What Happened After Massachusetts Voters Approved a Right-to-Repair Law? (msn.com) 48
U.S. right-to-repair advocates hoped a district judge would finally rule Friday on Massachusetts' voter-approved right-to-repair referendum. But they were disappointed again, reports the Boston Globe, since instead the judge said he'd first have to consider a recent ruling by America's Supreme Court limiting the regulatory powers of the U.S. government's Environmental Protection Agency:
The Massachusetts law was approved by 75 percent of voters in a 2020 referendum. But its implementation has been held up by court challenges ever since. It would require all automakers selling new cars in Massachusetts to provide buyers with access to "telematic" data â diagnostic information â via a wireless connection. That way, car owners could get their cars repaired at any independent repair shop, instead of being forced to have the work done at manufacturer-approved dealerships.
But the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an association of the world's top carmakers, sued to overturn the law, arguing that only the federal government, not states, may enact such a rule. In addition, carmakers said that they could not redesign the digital systems of their cars in time to comply with the law's 2022 model-year deadline.
The lawsuit went to trial last summer, but the court's judgment has been repeatedly delayed. In the meantime, at least two auto manufacturers, Subaru and Kia, began selling cars in Massachusetts with their telematic features switched off, to avoid violating the law.
The state's attorney general has now granted a two-week "grace period" during which the law won't be enforced, according to the article, while the district judge "said that he expected to rule before the end of a two-week grace period."
But the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an association of the world's top carmakers, sued to overturn the law, arguing that only the federal government, not states, may enact such a rule. In addition, carmakers said that they could not redesign the digital systems of their cars in time to comply with the law's 2022 model-year deadline.
The lawsuit went to trial last summer, but the court's judgment has been repeatedly delayed. In the meantime, at least two auto manufacturers, Subaru and Kia, began selling cars in Massachusetts with their telematic features switched off, to avoid violating the law.
The state's attorney general has now granted a two-week "grace period" during which the law won't be enforced, according to the article, while the district judge "said that he expected to rule before the end of a two-week grace period."
It's a start (Score:5, Insightful)
Subaru and Kia, began selling cars in Massachusetts with their telematic features switched off, to avoid violating the law.
Two down, multiple dozens to go. There is no reason car manufacturers should be able to track what your car is doing, wirelessly. They do not need real-time feedback for any reason whatsoever. I bought the car. I gave them my money. The car is mine. All this does is create something else to break down or cause other components to not work which will cost me money to repair.
If their claim this is necessary, then they get to pay for any repairs caused by this usage.
Re:It's a start (Score:5, Insightful)
only the federal government, not states, may enact such a rule
Lie.
they could not redesign the digital systems of their cars in time
Damn lie.
the Alliance for Automotive Innovation
The very name is a lie. The only thing they innovate is ways to bilk consumers out of every penny they are worth, including and especially by eliminating legitimate competition in secondary markets. This ONLY harms consumers, despite the lies they will spew about how it fosters innovation in car technology so they can bring prices down.
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only the federal government, not states, may enact such a rule
Lie.
Whenever the federal government passes a law the Republican Goons claim that it should be left up to the states. Until a state passes a law they don't like, then they say that only the federal government can do it.
Re: It's a start (Score:1)
Cute how you ignore how the Constitution plays into those decisions...
Abortion, not in Constitution, so up to states per Tenth Amendment.
Gun ownership actually is IN the Constitution, so it's up to the Federal government.
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The very name is a lie. The only thing they innovate is ways to bilk consumers out of every penny they are worth.
You are correct but the reason the automotive industry is doing this is because they see what's going on in videogames and software industry of massive theft that's been going on for 30 years since UO in 1997. They see all that recurrent revenue from microtransactions and mmo's (rpg's with stolen networking code) and want the same model where you will own nothing.
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I mean, yeah, if I was a rent-seeker I'd absolutely love to still have a finger in something you bought outright and are proprietor of. I'd love to jam my asterisk onto those words. I'd love to force myself into the formula, despite having no business being there. I want to pretend that, as the previous owner, I get to tell you how to use your property.
It's bad enough that the corpos are pushing as-a-service "revenue stream" so hard and making it near impossible to Buy something. And when you finally manage
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Car dealers sold cars without this "feature" for decades and the only "harm" done was that independent garages were just as good at repairing the cars as the dealers were, and usually at a lower price. Now, claiming that this constant phoning home is needed is an extraordinary claim and as such needs extraordinary evidence, provided by the auto companies. I'd love to see a class-action suit brought against all o
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There are some benefits to consumers from telematics. If the car is stolen it has a GPS in it that can't trivially be disabled if they want to drive it. For EVs it's also useful to be able to remotely monitor state of charge, especially while charging. Remote control of air conditioning is nice to have as well.
So rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, what you need are some strong privacy laws that allow the manufacturer to offer that service, but not to abuse the data. They can relay the car
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"If the car is stolen it has a GPS in it that can't trivially be disabled if they want to drive it."
No need to disable, just jam the signals from the vehicle on all bands with a spark-gap emitter. On ICE vehicles, all you needed to do was make a spark plug loose, not so easy with an EV obviously.
Re:It's a start (Score:4, Interesting)
The company I work for actually makes a device that detects GPS jamming and takes a photo of the vehicle with the jammer in it. The police buy them, for use at ports and motorway service stations.
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Don't jam, put it inside a container which blocks the signal.
Turn off the jammer as you go through the port, sure the owner of the car will see that the car was at the port but by the time they can do anything about it the car will be in another country.
Re: It's a start (Score:2)
Yes, this - you simply put a pie plate (or tin foil) over the antenna.
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None of this requires an ongoing service provided by the manufacturer.
At most, you need an ongoing cell service to carry the data, otherwise you're limited to the range of wifi or bluetooth.
There's no reason the car cannot communicate directly with the user, with the carrier (ie the telco) doing nothing other than carrying an encrypted stream. No other party needs to be involved, and the telco does not get access to any data. The reason it's not designed this way is because the manufacturers want to artific
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How would that work exactly? Say I have a phone and I'm out of Bluetooth and WiFi range of the car, how do I get status information directly?
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Car has an IP address on the cellular network..
Your phone has an IP address on the cellular network..
So long as you have some way to identify the address (Dyndns, cached when you were last in the car etc) there's no reason the two devices cannot communicate directly.
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There is a reason: security.
The industry standard way to handle security like that is for the IoT device to establish a VPN connection to their server. It's always the IoT device opening a connection to the server, so the IoT device can have a very simple and robust firewall that doesn't accept any incoming connections at all.
If the IoT device can accept connections then it needs to be actively updated to stay secure. Whatever service it runs will eventually pick up some CVEs that need to be patched. Given
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You can still find vulnerabilities in an outbound protocol which you could attack via MITM, only now you have to support not only the software on the car but you also need to keep running the service it connects to.
The real reasons for doing it this way are:
1, NAT - which is solved by IPv6
2, Locking you in to a subscription service
Claims of "security" are just an excuse to make the subscription seem less unpalatable.
Car manufacturers do drop older models, or features from older models. Many cars used to com
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Realistically it's much harder to MITM a connection between a car and a server than it is to simply connect to the car directly, if it allows incoming connections.
The support load is greatly reduced by having the car connect to the server. Updating software on hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of cars, is expensive. Lots of bandwidth to send updates, some % of them will fail and cause warranty claims, and you will probably have to build and test a dozen different versions for different revisions of the
Solution: 10% extra state Tax on tied unrepairable (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: It's a start (Score:1)
These systems bring anything from WiFi to GPS updates, 911 assistance in a crash and remote start. I wouldnâ(TM)t want my car to get some of those things turned off simply to comply with a stupid law that has no effect on 99 percent of the population.
And that's bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Subaru and Kia, began selling cars in Massachusetts with their telematic features switched off
Lucky Mass customer: they can get their cars without stupid cloudy IoT features.
Re: And that's bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a big fat hint (Score:1)
Shows you whose interests we are to value, as instructed by our editorial overlords.
Not the first time (Score:3)
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Boo hoo (Score:4, Interesting)
If California can mandate stricter emissions, Massachusetts can mandate open diagnostic protocols.
Does that mean the market will be split into state vs federal versions? Yup, same with Cali emissions at first. But this is going to be a long fight and this is just the first round. As more states pass similar laws, eventually they'll have to decide if making money is more important than their walled garden.
EPA decision doesn't seem relevant (Score:2)
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Nothing. But it takes another 12 months to make sure it doesn't. And then after those 12 months, they can complain they don't have enough time, because they didn't have to do anything during those 12 months. Right?
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I think it is the Supreme Court recent push towards State Rights to do stuff without federal control. As consistent federal laws get considered unconstitutionall, states will now jump in and now take power to inact their own laws. Where they will be based on their own electrates desires.
This push does put companies that rely on interstate commerce into a big problem of having to deal with 50 different state laws vs one federal one.
Being that these Liberal states tend to push harder regulations but also ha
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This push does put companies that rely on interstate commerce into a big problem of having to deal with 50 different state laws vs one federal one.
This is no different than dealing internationally, where many entire countries are smaller both economically and physically than some US states.
You will also get a lowest common denominator system. Products will be built to comply with the toughest regulation, as these will still be perfectly legal to sell in locations which don't have such rules. Other vehicle regulations (eg emissions, seatbelts etc) were not rolled out globally at once, and yet these regulations set standards which were then rolled out e
Big impact come from elected representatives (Score:2)
What does a decision about what a Federal administrative agency was authorized to do by Congress have to do with a voter initiative at the state level?
It has to do with the explanation, the rationale, that the court specified in its decision. The give the rationale for this very sort of thing. The idea the Supreme Court put forward is that when a regulation has a big enough impact it should be something a legislature enacted, or specifically delegated by a legislature to some agency. That an unelected agency should not have such broad powers. That big impacts should be traceable back to elected representatives.
Going to vote out the Republicans now? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Going to vote out the Republicans now? (Score:5, Insightful)
just maybe, we can find judges who are at least closer to being unbiased.
Finding justices who know what the Constitution is about would be a good start. Considering how much government oversight of the people has expanded with these "originalist" justices on the bench, it's clear law schools aren't doing their job.
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SC nominees just props in Senate theatre (Score:2)
The problem as I see it is they can lie through their teeth at their so-called 'confirmation hearing' and still get confirmed
I get your sentiment, but that applies to every judge since Bork, on the left or the right.
Now regarding your sentiment, its wrong. They did not lie.
1. They answered a question like a lawyer, the answer being technically accurate but being open ended in reality.
2. No candidate says how they will vote in some future case. That would be illegal, for the candidate and the Senator asking.
Is Roe the law of the land? Yes, it has been for 50 years now. Left unsaid is what will happen if a future case cau
The Dakotas are more important than us (Score:2)
What's even worse is for someone to relocate to Washington DC, (or be from there) because then all those nice legal rights of self-government are now lost. You know, like voting for a Representativ
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This is all fallout from them and their agenda. Vote them all out. Then find a way to pressure the so-called 'conservative' SCOTUS 'justices' to retire, and maybe, just maybe, we can find judges who are at least closer to being unbiased.
Actually, these current judges are being unbiased. They are saying things not enumerated in the constitution are not the realm of the federal government, precisely what the constitution says. They are saying that when regulations have a large impact they have to come from elected officials, the legislature, rather than unelected bureaucrats.
What you are asking for are the biased judges, the judges that are activists who are OK with the unelected making major laws and regulations, be the unelected themsel
It's not that easy. (Score:1)
Re: It's not that easy. (Score:1)
The small shops simply call the dealer and ask if they ever need any information. I go to a non-dealer for my cars as recent as a 2019 model, they never have a problem dealing with whatever is wrong with it. Unlike what people are being gaslit by some of these activists, OEMs already have an obligation to provide warranty repairs by any mechanic of my choosing. Cars arenâ(TM)t that complicated, nobody is doing board level repairs on computers either.
14 Days? (Score:1)
Well, it does take up to ten business days for a check to clear, right?
can't redesign in time? (Score:2)
Re: can't redesign in time? (Score:1)
Re: can't redesign in time? (Score:4, Insightful)
The legislation wouldn't have been necessary at all if the auto makers hadn't moved existing useful data from being accessible on the diagnostics port to only being accessible via telematics as an end run around a previously passed law. Thus the new law has to cast a net wide enough that the weasels have nowhere left to hide.
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A lot of proprietary protocols are never designed with security in mind, and rely on obscurity to hide the presence of glaring security holes.
Opening it up exposes the holes all at once, whereas reverse engineering by hackers will expose the holes gradually over time.