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[Varche]

This made me smile.

Great idea in principle but the true crim will have disabled it in the ECU or whatever before his criminal act.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25961096

Just another step forward to the day we are debited for every action on every waking day.

[Omegatoy]

lol never buy a car built after 2001, and would be better to keep an old car(pre89) with no ecu for doing your naughty bits in!
our 86 pajero hasnt got a single ecu on it!! love it,all problems easily fixed by the owner without recourse to consulting a computer or code reader,there is a lot to be said for old skool motors!!

[I_want_an_Omega]

Not if it's a baked in ECU feature and all future vehicles are "connected" ............

"some say" that this type of technology might even be around in certain instances allowing high value assets to be "bricked" from afar ......

[Varche]

lol never buy a car built after 2001, and would be better to keep an old car(pre89) with no ecu for doing your naughty bits in!
our 86 pajero hasnt got a single ecu on it!! love it,all problems easily fixed by the owner without recourse to consulting a computer or code reader,there is a lot to be said for old skool motors!!

Not much fear of that living in Spain unless.......we win the lottery!

[aaronjb]

Not if it's a baked in ECU feature and all future vehicles are "connected" ............

"some say" that this type of technology might even be around in certain instances allowing high value assets to be "bricked" from afar ......

I'm told "OnStar" in the US already has the ability to disable vehicle functionality on some vehicles..

Of course this all sounds great in theory .. until someone disables your brakes and wedges the fly-by-wire throttle open.. or "ransoms" your car (see "ransomware") at the less destructive end of the spectrum.

If the functionality is available to it's intended recipient (the police, in this case), it will be hacked and be available to criminals.

[Kevin Wood]

Yep, telematics modules being built into high-end cars at the factory certainly have the capability to disable the car. I was talking with a manufacturer of such boxes a couple of years ago. They talk to all the other ECUs via CAN and nothing works unless the telematics box is happy. Telematics has a GPS and GPRS module, and is buried extremely well inside the car. As a subscription service you can have it tracked and if it's stolen they will monitor it, call the police and shut the car down when it looks safe to do so. You can even, for example, get it to flag the car as stolen if the car is driven off but the telematics box hasn't paired with the normal driver's mobile phone via bluetooth.

The only barrier to plod being able to shut down such cars at will is that that the plod would need some sort of system to resolve the number plate to the appropriate telematics provider and interwork with their systems to command the car to shut down. That would require a public sector IT project that actually functions as intended. Never going to happen.

[05omegav6]

Has been used to criminal effect in a couple of films... in one a woman is targeted by an unsavoury character who decides to shut down her Saab 9-7X (Cadillac SRX/Buick Rainier) in the pouring rain late at night, using the OnStar system... Another obvious example is in Die Hard 4.0, when the geek and Brucie nick that 5 Series obviously that was a bit daft as had the operator looked at the Map she would have seen that the car was, in fact, in Washington DC rather than some quiet country back road but the principle is sound.

Given that the technology is in place and in use, the Police don't actually need direct access to the systems, merely contact with the relevant control centre together with a reliable link to the Department of Very Lazy Antagonists to cross reference registrations with chassis numbers, all done in a Police control room somewhere rather than in car. Once confirmed, a quick call to BMW assist, or Volvo etc could see the car shut down, provided it is factory fitted with an 'On Call' system. Arguably this system could be fitted without the purchaser of the vehicle knowing, regardless of the options ticked, assuming of course that this isn't already the case

The DMV in the States is much more effective at processing this information given the far more local way that the US is organised. There the officer types the reg into his computer, and up comes everything, whereas here, they generally have to call in for a VIN check

[Sir Tigger KC]

What's new?   

They had ray guns in the sixties... 

[chrisgixer]

So its actually already in place on certain models in America, as we know from the US and some top gear programmes, i dare say there's private services that have it in the Uk, yet the bbc say its not in place, and the eu are looking at a feasibility study.

it would have to be retrofitted to every other car, like an Alarm system but worse, and be reliably operated by historically incompetent officials.

What could possibly go wrong?

[tigers_gonads]

I believe the Swedish has some sort of microwave device which they could deploy at border crossings which scrambled the ecu signals of modern cars and slowed or stopped them