While requiring a warrant from law enforcement is likely correct, refusing to give the owner the information necessary to track a signal from their own property is wrong. The owner of property should have a right to the information necessary to access a signal emitted by their own property. A situation where an owner does not have that right is essentially claiming that the device is leased rather than owned.
(Of course Honda wouldn't want this because then they'd have to compete with other providers for connected car services. Instead they wish to maintain a monopoly over Honda owners who may only choose between their service and no service.)
"A situation where an owner does not have that right is essentially claiming that the device is leased rather than owned."
Owning the device is not the same as having a service that enables the device. Especially when it is a device that relies on third-party networks. There's a cost in that. That's like saying that Apple needs to give me data to use my iPhone just because I own the iPhone and I pay them for it. Those are separate concepts.
Honda can totally deny the customer access to the data associated with this service. The way I see it there are two possibilities here:
1) He reports that his car was stolen to law-enforcement and they, within the scope of their duties, can go and ask Honda to release this information. That's fair.
2) He contacts Honda saying that his car was stolen and that he already reported this to the police. He asks for the location data because he wants to know where is the car now. He doesn't want to wait for the police to do their job. They deny it because he doesn't pay for this service. They will, however, honor the situation described in #1. That's also fair.
No, it's like saying Apple needs to give me the information required to use a phone with a network/MVNO of my choosing, rather than Apple saying "we'll pretend your phone doesn't exist unless you buy an ATT subscription."
Edit: your comment got updated.
I agree Honda can deny access to the data, but they shouldn't be able to deny the information needed to interface with his car via a 3rd party system instead.
Says who? He was free to install his own tracking system if he didn't want to use the manufactures. This sounds more like someone being upset at not getting a payout when their house burned down after they passed on fire insurance.
You act like "the information needed to interface with his car via a 3rd party system" exists. It almost certainly doesn't, because they'd have to specifically develop their system to support that use case. And there's no reason that they would.
If honda does in fact have the location data available, then they are withholding evidence from law enforcement. They are making it more expensive and time consuming to solve crimes so they can extort money from people. This is entirely different from memory provisioning in VMs and other comparisons people in this thread are trying to draw.
A more accurate comparison would be if a hosting service logged the process of one of their customers being hacked, but then refused to turn over evidence to the FBI unless the customer paid them for "special security service."
The legality of doing this kind of thing can be debated, but i would hope people can at least recognize wrong when they see it.
They absolutely are not withholding evidence. They're just asking the police to follow the correct procedure, which is a court-issued warrant.
No one should ever be compelled to hand over data to a police officer without a warrant, especially with something as sensitive as tracking the location of your car.
Comments
I think it is a bit different.
While requiring a warrant from law enforcement is likely correct, refusing to give the owner the information necessary to track a signal from their own property is wrong. The owner of property should have a right to the information necessary to access a signal emitted by their own property. A situation where an owner does not have that right is essentially claiming that the device is leased rather than owned.
(Of course Honda wouldn't want this because then they'd have to compete with other providers for connected car services. Instead they wish to maintain a monopoly over Honda owners who may only choose between their service and no service.)
"A situation where an owner does not have that right is essentially claiming that the device is leased rather than owned."
Owning the device is not the same as having a service that enables the device. Especially when it is a device that relies on third-party networks. There's a cost in that. That's like saying that Apple needs to give me data to use my iPhone just because I own the iPhone and I pay them for it. Those are separate concepts.
Honda can totally deny the customer access to the data associated with this service. The way I see it there are two possibilities here:
1) He reports that his car was stolen to law-enforcement and they, within the scope of their duties, can go and ask Honda to release this information. That's fair.
2) He contacts Honda saying that his car was stolen and that he already reported this to the police. He asks for the location data because he wants to know where is the car now. He doesn't want to wait for the police to do their job. They deny it because he doesn't pay for this service. They will, however, honor the situation described in #1. That's also fair.
No, it's like saying Apple needs to give me the information required to use a phone with a network/MVNO of my choosing, rather than Apple saying "we'll pretend your phone doesn't exist unless you buy an ATT subscription."
Edit: your comment got updated.
I agree Honda can deny access to the data, but they shouldn't be able to deny the information needed to interface with his car via a 3rd party system instead.
Says who? He was free to install his own tracking system if he didn't want to use the manufactures. This sounds more like someone being upset at not getting a payout when their house burned down after they passed on fire insurance.
You act like "the information needed to interface with his car via a 3rd party system" exists. It almost certainly doesn't, because they'd have to specifically develop their system to support that use case. And there's no reason that they would.
If honda does in fact have the location data available, then they are withholding evidence from law enforcement. They are making it more expensive and time consuming to solve crimes so they can extort money from people. This is entirely different from memory provisioning in VMs and other comparisons people in this thread are trying to draw.
A more accurate comparison would be if a hosting service logged the process of one of their customers being hacked, but then refused to turn over evidence to the FBI unless the customer paid them for "special security service."
The legality of doing this kind of thing can be debated, but i would hope people can at least recognize wrong when they see it.
They absolutely are not withholding evidence. They're just asking the police to follow the correct procedure, which is a court-issued warrant.
No one should ever be compelled to hand over data to a police officer without a warrant, especially with something as sensitive as tracking the location of your car.