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Comment by joshu | Hacker News Reader

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joshu·

I wonder how many of the car owners knew there was a remote disable switch in their cars.

Also, I suspect this is a small outbreak of The Future we're all about to inhabit.

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All of them?

This is not a standard car feature, it's added specially for people who are a poor credit risk, allowing the creditor to remotely disable the car if they don't pay.

True in this case, but on-star also has the ability to disable cars, and I suspect a lot of people with it don't know about it: http://www.onstar.com/us_english/jsp/privacy_policy.jsp#othe...

Why don't these people just clip the wire leading to the disabler device?

Why should they?

No one forced this on them, they requested it. It's the only way they can get a car loan.

Where do we draw the line? If the only way for you to get a loan was to sign over the right to have your family abducted and held for ransom, would that be OK? Why is that not OK, but having the car honk at your neighbors all night is?

We draw the line wherever the borrower wants to draw it. If the borrower (and his family in the case) are OK with it, then what's the problem?

And if he's not, then he shouldn't borrow the money.

Are you implying people have the right borrow money?

Are you implying people have the right borrow money?

Yes.

Most car alarms, engine immobilizers, etc. can be defeated in about a minute by an expert, as shown many times by pretty much every car magazine out there. But they are still installed because the average thief does not have this knowledge. I think the same principle is at work here.

A speculative point further in this outbreaking Future:

Jipi and the Paranoid Chip, by Neal Stephenson

http://www.vanemden.com/books/neals/jipi.html

(Submitted as its own HN item at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1201806 ).

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