically, it would be easy to design them with an OFF switch that completely disables the phone unless something causes the airbags to deploy.
Paris, because she has more to worry about being tagged and tracked than most of us.
It'll be interesting to see what happens the first mass collision and all the emergency lines are jammed by simultaneous, automatic dialers!
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/germany-autobahn-pileup-259-car-crash-66-injured-no-deaths
Granted these very large incidents are rare, but speaking as someone with pretty good knowledge of emergency operations in the U.S. I could see our dispatchers getting very busy very quickly handling both auto dialers and human 911 callers.
The home-and-business version of these auto dialers are prohibited from dialing our dispatch center directly, taking advantage of state law that prohibits them unless the local emergency call answering point allows them. Due to the large number of false alarms, when one is hooked up and dials the dispatch, we send a State Trooper out who ensures the unit is physically disconnected. People can use them to dial a private alarm monitoring service for a subscription fee which weeds out most false alarms, to call someone else, call their cell phone, etc.
I had a prototype of a one these devices based on a micro linux box for security testing about 2 years ago. They have a nice feature that stores all your movements from the GPS and then send over GPRS when in network coverage. Other big brother friendly features such as remote engine kill or performance degradation (i.e. locking speeds to limit for location).
You also can have a lot of fun attacking them over the GPRS network and sending spoof GPS information back to base. I think it would be amazing to see the response you would get when your driving down the M1 and suddenly appear at the top of a mountain.
Presumably the car owner will be compelled to maintain a current contract on the phone? I'm sure the phone companies will be able to work out a reason why such a contract will of course have to be at a premium price.
And will the owner be charged for all the calls the phone makes automatically to relay the position of the car and everything that's said in it to GCHQ? (Once NuLab and the Daily Mail manage to point out why that is of course needed.)
Is it just me, or would it be the case that after the legislation was passed every time you buy a car you are also buying into a lifetime contract with the cell phone company for "support" at 20-40 USD a month? And of course if it's required by law and makes things "safer" that's another reason for insurance for anyone who doesn't have this wonderful safety feature to go up. Granted automakers could just attach a low cost chip and cheap mike and pass the cost along as a fixed cost to the consumer, but I can't see them NOT wanting to provide "increased functionality" for profit if the person has no choice but to buy it.
Oh, and just the tinfoil hat thing, every car wired with microphones connected to a cell that is remotely activated when the police (at least in the US) have already had such systems activated in the past to gather evidence against criminals... yea... that really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.
So this is a plan to save lives?
"along with a GPS system to report the current location "
Is it just me, or does it seem that the real reason they want this is so that the thought police will always know where you are, where you have been, where you are going?
They will pwn your lives
I understand that interior microphones in vehicles equipped with OnStar (the US equivalent) can be legally "opened" by police, probably with some restrictions, to listen to suspected criminals in their cars discussing their nefarious plots. Whilst this might be of value to society in dealing with serious crime, given that every public official and their dog in the UK seem to have powers under RIPA to obtain communications data (not the content for most of them, yet), and also that these things generaly only ratchet one way, we might conjecture that in line with current plans to record all telephone calls in the UK, that these things will eventually be permanently switched on and all in car chat recorded centrally for our protection.
It wouldn't be hard to wire it to cancel out any noise from the Stereo masking recordings of conversation, (although once Sir Terence retires, there will be 8 Million less people listening to Radio 2 each morning), or to make the "recording" voice activated to save storage space.
If its made part of the security (anti-theft) system to prevent it being by-passed for effective operation of the car, they there's just our homes left for any attempt at privacy.
But there might be an upside. So lets not get too paranoid
I assume this is an automatic system, as a manually triggered one would have little advantage over the mobile phone that everyone already owns.
So where does this system set its threshold? I've had some serious accidents (serious as in lots of mangled metal), but when I've rung the cops all they wanted to know was that everyone was okay and that details were exchanged. They didn't even bother putting in an appearance.
So I can see the police being alerted to many many accidents they wouldn't normally bother with, and probably lots and lots of charges of undue care and attention being thrown at everyone for being silly enough to bump into each other. No such thing as an accident any more.
Actually, I can see every Sainsbury's and Tesco car park packed with automatically summoned emergency vehicles!
The more suspicious of you will already be thinking about this factory fitted GPS GSM system which is but a small data packet away from being a 24/7 vehicle tracker.
There seems to be a lot of comments about contract costs but ALL GSM phones can call 112 on any available network without the SIM card being present - ie NO contract cost. Unfortunately the UK carriers won't pass the call on to the 112 operator without the SIM card present but this is a completely different problem. Presumably, if you are going to create a law to force the fitting of these special phones you will also create a law to force the UK carriers to pass on the call without a contract.
If this is like OnStar type systems in the US, I think this gets linked to "do the airbags deploy" and/or a similar accelerometer. You also don't need a mobile phone contract (but the system may need a separate subscription after the first 1-2 years).
They also don't send help automatically - instead someone comes on the speakerphone and asks if you need help to be sent (you can say no).
It's interesting though that I think the US system is radio/satellite based rather than using a phone. Which is useful if you crash somewhere out of mobile phone range.
No doubt that there will be law enforcement mission creep, but this does not mean this system is useless. The US system may be slightly (only slightly) better in this regard in that you get linked to a private company first, not directly to emergency services. But if people want to track your car, they probably can do this anyway. (Or they will track your phone if it's switched on, regardless of whether the car has GPS, so you may not be notably worse off with this scheme).
If you carry a cellphone you can already be tracked by the cellphone towers. Same goes for any phone system installed in cars, no matter whether it has dialed out its registered with the network. Instantly know roughly where you are based on what tower is serving your phone. The tower has a good idea as to how far away you are, and if another tower also hears you then they know you are at one of two places. If you have been tracked then its pretty easy to eliminate one of those two positions.
Don't now for sure but expect the phone companies to be doing all this already if for no other reason than to know when to transfer you from one cell to the next.
According to those there is this right of anonymous travel which the EC already had their knickers in a twist with how member states might implement per-mile tracking for vehicles.
The way I see it they can't prevent me adding a faraday cage to my property(not specifically to the device but to the whole vehicle ;) ) and with that it would become near impossible for it to do much. I can always wire up anything I need to be specific in such a way.
"It all sounded so great when the idea was scribbled on the back of a fag packet."
Not a chance. Fag packets are known for producing good designs that work. I bet you a GSM jammer to a doughnut this was Powerpoint..
It's a fantastic idea. I can see this work in London where GSM capacity is already so maxed out it breaks Critical National Infrastructure conditions - it'll make the effect of a successful bomb even more interesting by fully automatically jamming the emergency services.
Oh, and as for monitoring, I'm sure than any MP supporting this system will, of course, have this system installed first and make the data available where his/her tax payer sponsored limousine has been - after all, they're paying for it. AFAIK they have nothing to hide, no?
Even if it would be a plausible idea and it would dial a special number to avoid emergency service DDOS, I would probably only trust the Swiss to design it so it actually does as it says on the tin/specs. Every other so-called democratic government has shown themselves at their Stalinistic best over the last decade or so and have lost the trust of their citizens to act in their interest.
Anyway, I have to go, someone's buzzing my house with a helicopter. No, it's not a black one :-)
The math assumes that the phones will only dial 112.
That is not likely to be the case for most manufacturers. Ford is already dabbling into realtime telemetry, other carmakers are also looking at it.
The logistics of just one factory recall (turn on that "engine check/service light" remotely instead of locating all customers) pay back the investment for the car maker. Add to that the use in roadside assistance, etc and you get pretty good financials. For example the cost savings for AA from knowing your actual diagnostic codes when called are likely to be in the 20£+ range per year. Add to that pay-as-you-drive insurance (Aviva). Add to that...
And so on.
...and if I remember, it goes off when the airbag does, (but doesn't record the voices of the screaming occupants burning to death) and I thought (back at the turn of the century) it wasn't a bad idea. I've also got tracker fitted in case the car gets nicked. But these are personal choices.
There is no effing way in hell am I going to accept being told to wire up to the "grid" on the off chance I have a crash, no matter how much spin is put on it.
sometimes you make me smile and sometimes.....
"I congratulate the mobile phone industry for answering so promptly. By backing Europe's in-car emergency call system, they have shown their social responsibility and openness to innovative applications of communications technology in daily life."
Social responsibility? sometimes you make me laugh, this is a fucking big door the mobile phone industry has wedged it's foot into, once all cars are fitted with this the possibilities are limitless. It needn't cost the "subscriber" anything.
Imagine if you will google tracker, find out where your partner is at any given time or street view with real time images (if you are going to fit a microphone inside the cabin then why not a small unobtrusive camera). Don't forget of course all those other applications already mentioned (road pricing, road "safety", "security" uses etc, etc)
No, the phones wont require you to take out a contract, just read your new car finance agreement VERY carefully when you sign it, look for the part of the T&C's which give the right to your privacy away!
I thought that it sounded alot like the M15 covert monitoring in every taxi in london during 2012 story i read a wee while back.
rozzers will love this, assuming of course they get access to position info (after obligatory uproar by Daily Fail/The Shun following child kidnap by paedophile)
on a side note... if it's mandated on new cars (initially, until pay-per-mile taxation catches on or old cars are deemed environmentally inept and banned/taxed to oblivion to allow govt to meet carbon reduction quotas), old 2nd hand cars will skyrocket in value ^^
...mines the 1960s Mini Cooper followed by black helicopters...
Once again the Governments are trying to solve a symptom not cure the disease. Make driving tests more rigorous, improve the required safety of vehicle systems and FFS put some of the taxes us motorists pay back onto the roads!
It's like the banking fiasco again. Badger Darling gives everybody's money to the banks to stop them going under, then wonders why nobody is spending anything...
Is a requisite of a career in politics a total and appalling lack of common sense? Egads, man.
....that the UK is holding out on cost / value / effectiveness grounds, but is pressing ahead with ID cards.
Would it be because UK MP's have no holdings in the firms required to produce the technology - so there's nothing for them to trouser?
Where's the "clammy hand grasping after a bundle of bank notes" icon?
... a recipe for services overload.
A couple of weeks ago, someone ran into the building - I suspect a classic "hit the throttle instead of brake" automatic accident. Very quickly we had two police vans and a paramedic out in the street looking for the vehicle - it was in out car park, and due to the location, they couldn't see the smashed front end of it. Shortly after that, the fire engine and ambulance arrived, plus another police van, and a fire officer in a car.
SEVEN emergency vehicles for a low speed impact causing only minor injuries to one person (she'd just taken her belt off and got a bloody nose and slight whiplash from impact with the exploding airbag).
And I'm with the other sceptics above - how long before the tracking begins.
By thinking you will get away with removing or breaking said tracking device. Any miles travelled that cannot be accounted for via the GPS system will be charged at a slightly higher rate. They will incorporate your mileometer reading which is much more difficult to tamper with.
Also, I'd really like to know who exactly are the individuals that think this stuff up? Statements such as "The UK is holding out" Who in the UK? and who exactly is proposing this in the first place?
It's trivial to sabotage the mileometer. Just unplug or jam its sensor. (I don't know if the feed is still a mechanical rotating cable in a sleeve, or whetther it's gone electrical, but either way - no input, no recorded mileage).
Beyond that, same argument as before. Will disabling the mileometer be deemed to be an illegal act, or something that one is free to do to one's own property? And why?
@DavidKelly 2 - location tracking via mobile networks is already here, see http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10115350-233.html
If it can tell you where you are then it can tell other's too, and you wouldn't have to be carrying an iphone - all gsm phones are seen by all "in range" gsm antennae, irrespective of the phone company.
"....or a shade over £14m for each one of the 2500 lives saved."
I'm sorry, but this a debate that needs to be had. The 'elf 'n safety nazis have had all the low-hanging fruit and are now off on a kick to achieve the (patently impossible) target of zero accidental deaths.
The Truth That Dare Not Speak Its Name here is that the various pieces of legislation gradually chipping away at our liberties (and wallets) need to be subjected to rigorous cost (both monetary and in terms of inconvenience/privacy/personal freedom issues) to benefit analysis. This would, however, entail effectively putting a price on human life and the sort of dickheads that work in this business all have in common that they genuinely believe that no price is too high to pay, so we're f***ed as things stand.
@Whoever said that ABS and NCAP stars should be mandated: If you ever feel like complaining about the "nanny state", look in the sodding mirror first.
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