My friend had one of these and it does all kinds of other things like taking photos of the driver performing the test. I can't remember everything he listed. Yes, someone fucked up the service, but this kind of device is supposed to failsafe with a disabled vehicle. It's not the same as a a car that gets over the air updates, which would failsafe with your vehicle continuing to run on old firmware. I'm pretty sure the over the air "periodic calibrations" they are talking about is the failsafe for tampering they want to keep obscure.
There's no timeline where these devices are not connected full time. Those of you who think otherwise are delusional.