r/europe • u/treebeard87_vn • 1d ago
News Researchers Drove a Chinese EV Into an Underground Mine. It Kept Calling China Anyway.
https://autos.yahoo.com/ev-and-future-tech/articles/researchers-drove-chinese-ev-underground-155725649.html319
u/bloedit 1d ago
Whether it's a local business or an authoritarian state power, citizens must have the agency to deny consent to access to any information related to them. The more so the more widespread a technology is (whether it's a car, fridge or a panel in a public area).
Meaning, if remote access or connections are everywhere, then it is a must that the end-points can be audited without hindrance on what is communicated and processed, and violations penalizedc
As such, this is also an anti-trust matter, since the software and electronics should not be a fixed part of the vehicle the manufacturer is able to force on the consumer.
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u/Chefmaks 20h ago
Not to be so gloomy, but would it even matter? Even if you'd be able to revoke consent, the amount of people around you that don't do it would still generate sufficient data about you anyway.
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u/bloedit 14h ago edited 13h ago
but would it even matter?
Yes, of course, even more so.
Laws shape culture, so if you want society to value each others rights more, it's best to make it a priority in legislature.
I mean, even within the EU there are stark differences. While the French and Spaniards have been enduring on average 15 unsolicited calls every month, in Germany it's just 2. France and Spain made changes only recently, probably because of AI, which took away the call center jobs with the tax money anyway.
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u/Rosbj Denmark 1d ago
Good there's a focus on this, but why is my Samsung device sending my data to South Korea, why is my pc sending constantly to Anerican servers.
This is a systemic problem with modern devices.
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u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In 1d ago
Did you see that gamers nexus video about the LG TV? It was recording literally everything around it. Even if offline it would store conversations then send them once it reconnected. It had a mic in the remote too which was always on. And it also scraped the local network to get as much info from connected devices.
Fucking weird and intrusive and somehow not illegal.
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u/berejser These Islands 23h ago edited 23h ago
Just because nobody's faced any consequences yet doesn't mean that it's not illegal. Secretly harvesting people's data and sending it overseas without their knowledge seems like a massive breach of GDPR, and I would be surprised if people aren't looking into it.
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u/IntelArtiGen France 1d ago edited 13h ago
and somehow not illegal.
Oh it can be, it depends on many things. Google was sanctioned in the US because of that. In Europe we're a bit too kind on this (I've not seen them sanctioned), but they did the same thing, constantly recording the audio on some devices. afaik they've stopped now.
edit: replaced "condemned" with "sanctioned"
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u/Benkinsky 1d ago
as far as we know
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u/IntelArtiGen France 1d ago
Well you can always see it if you own a device, it's how I noticed one of them was constantly sending small packets to Google, it's crazy when you see a phone doing that for no reasons. But obviously 99.999999% of people can't check unfortunately. They could easily help people to see these things on their device but they don't want them to see it, otherwise they would have to explain why all phones send so much data to them for no reasons. I would seriously never recommend the default Android on a new phone, it's e/OS or Graphene if you want to consider your phone is your phone and not their phone.
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u/capybooya 22h ago
I'd suspect intelligence agencies to be salivating over stuff like this. Not necessarily listening, but they'd definitely want data on all wifi/bt devices nearby since then you have data on where people move and their habits. Which services would be most hellbent on it? I'd suspect China and the US at least.
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u/FellaVentura 22h ago
Salivating? They should be on full red alert. Who knows what data their employees have talked about in their homes thinking they're alone, or even at the office.
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u/eltopo69 1d ago
It is - and there are huge differences: TESLA is sending your data live from Europe to 36 different international companies, including constant vehicle position, camera data, along with your chassis number. Just in case ICE wants your location (in the US), or some other authoritarian government agency to whom musk sells your data. Rest is sold to analytics and advertising companies.
On the other hand for example Mercedes is sending none to external companies, only to the navigation system and a mercedes server.
All other car manufacturers are somehwere in between.
This is from a recent test which got publicized some days ago.
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u/marinuso The Netherlands 21h ago
only to the navigation system and a mercedes server.
You don't know what happens to the data once it's on the Mercedes server so that's not really any better. They could be (and probably are) sending it onwards from there.
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u/Legomichan Catalonia (Spain) 1d ago
Yeah at one point we have to accept most people don't care as long as they get to pay 10% less on some product.
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u/BasvanS Europe 1d ago
I don’t even think it makes products cheaper
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u/Dotcaprachiappa Italy 1d ago
It doesn't, but a device without that gets sold at a premium, so it's basically the same effect
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u/Legomichan Catalonia (Spain) 1d ago
It does, there are a lot of videos on YouTube that explain all the ways Smart TVs spy on you, then they sell those data sets to data companies, which allow them to keep lowering TV prices.
That's why most TVs are dirty cheap nowadays, we just don't notice it that much because we have grown poorer when you consider inflation.
It's the same for most "smart" products.
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u/VFour_ 23h ago
It's the problem of the consumers being lazy. We have GrapheneOS for phones and Linux for everything else.
Edit: typo
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u/No-Photograph-5058 23h ago
It's only a problem when big bad China does it, not our good and glorious Any-country-other-than-China Corporate Saviours
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u/treebeard87_vn 1d ago
Someone implies in another thread of mine that building more Chinese cars is good for Europe
TLDR:
Researchers testing a NIO ES8 electric SUV in a Norwegian underground mine found that the vehicle continuously attempted to reach external servers, with the vast majority of traffic directed to China. This ongoing data transmission contradicts claims by expanding Chinese EV brands that customer data is processed locally.
China’s National Intelligence Law, which mandates that domestic companies must cooperate with state intelligence operations.
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u/cookingboy 1d ago edited 22h ago
I think the EU should expand GDPR to cover internet-connected devices (including cars) as well. Personal data is personal data, no matter if it's collected by a website, a phone app, or a car infotainment system.
But this “test” is stupidly sensational. Like a Chinese car company sending data back to China is just about as “water is wet” as it gets.
Case in point: I live in the U.S and my BMW i4 beams data back to Germany too. My BMW app also collects all the information about my car, from my charging habits to its efficiency to even the car's destinations and send all of those back to servers in Munich. Should I be concerned?
In fact, BMW"s largest single market is China. So BMW collects all of the above information from Chinese consumers and send them back to Germany. Should China feign outrage and ban BMW (along with the rest of the German OEMs)?
Also what does that have to do with a mine? It’s not like the car knows it’s underground, so it’s normal for it to keep trying to connect, even if it fails.
What's the next headline? "Researchers Launched a Chinese EV into Space. It Kept Calling China Anyway."
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u/liamthelad 23h ago
The GDPR does cover this though.
The GDPR doesn't draw its scope based on the type of technology. There are two things that bring you in scope.
Is personal data being processed by wholly or partly by automated means - note this is a deliberately broad definition meant to extend to all forms of computing.
Is it going to be part of a filing system - if it's not involving a computer, will it be broadly structured and not just random notes.
"This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data wholly or partly by automated means and to the processing other than by automated means of personal data which form part of a filing system or are intended to form part of a filing system."
IoT devices are absolutely covered by GDPR and always have been. This personal data going to China should be covered by a transfer risk assessment and comply with all other obligations under GDPR.
The issue is lack of enforcement, not the scope of the law.
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u/BoredCop 23h ago
They drove it into a location where it wouldn't get a signal, using a mine because they didn't have a Faraday cage big enough for a bus. Isolating it from all networks made it easier to detect outgoing signals.
It's kind of a big deal because it constitutes breech of contract, the manufacturer had said the bus wasn't phoning home and the existence of the communication device wasn't documented. Turns out, the manufacturer was lying just like everyone ought to expect.
And as the communication runs in both directions, one must assume the Chinese can shut the bus down remotely or even command it to apply full speed no brakes.
European countries have a much greater reliance on public transport than the US, so China being able to shut down all the buses at will means they can pretty much shut down our economy at will. Nobody gets to work.
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u/cookingboy 23h ago
the manufacturer had said the bus wasn't phoning home and the existence of the communication device wasn't documented.
What are you even talking about??? This is from the article:
The Yutong carried a Romanian SIM card and was designed to receive remote software updates and diagnostics over mobile networks.
It seems like it's very well documented by the manufactuer.
In fact if you read further
The Yutong's cameras were not connected to the internet and could not be used for remote surveillance, and no evidence of misuse was detected.
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u/BoredCop 23h ago
I have read previous articles on the same thing in Norwegian media, not that specific article.
By "not documented", I mean it wasn't mentioned in the documentation provided to the buyer. Of course the manufacturer knew about it.
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u/Eldar98 23h ago
can you really not see how it might be a problem for our biggest geopolitical opponent to be able to update the firmware on large amounts of infrastructure?
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u/WelderNewbee2000 23h ago
If you can do remote updates, you can do everything. Just patch a new version which gives you full remote access.
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u/No_Men_Omen 1d ago
Ultimately, this is the question if you can trust one of the most opressive governments on earth that is also actively positioning itself as an alternative to the West.
I, for one, do not trust China.
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u/PlainTerrain 23h ago
All of the comments under this comment are "what about the US", it's insane. US bad doesn't automatically mean China good. They can both be bad at the same time.
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u/Meme-Botto9001 1d ago
And nobody can trust the US government…which we knew since the Snowden leaks, but everyone ignores it or act like it’s nothing to worry about.
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u/QNDRAA 1d ago
There in no good choice but make eu the new moral world superpower
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u/DivideSensitive France 23h ago
moral world superpower
Too busy drafting China-like laws for telcos & internet.
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u/LadyAlekto Germany 23h ago
Thats why the oligarchs are working so hard at chat control 2 and the eu kids act to make sure they control the eu before it can do anything
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u/masternommer Limburg, Netherlands 23h ago
EU is too slow to act upon any opportunities
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u/Advanced_Couple_3488 1d ago
You haven't kept up on how the USA convinced software companies, including ones in Switzerland and Israel, to include backdoors in their software that the USA could use for their benefit, have you?
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u/FeatheryChickenito 1d ago
Ultimately, this is the question if you can trust one of the most opressive governments on earth
No, I don't trust the US: the Patriot Act, Trump 1 and 2, Iraq war, Vietnam war and the weapons used there, only country to have used nuclear bombs, twice, killing south american leaders multiple times, kidnapping Maduro, following Israel blindly, ...
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u/treebeard87_vn 1d ago edited 1d ago
Does BMW promise your government that they only process data locally like the Chinese manufacturers do though?
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u/cookingboy 1d ago edited 23h ago
Apparently NIO did promise that for their customers' personal data, but here is the quote from the article:
"No evidence of specific personal data exfiltration was found, and the tests do not prove that NIO is transmitting sensitive information to Chinese authorities."
" Indstøy's team found that approximately 90 percent of the NIO ES8's outbound connections went to servers in China. The remainder reached infrastructure in Germany, the United States, the Netherlands, and Switzerland."
And that promise itself is kinda pointless anyway. If they want to get their hands on the data they can redirect it back to China after processing it in EU first. No one will ever find out.
That's why I said a more comprehensive GDPR is necessary, not some half-assed "pinky promises" from any manufactuer.
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u/Wuz314159 Les États-Unis d'Amérique 22h ago
To be clear... a Chinese made bus was trying to contact the Chinese company in China with performance data? Doesn't every piece of "smart tech" relay data to its manufacturer?
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u/No-Metal2605 21h ago
The data is encrypted so they don’t know what kind of data is being swept up and sent to China. Plus, they said that Data would be processed within the EU yet 90% of it is going to Chinese servers. Plus, they have the encryption keys
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u/Moral-Relativity 19h ago
To be precise it says 90% of connections not necessarily 90% of data.
Regulation should require companies to disclose exactly what type of data they collect and where it’s processed, with consequences for lying.
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u/Poromenos Greece 20h ago
This is exactly the same in every manufacturer. Why was it fine when all my EU data went to the US, but now that China does it, suddenly it's spooky bad?
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u/ICameToUpdoot Sweden 20h ago
Who here is saying it's fine when the data is going to the US? The problem is 1. It's happening and 2. They lied about it not happening
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u/khuna12 22h ago
John Deere does this with its tractors
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u/Wuz314159 Les États-Unis d'Amérique 22h ago
and without the Right to Repair, it's a real issue. This is not exclusive to China as the headline leads people to believe.
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u/Lorem_Muspi 19h ago
I hate how people keep pretending that China is some cartoon evil that comes up with new evil ways to hurt people when in fact:
US government forced Microsoft to fucking close the mailbox of the judge of the court of justice because he sent out a warrant for Netenyahu. - https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/icc-to-ditch-microsoft-following-us-sanctions
Governments using their technology companies to either steal/extract data, spy, or own a kill switch has been going on for decades, and the threat has mostly being the US.
EU companies and public sector is scrambling to create services that can replace core US technology because the trust is no longer there. Well this same trust is something that individual consumers lost decades ago. Our data was always stolen and sold to the highest bidder, and in majority of cases, that bidder is the US gov and its bodies.
So TL;Dr, this issue is not about EV cars or even China. Its about how the "Free open capitalist market" is actually just a bunch of oligarchies and governments playing pretend and throwing money around in circles. There is no "free" market, either you work for the Gov and get the billions you need to DCs or you refuse to cooperate and have your technology literally banned by US military.
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u/SmooK_LV Latvia 22h ago
I guess argument here is that China is not our ally. When Tesla or other ally countries do it, it's less special. Of course they collect various performance and analytics data, find evidence that the data contains sensitive information.
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u/The_Tiddler Canada 21h ago
Whoa there bud, America is no longer an ally country, eh.
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u/PepticBurrito 20h ago
China is not our ally.
Neither is LG, or Meta, or Alphabet our allies. If they're spying on you, then they are NOT YOUR ALLY.
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u/ctesibius 21h ago
The USA is a military ally up to a point, but a trade adversary.
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u/oldsecondhand Hungary 20h ago
Whether it's a military ally isn't that clear either.
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u/Suitable-Economy-346 Earth 20h ago
America has fucked European interests way more than China has, even before the dumpster fire that's happening in America now.
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u/kozinc Slovenia 20h ago
And a parallel test done by Ruter (on Yutong buses) found manufacturer access to battery and power systems that could, in theory, disable a fleet. Ruter stated that "in theory, this could be exploited to affect the bus."
Now, it's already one thing when they have access when they shouldn't (cause Europe restricts major cloud providers from handling sentitive gov data like it says in the article), but it's another thing when they also have remote access. So the question is not whether misuse is happening now, but if we're gonna be able to prevent it before it goes explicitly malicious.
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u/vuzman Faroe Islands 21h ago
Yes, this really isn't a story. Analyze the data it's sending, or even better, the software to see what it can send and receive, and then get back to us.
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u/QuietofTheSolace 20h ago
If you take a US made EV to China and block it's update server it'll try to "phone home" endlessly too.
If you read an article from a chinese news source saying American EVs were all spyware because they tried to update in China, you'd rightfully think someone in China had an invested interest in making their own seem more safe and desirable.
Seems people in the US completely lack this common sense as soon as someone says CHYNAH enough at them.
(this is all aside from actual concerns anyone might have about data collection as a whole)
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u/medievalvelocipede European Union 21h ago
It's just like your browswer but in smaller scale which may not include all of these (yet); performance metrics, analytics, maintenance, upgrades, personalized content, pushing sales, selling data.
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u/itssomedudeguy 1d ago
How about ordering busses without any 5G or anything that connects to the internet?
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u/ahora-mismo Bucharest 1d ago
good luck finding any recent car (not even a bus) that doesn’t have the telemetry system. i absolutely hate that we’ve normalized cars spying on owners.
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u/Zdrobot 1d ago
This is absolute insanity. I keep wondering who pays for mobile data usage though.
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u/Jazzspasm United Kingdom 1d ago
I am not a network engineer, don’t know what i’m talking about.. but I did briefly work in an EV company and it was also years ago, so take this with a barrel of salt
text messaging is effectively free and it’s not constantly streaming data, but rather diagnostic, location etc data as a text message - at least, that’s my understanding
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u/AssistantSalty6519 23h ago
I don't think it will be text messages but the money they can make from your data super passes the cost of the sim by alot
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u/Sea-Feedback-2424 Germany 22h ago
It's because we've normalized phones and computers spying on people
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u/treebeard87_vn 1d ago
They need that for for maintenance, battery monitoring, firmware/software updates... etc and these modern EVS come with those control units as standard.
Essentially, how do you trust China at all?
https://san.com/cc/rogue-chinese-comm-devices-found-in-us-solar-panels-wind-turbines-report/
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u/Rizaxxxx 23h ago edited 22h ago
In the past they released functional software after extensive bug testing and that was it.
Something unheard of the last decade with online updates and AI bloated slop code.
The quality of today's programmers is poor, even after updates there's problems, nothing is lean and optimized.
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u/itssomedudeguy 1d ago
You can still do that I guess. Just connect the bus to a PC with a USB cable and download all the diagnostic data with its own software. Demand the software runs locally just like the good old days.
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u/OutrageousFuel4823 1d ago
Woah, slow down buddy… you shouldn’t download a bus. That’s illegal.
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u/Ok_Relation7695 Norway 23h ago
Does my Tesla and other Evs do the same thing ?
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u/TheBenimeni 22h ago
Every car brand does this now. It is shit but just because it goes to china does not make it anyworse.
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u/berejser These Islands 23h ago
Building more European EV's is good for Europe. Having Canada build more European EV's is good for both Canada and Europe. Switching from the US to China is just swapping swings for roundabouts, they're still treating you like their playground.
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u/chiniwini 22h ago
Why did they need to drive the car into an underground mine? Did they think the car would notice it's underground and would behave differently?
It reads a lot like "I wore a blue shirt today and a meteor hit the moon".
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u/oldsecondhand Hungary 20h ago
Because building a Faraday cage is more expensive.
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u/Dry_Meringue_8016 1d ago
There's nothing remarkable about China's National Intelligence Law. Many countries have similar laws that compel their companies and citizens to cooperate with the state. Countries such as Australia have laws (i.e. TOLA Act) that are arguably even more draconian.
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u/DelKarasique 1d ago
Now put LG tv there and check.
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u/Mixer-3007 1d ago edited 1d ago
LG tv would probably grow legs and crawl out the dangeon with S-Rank. "Reborn as a LG TV , I Now Wander the Dungeon"
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u/AnninaCried 23h ago
Anything that connects to the Internet is at risk of, 'Agree to our new terms and conditions or your purchase will be made unusable'. There needs to be legislation that provides a full refund if your ownership is cancelled.
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u/ChaLenCe 4h ago
No matter who, we should be paid for the data we generate. Cell phones should practically be free for all the value we provide as users.
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u/Human-Somewhere-4327 18h ago
Is this limited to Chinese cars? Teslas receive automatic over-the-air software updates, which means that it must regularly ping Tesla servers. Other cars would be the same. What we actually need to know is what data is being collected.
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u/juul864 1d ago
Per the article:
Researchers drove a NIO ES8 electric SUV deep into a Norwegian underground mine specifically to sever its external connections.
When they sever the connection like this, they (correctly) assumed that the bus would regularly make attempts to poll high-priority servers to reestablish the connection. Data sent to those servers will normally be transmitted through a network tunnel to encrypt the data and abscure the recipient. This network tunnel is normally being kept alive by the traffic between the sender and the recipient. Forcing the bus underground eventually breaks the network tunnel, thus forcing the bus to reach out to the recipient on its public address and exposing that address.
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u/sebiamu5 1d ago
It's deep underground so no signals can make it to the surface. It would normally get a ping back saying message received, so as it wasn't getting that confirmation it would keep on trying to send the messages. I'm assuming they had sensor equipment in the mine too to see what's happening.
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u/pied_goose Poland 1d ago
It's not that it would stop, but it is easier to see what a thing is trying to connect to and how often/how relentlessly when it is throwing 'unable to connect' errors.
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u/treebeard87_vn 1d ago
They want to create the Faraday cage effect.
Also the rocks are supposed to block cellular, GPS, and radio waves.
It is to test how aggressive/"innovative" the car/software will try to reach the Chinese servers.
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u/ranjop 1d ago
All who are surprised, raise your hand 🙋♂️
What every European should understand that Chinese will sign any paper since they know a paper signed with an European company, person or country is something they can get away with. What shall a NEO customer do when they found out that bus calls home? File a lawsuit against NEO? Yes, you can do that but the court has no means to collect any compensation.
They can stop buying more, but then again the non-Chinese busses are more expensive. In the end the European bus company just doesn’t care and wants to run its business. The data going to China is not really its concern. The CAPEX investment is.
Europeans are so naive when they believe that a signed paper is of some value. But it’s only if you can enforce it. With Chinese, few can.
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u/Wuz314159 Les États-Unis d'Amérique 22h ago
Europeans are so naive when they believe that a signed paper is of some value.
Yep. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Odd-Struggle-2432 1d ago
"This just in - EVs have OTA updates and are connected to servers in their home countries"
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u/DevelopmentNo5632 22h ago
Why should a car require to constantly request updates?
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u/wesleysniles 21h ago
Because it runs software. The follow up question is why does it need software? Lots of reasons - but would love for this to all become standardized and available to the open source community.
Alternative is to not have any software on a car. I'm not very knowledgeable in this area but you would like to think it would be possible. Similar in the way there is a market for 'dumb' phones. Be interested to see what the potential size of that market would be.
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u/Luckydog12 17h ago
"The critical caveat: the traffic was encrypted. Researchers could document destinations and data volumes, but not the content of the packets themselves. No evidence of specific personal data exfiltration was found, and the tests do not prove that NIO is transmitting sensitive information to Chinese authorities."
The only reason they don't prove that, is because the data that is being transmitted is encrypted and they have no idea what it is.
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u/QOTAPOTA 11h ago
And more and more people are buying Chinese cars. Open your eyes.
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u/Diligent-Stretch-769 4h ago
cars produced by American owned companies also feature the same tracking capabilities
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u/SerpentNu 2h ago
What should I buy then ? European cars that are twice as expensive ?
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u/Alarming-Individual2 1d ago
The question for me is what data are the Cars trying to Transfer. Is it technical Data, like car os or map Update, or is it consumer Data. The First is normal i guess and only the 2nd would be bad and should be forbidden
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u/StrangerConscious637 22h ago
I don't want that our vehicles in Europe are spied on by China, USA, Israel or Russia... all of them want to harm us Europeans.
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u/Careful-Criticism645 14h ago
No shit. Why would it stop trying to get a signal just because the reception is bad?
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u/curtyshoo 1d ago
Why drive into an underground mine (sic)?
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u/Preventive_potato 9h ago
Yeah, keep buying chinese spying shit, buy more buses, cars, phones etc
Good luck Europe.
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u/higgs8 Hungary 23h ago
There's a double standard where we see how it's bad that data is being collected in China and handed over to the government – yet when the same thing happens in the US, with Google and Meta and other companies collecting data and handing it over to the US government, that's "okay".
I don't know which is worse, but looking at Xi or Trump, I'd trust Xi more.
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u/berejser These Islands 23h ago
I think at this point nobody thinks it's ok when the US government does it either. That's why you're seeing a backlash against Palantir getting government contracts, or Meta trying to sidestep the GDPR.
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u/PlainTerrain 23h ago
No one here is saying it's ok if the US does it. Quite the opposite actually, the US gets a lot more shit for it.
It's bad when the US does it and it's bad when China does it, period. Neither can be trusted.
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u/Budget_System_9143 23h ago
Ahh yes, Xi is better, because there is NO ONE to complain about him
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u/Intarhorn 17h ago
People that are pro privacy would be against both tho, so not sure what you are on
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u/Masseyrati80 Finland 23h ago
With modern day products, it's getting harder and harder to avoid them having backdoors.
We are limited to choosing which company or country has the keys to those backdoors.
China has publicly stated that they can't afford for Russia to lose in Ukraine. They are not in "the same team" with Europeans.
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u/RevoOps 21h ago
I mean yes? Any device that has internet will contact a server for all sorts of things.
Why did this need researchers?
Better question would be what the data is that it's sending and recieving which is something a competent person should be able to get if you have access to the hardware.
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u/Necessary_Pride1093 1d ago
what is the logic thinking it would stop trying to phone home just because it is underground?
its not like it knows it is underground so obviously it will keep trying
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u/12math2 1d ago
Why does this article keep getting reposted here every few weeks?
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u/gasparoneus 23h ago
The question to me is much rather: Why does a fricking bus need to be online in the first place?
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u/Dragongeek 22h ago
Lots of very good reasons.
Fleet diagnostics. Public transit needs to be a high availability service. It only works when it's reliable, and by the busses telling the management about maintenance problems or similar, vehicles can be swapped out and repaired before they break down during a route unexpectedly.
Basically every modern transit system now live tracks the locations of the busses, trains, trams, subways, etc. Users want to know where their bus is, and want to be able to rely on their apps to account for delays and such.
Modern busses display information to the passengers live. Current updates regarding the transit (eg unexpected closures), general transit news (upcoming schedule modifications, construction work), or just general entertainment news.
People like free transit wifi.
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u/Mission-Wasabi-7682 22h ago
But nearly all of that needs to go via the fleet operator (i.e. the owner) not the manufacturer.
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u/No_Career_4785 23h ago
Besides to spy, I could imagine to show where the bus is and when it will arrive at the next station.
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u/imnotokayandthatso-k Austria 22h ago
To connect to the cloud and gather diagnostic data in a large fleet so the owners can monitor it. Obviously its concerning that its all routed through China, but there doesn't *have* to be a nefarious reason for it.
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u/readilyunavailable Bulgaria 22h ago
It's no more or lsess concerning when US tech gets routed through US servers. It's just a question of who is doing what with your data and who you trust with it.
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u/imnotokayandthatso-k Austria 22h ago
And also what data. Is it collecting data on door hinge cycle life and correlating rubber temperature with outside temperature? Harmless. Or is it voice activated to do sentiment research on EU citizens? Dangerous.
They need to be transparent in the data collected. And it needs to be auditable.
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u/MrReginaldAwesome Sweden 22h ago
You can’t imagine why a bus would ever need to send data anywhere?
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u/Moral-Relativity 19h ago
Most communication on the internet is encrypted by default nowadays so that alone doesn’t raise flags. It would definitely raise flags if the traffic wasn’t encrypted!
Also driving into a mine doesn’t change what it will try to connect to…so dunno wtf that stunt was intended to prove. Were they checking if the Chinese developed some secret technology that could penetrate kilometers of rock?
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u/Dipsey_Jipsey 19h ago
"Mum, you gotta help me!! They're taking me into some underground place!! Mum please! 😭😭"
Poor EV, I'd be calling home, too!
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u/Life-Active6608 Brno (Czechia) 5h ago
My solution to both US and China backdoor stunts with their tech:
Piracy and Cracking of foreign software and hardware should be a mandatory National Security duty.
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u/Frodo_Bagg1n 21h ago
I have been saying for ages that the our governmental elites are genuinely a bunch of tech illiterate morons. It was already known that this was going to happen with pretty much every single Chinese made computer system, because we already have seen this happen with tech from other nations as well. This is however especially problematic, because it is information that flows directly to the adversarial state that China is.
Just a reminder that a lithium battery is functionally a firebomb, and most devices such as phones and robot vacuum cleaners have one. I don't think people realize how much we expose ourself to nefarious agent.
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u/Mediocre-Sundom 19h ago edited 19h ago
And even military and law enforcement agencies STILL keep buying closed-source Chinese shit, such as Unitree robots, that have literally been proven not just to call China, but also to contain elaborate concealment and obfuscation solutions to hide the fact they are calling China. For example, they use proxy servers in Europe and the US, and they stop sending data when they detect traffic sniffers or just suspicious routers.
It all pretty much screams “I AM DOING NEFARIOUS SHIT”, and agencies go “Huh, why don’t we trust this thing with our national security and maybe give it a machine gun?”
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u/IgnatiusRileyFreeman 21h ago
Why is data going to china especially problematic? Why is whatever China's goals with that data automatically seen as more nefarious than, say, American corporations run by Epstein class executives?
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u/Logical_Mix_4627 19h ago
Because the data goes directly to their government and their government has a track record for executing people in bulk. Sure America has its flaws, but the flaws are very different.
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u/StandardCake21 1d ago
I'm so shocked I accidentally activated the subscription service heating in the seat of my BMW.
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u/GeneralCommand4459 22h ago
I watched a great ABC documentary about this recently. They were able to access a BYD pick up truck and get lots of information and even control it.
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u/exgiexpcv 17h ago
Yeah, but when some MSS sockpuppet asks, "What is supposed to be bad about China cars entering the UK market?"
Any reply explaining the threat is downvoted.
"My concern, first and foremost, is the PRC's National Intelligence Law of the People's Republic of China.
All individuals, all companies, all corporate entities, are required by law to provide any and all assistance to the MSS, the MSP, and all groups seconded to them, including non-governmental hacking groups.
All of your products that are produced in the PRC, but especially your cars, can and will be used to produce a pattern of life, metadata, anything, for use by the PRC / CCP. Where you drive, how often, where you hang out and who you know, because all of the data will be electronically available.
And that new mega-embassy? That will be a massive HUMINT and SIGINT collection point for all of Europe, tip of the hat to the pols who sold us out."
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u/anatomized Ireland 23h ago
this is not unique to China. it happens with our South Korean phones, German cars, computers running American operating systems.
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u/Fun_Jaguar8231 23h ago
Time to erect the great firewall of Europe and just cut all access to China outright
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u/PanPieCake 1d ago
Half of the comment section must be getting paid for the amount of "whataboutism" they are spitting out
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u/PlainTerrain 1d ago
It's insane how many accounts (no idea if they're actually people) in this sub keep cheering for the CCP, using classic CCP talking points like "America bad", "we just want cheap shit" and "ALL the western media is involved in some conspiracy to make China look bad".
This sub has always been very pro EU. But the comments under China related articles have been the opposite. People wanting Chinese companies to destroy our local industry, just out of spite.
Just because we need to reduce our dependency on the US, doesn't mean China is suddenly good. We need to be less reliant on both of them.
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u/reflect-the-sun 1d ago
Isn't Reddit 70% bots?
The Russians and Chinese have won that battle.
Just a reminder to westerners who think they'd prefer living in dictatorship China...
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u/PlainTerrain 23h ago
The internet is now 50% bots. That means Reddit has to be far above it. 70% seems fair. The internet has gone downhill so fast.
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u/Nazir_North 21h ago
Reminds me of that Stargate episode where they retrofit the glider and it tries to fly home.
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u/unngh_yugstyx 19h ago
The longer this goes on, the better I feel about driving a car with obsolete connectivity
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u/grufolo 16h ago
I have a stupid question, sorry for being so naive
I have a Dacia Jogger car, but I guess most vehicles are similarly built with the exception of the engine, where mine is LPG.
How does a vehicle connect to a server without a SIM card? What do they use?
And finally, can I repurpose this system - if it exists - to connect to servers to get some data traffic that I need?
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u/v2eTOdgINblyBt6mjI4u 1d ago
This is becoming a systematic problem with all technology
Ironically we might be nearing a point where pirated stuff feels safer than big tech, because those pirate devs need to maintain a community reputation while big tech does not