"So you are turning off and removing the battery from your Cell Phone? No?"

Pretty soon, that won't matter either, with MIT developing wireless radios that rely on nothing other than power from the wireless signals floating all around us. That's why I use a Faraday Bag to put my devices in when I am not actively using them.

"And you are worried about your CAR?"

There, FTFY.

It's still my car. If I want my car's exact speed, location, route and destination being sent to anonymous, random strangers sharing the public roadway with me, I'll be the one who authorizes that data being sent outbound, thank you very much.

"They ALREADY can track you, even with out a warrant. It's called a stakeout and tailing somebody. They can watch you in public, any time they wish, no warrant required."

The major difference here, is that we can track them as well, and they aren't allowed to continue to track you, follow you onto private property without a warrant. They're also not allowed to illegally attach GPS devices to your vehicle, but they're doing that anyway too.

See the problem here?

"Conspiracy is when you invent an implausible explanation for something."

If we've learned anything over the last 4-5 years, it's that those pesky conspiracy-theorist friends we have that we never acknowledge to others, were much closer to "Right" than we had ever dreamed of.

I agree with you. There's absolutely no way this is going to go unabused.
 

"It's all short range communication, so application is limited."

Really? How "short" is the range of GPS these days? Looks like about 12,551.7 miles.

Galactically, that's probably "short", but there is nothing about this that is "short range" at all. GPS capability + what essentially amounts to a huge, roadway-phased mesh network, and you're talking about miles to dozens of miles of coverage between "endpoints".

"We can build systems that react more quickly and consistently than any human. Every year's technological advances expand the domains in which we can do this. If we can use such systems to prevent unnecessary death and suffering, LET'S GET ON WITH IT."

Show me the data.

There is absolutely no way in this universe, that this will not be abused.

There's too much hand-wringing possible with this technology. Couple this with the recent "Remote Stop Device" that the EU is mulling over, and you've essentially got real-time tracking of every single car in the participating countries, mapping and plotting movements and vehicles, and auto-citations being sent out to offenders.

Do something you're not supposed to do, or out past curfew? Your vehicle is remotely stopped. "Please stay where you are, while we send an officer to violate your rights further, with an illegal stop, search and invasive roadside interrogation."

No, there's no way this is happening in a benign, olive-branch fashion. I'm not that naive. There's far too much evidence backing me up here, that similar technologies proposed as saving humanity weren't immediately abused when they hit the market/street/public.

"None of this takes control of your car in any way. It would just be used to provide information to built in indicators in the cars. Perhaps a HUD that would show the locations of other cars with relation to yours, especially in your blind spot."

Are you sure about that?

"Finally, we get to the issue of government spying. Since every vehicle is transmitting its location, doesn't this mean that the government could track everybody, or gather other information about them? This is actually very unlikely. The development of V2V tech has been fairly hands-off on the government's part. Their primary contribution has been to lay down certain standards and requirements for the tech, and then let the commercial companies implement it."

Don't be ridiculous.

Within a hour of this being made a requirement, there will be installations on bridges, public roadways, intersections that will be capturing, gathering, storing, aggregating and mapping every single vehicle movement within city and rural limits.

Guaranteed!

This is an over-bearing, invasive government's wet dream. To know where everyone is at any one time, at all times, day or night? Absolutely this will be abused. They're already doing it now without our consent using our phones and surreptitiously installed GPS devices in our vehicles.

If you think for a nano-second that this is truly being developed to reduce the number of traffic accidents, you're being quite naive. You may be working on the technology, but that doesn't mean you understand the full implications of how it's targeted for use, or how it will ultimately be used when it becomes a reality.

There is absolutely no way this isn't going to get abused at the highest levels of Government.

When computer-based automation and robotics starts taking away 50%+ of the common jobs in the industry, you can bet learning how to code, will be immensely valuable.

Do we have the capital funds at the government level to re-school and re-skill everyone who is 40+, locked into a career path and now out of work, with nothing available in their own industry sector?

We're ignoring a very large and looming issue that is about to hit us in 10 years or less. Someone will need to be around, understand and be conversantly expert in the technologies powering that automation (think cloud, drones, home automation, self-driving vehicles, facial recognition, algorithms, etc.).

Crap, Slashdot truncated it...

Search for: "Photos of {someone you are not friends with}"

No, that's precisely how it should work. If you're putting anything on Facebook that you don't want the general public to see, you're using it wrong. Facebook is already exposing your profile and data all over the place, and selling it to three-letter-agencies and private, commercial companies.

Try doing a search on Facebook for this string: "Photos of " and see how much data it shows you from someone's profile, where going to their profile directly and clicking on "Photos", shows you nothing (for those who have locked their profile down).

Also, your connection is most-definitely NOT anonymous using Tor.

Yes, there are quite a few apps that ask for access/permission to things they clearly should not have permissions for. I've taken quite a few screenshots of the abuse, posted on my Twitpic feed. Look closely at the dates some of these were posted:

http://twitpic.com/dfg0wn

http://twitpic.com/d7sepd

http://twitpic.com/ckgra5

http://twitpic.com/ckgr11

I found the issue with Brightest Flashlight almost a full year ago, now it's just recently hit the news. Sigh.
http://twitpic.com/cjlfvr

http://twitpic.com/cjl3r1

http://twitpic.com/cjg0q3

If you're doing that, might I suggest just using "Tinfoil for Facebook", or use Orbot + Orweb, and browse a bit more anonymously through Tor instead.

You don't need to use the Facebook app on your phone, you can use the mobile version of the website, or if you're using Android (as is the case with the OP's gripe), you can use Tinfoil for Facebook.

Remember to uninstall Facebook as an app and from ROM including the SNS service (not a typo), to completely rid your handset of that mess.

If you don't want to do that, use Orbot and the mobile site over Tor using the Orweb Privacy Browser.

I couldn't be happier now that I've completely purged Facebook and its hidden (SNS, not a typo) services from my ROM and phone, and frozen/deleted all of the other assets in other apps that try to "phone home" to Facebook. Side benefit is that after removing Facebook from my phone, I gained seven solid HOURS of battery life back. I didn't realize how often the SNS service and Facebook itself were sending and receiving data, phoning home, etc.

The combination of Android Permission Manager, DroidWall and LBE Security Master have made things much easier to block, delete, drop packets, deny and forbid services from trying to use unnecessary permissions.

I guarantee that no app is doing what it shouldn't, and those that should have permissions (Camera => Take Photos Permission) are prompted every time they attempt to do so, never allowed by default. If I'm not using the Camera for example, and I get a popup that it tried to take a photo, I permanently deny it and remove/uninstall the app. I don't tolerate any of that out-of-band behavior on my phone.

You should investigate the same. Yes, we all know about the L4 kernel, but this at least will help remove the abuse from the application level.

Unless of course they just happen to see something during a legal search, then they can collect that evidence too, even if it's not related to the warrant.

It's not a grey area. They absolutely cannot have a broad search for your house and then say "Oh, here's safe. It's used to hold things secret. He MUST have something in there he doesn't want us to see. I'll bet there's all sorts of fun stuff in there! 'Sir, open the safe too'..."

They have to know, with absolute certainty that there's directly-related, incriminating evidence contained in that safe before they ask to open it.

If they're searching your house for a murder weapoon or drug parephenalia, and demand you open the safe and you do, and they find documents implicating tax evasion, they can't then decide to throw in charges for that along with the others you're accused of.

Likewise, if they are looking for a murder weapon, demand you open the safe, and inside they find an encrypted USB thumbdrive in the safe and demand the password, you don't have to provide that decryption passphrase at all.

There's already legal precedent here backing this up, until they decide to invalidate that with NSL and FISA orders, of course.

...but if they ask you to open the safe, you have to open it.

Actually, you don't.

You only have to provide access to locations specifically named in the warrant. If the contents of the safe aren't listed on the warrant, you don't have to open it. Also, they have to have evidence that the specific contents in the safe contains incriminating evidence beforehand, else it is off-limits.

Just because they have a warrant, does not mean they can go on a fishing expedition and go looking for evidence. The warrant is there to collect the evidence, not to try to locate it.

If you're still confused, please read the SSD:

https://ssd.eff.org/your-computer/govt/warrants