Yeah exactly, with a car I would no longer be expecting any type of privacy, sadly.

Here in Holland we must even have a mobile phone module in every car so it can call the emergencies in case of a crash.

It’s all of the EU. It’s literally illegal to sell new cars without a radio transceiver in them.

But is it illegal to personally disable it?

Nope.

No but it often involves voiding warranty and/or labor-intensive, really annoying work to access something you can disable.

On Toyotas, you simply remove a fuse [which can be re-installed].

I can assure you this is not the case with all Toyota models or even most. It's often integrated into the radio instead of a separate module, or simply not on a dedicated fuse, but sometimes it is. Disabling it can also lose other features of the car such as navigation, remote start, the Bluetooth mic, or the mandatory eCall feature if you're in the EU.

https://www.toyotanation.com/threads/wiring-diagram-for-disa...

https://www.tundras.com/threads/dcm-how-to-remove-completly-...

https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/permanently-disable-telemet...

https://www.toyotanation.com/threads/disabling-the-dcm-in-my...

On all 2016+ US Toyotas, removing the fuse labeled "DCM" will disable the following:

•) Wireless communications module (including OnStar and telemetrics)

•) Front passenger dashboard speaker (there is an easy bypass to re-enable, but must open dashboard — in which case just remove the entire module!)

I'm in two minds about this. Yes, there are severe privacy implications.

But also this happened, just a couple of hour's drive from where I live, about ten years ago:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-33505...

and similar things have happened about once a year ever since. Now in the news article I linked to a huge part of the problem was that the police didn't follow it up correctly, went to where the accident had been reported rather than where it had occurred, didn't see anything, and then gave up.

But if the car had rung from where it had actually crashed then the incident would have EISEC[1] data tagged to it, which would have given them actual co-ordinates to hit.

[1] https://www.derbyshire.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/foi-media/der... (first hit on google)

Also, you can read the plate from much farther away than the TPMS sensors.

Wait they use this for parking meters?! Which cities?

I think they’re pretty common.

Only reason I know is because I wondered if I could walk to the booth and press the button for a new parking ticket and pay for 5 minutes instead of 4 hours..

Here in Sweden it's uncommon. Especially in big parking lots/houses.

Even easier, electromagnetic radiation can be used to detect the presence and exact location and movements of not just automobiles, but also people! Many people have detectors for these things that can literally see through transparent material that makes up large sections of the walls of many houses and apartments.

The plate is pretty trivial to fake though. For one thing you can just remove it, but it's trivial to alter with just spray paint. Or using an outdated plate, or someone else's plate, etc. it's identifying sort of how an phone number is supposed to be identifying: nominal, but not secure and trivially abused for fraud

> The plate is pretty trivial to fake though.

Sure it is, but people can't realistically think to randomize their plate numbers to avoid tracking... IANAL but is it probably a criminal offense to do so.

It's trivial if you're concealing your conceal your identity when committing a crime, but a huge pain in the ass and a crime itself if you just want to protect yourself from creeps tracking you.

In Europe and the US all new vehicles now have a visible ID under their front window glass, it’s called a VIN. It’s even standardized where it must be.

Are there cameras that can actually read VINs on moving vehicles?

I'm pretty sure it should be possible if one really wants to do it. Think of a high-power IR flash and a high-res camera synchronized with the flash, with fixed focus on where the VIN would be passing. If the flash pulse is short but strong enough, it should be possible to read the VIN. Maybe some polarizing filters to remove glass reflections are needed.

I wonder what the first vehicle to have the VIN under the windshield was. I believe I saw that for the first time maybe 20 years ago (USA).

This says 1969

https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...

A camera has quite a few failure modes (bad lighting, fog, dirty lens, obscured by plant growth, privacy laws, etc.) which a TPMS receiver & directional antenna don't.