Massachusetts' Right to Repair law

[theprf]

We have a ballot question on this election, the "Right to Repair" law as it's called.

Back in 2012 MA passed a "Right to Repair" law that mandated vehicle manufacturers that wanted to sell cars in MA to release their diagnostic protocols. This was to allow independent shops to diagnose cars that are OBD2 and use manufacturer-specific codes. Threre are generic OBD2 codes required by the SAE OBD2 protocol spec and all cars have to support them. Manufacturers may add additional codes and until the 2012 Right to Repair law was passed there was no requirement for the manufacturer specific codes to be provided.

As you can imagine the auto industry fought this law as it would empower independent shops to diagnose what had been dealer-only problems. The auto makers lost, and all of them subsequently provided their codes etc. which has allowed things like our Durametric code reader to exist.

There was one area that was specifically exempted from the 2012 Right to Repair law, that of telematics and infomatics. Of course there was little usage of what we now consider advanced tech in 2012. Model year 2021 cars have infomatic and telematic systems in most every car. Systems like forward collision avoidance, auto emergency braking, lane keeping assist, blind spot awareness, intelligent cruise control, lots of new technologies are considered telematics. The manufacturer specific diagnostics aren't available so all these systems are dealer-only for service.
Want the windshield replaced in your 2020 Accord? Fine, have it done anywhere - but you need to bring the car to a dealer to get the forward cameras realigned or your cruise control doesn't work.

Now in 2020 we have a new "Right to Repair" law that would mandate automakers to release the same information for their advanced telematics systems.
Naturally the automakers are opposing this. The automakers' line of reasoning at first sounds valid, but....
The claim is that if any of the proprietary info is released it would enable hackers to access these systems. By keeping it all proprietary the automakers claim that would keep hackers away. The commercials show hackers grabbing control of car's steering and braking systems.

There is only one problem with the automaker's reasoning. The hackers are already aware of these systems and no doubt are already trying to connect to them. Attempting to protect these systems using the security by obscurity method is unlikely to succeed in the long run. If the telematics data were published then it could be audited by independent security groups and security problems addressed. This is going to be of ever increasing importance as NHTSA is pushing for a vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-environment network system intended to coordinate accident mitigation strategies, conceptually similar to the TCAS-2 systems now used by airliners.

There are other reasons why the automakers would want the telematics data to remain hidden. As of now no one outside of the automakers even knows what data is being collected or what it is being used for. As these systems age the automakers will certainly drop support for them, leaving older cars with no way to fix or even operate these systems.

Although most of you aren't in MA this would affect all US spec vehicles unless the auto makers make MA specific vehicles, which seems unlikely. There isn't anything you can do. I thought it might be interesting to show some of the other things that are ocurring in this time of crises.

Carry on!

[32wildbilly]

There are other reasons why the automakers would want the telematics data to remain hidden. As of now no one outside of the automakers even knows what data is being collected or what it is being used for. As these systems age the automakers will certainly drop support for them, leaving older cars with no way to fix or even operate these systems.

Although most of you aren't in MA this would affect all US spec vehicles unless the auto makers make MA specific vehicles, which seems unlikely. There isn't anything you can do. I thought it might be interesting to show some of the other things that are ocurring in this time of crises.

Carry on!

I read an article a while back in Consumer Reports, I think, that was addressing what the automakers are already doing with the info they collect from these advanced systems. There at least two companies that have access to this info for allegedly benign use. Not that I don't trust them, but I don't trust them.

Bust the automakers as they are not to be trusted.

[5chn3ll]

Security through obscurity eventually fails - when you hide how your system works from everyone, ultimately nobody will remain who understands how your system works.

[Dr_Strangelove]

As a big fan of the Rich Rebuilds Youtube channel (check him out if you haven't...) I'm very familiar with this issue. I hope you Massholes beat it.