I’ve not yet seen tonight’s 4 Corners on the ABC and I probably won’t bother.
In case you missed all pre-broadcast hoohah, it seems they have got their mic cables in a bit of a knot over certain Chinese branded electric vehicles potentially spying on us as we trundle off down to Coles or slip in a bit of 2 x 4 at Bunnings.
Horror! Gasp!
But worse is yet to come apparently. One specific brand is using cameras that give 360° vision that have been banned by various government departments. It seems DoD were concerned this particular brand was being (again potentially) sneaky in its communications abilities back to Mother.
Carpark Snooping
But oh no! If you work for DoD or are a contractor, say, and have access to, oh I dunno, the car park, your EV can turn into (potentially) a real live The Claw, sorry Craw from Get Smart and record its little lenses off. What it might record from a car park that is interesting I cannot tell.
But it gets worse!
You see, all these new models have pretty sophisticated AI functionality built right in. I personally bought a BYD Atto 2 Premium in January of this year, and I can speak to it to change radio channels, give it directions, ask it to turn headlights on or off, open windows, turn on or off the air-conditioning or heating and much more I haven’t even discovered yet.
4 Corners, according to the trailers, say they found a boffin who managed to hack what they called the “digital arteries” of one of these vehicles. At time of writing I am not sure which brand or model.
From there he was able to blow the horn, turn on the lights and other stuff. And he said there was no password to prevent that.
Ohmigosh!
Wow! Look out Daniel Craig. Your 007 lark is on the line here.
Now a couple of points to clear up a few things, from where I sit anyway…
Remote Access
Remotely from the BYD app on my smartphone I can do a lot of stuff like open or lock the car, turn on the heating (or cooling) so the car is at a preferred temperature when I later get in it. I can even find out exactly where the car is on a map within metres of its actual location.
I can’t talk for the other brands / models 4 Corners may bring up, but the BYD Atto 2 Premium has built in Wi-fi functionality, but to get to it, as far as I can tell, the only ways to get to it is to either have the 6 character pin code in the phone app, or the car is open and turned on. And you can’t get in the car without a Wi-fi fob or NFC card.
If you have left your car open and access to the innards is available, more fool you I say. That’s not the car’s fault.
Apart from that, what earthly use is the data that might be scraped to the Chinese Government (assumption: it IS the Gummint doing this, if it indeed is). Not a lot I’d hazard.
Additionally, should you be worried about others getting access to your data?
If You ARE Worried, Here’s What You Need To Do.
If so my friend, then you’d better ditch your smartphone, Facebook account, Instagram, Twitter / X – hell, nuke the browser entirely if you want to be really sure. And your GMAIL account.
Then, don’t go into any department store that has cameras, never use your FlyBys or similar card, always go through the manned checkout and pay in cash and whatever you do, don’t walk down the streets in any major city in the world.
And cut up every debit and credit card you own.
Airports and sea terminals are also out of bounds as are train and bus stations. So are the actual insides of busses and trains.
Yep. Best stay at home. Unless you have a CCTV system in your house as well. If not, don’t go outside as your neighbour(s) probably do.
You can’t even watch the best TV show there is (so far) on this subject – The Capture – as allegedly, your TV is also listening to everything you say. There might even be cameras in there too.
The only safe way is to bury yourself under the bedclothes, only coming out to visit the ensuite for a shower occasionally or to… well you know.
But make sure you check the shower head for cameras and microphones won’t you.
See how silly it is all getting?
C’mon 4 Corners, I thought you were better than this.