You have to laugh.

[Camy]

Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely

More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.

Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/hacker-bricks-cars/

[Bruin Fisher]

That's a technology I didn't know existed. Wot a lark!

[dude]

The fact that such technology exists and is in use is what is scary. It is certainly something that should be outlawed.

Imagine having an argument with some smartass customer service guy about a car payment lost in the mail and because he didn't like they way you sounded, the ethnicity of your name or maybe was pissed off his girlfriend wasn't 'putting out'... so he just hits a key on his keyboard... causing your car horn to sound incessantly in a hospital zone or at a funeral...... or your family car to shut down as you passed a truck on a narrow road.

The abuse of technology this way should be illegal in an 'enlightened' society. Is this what the U.S. has come to? Or should we start spelling it ameriKa?

[DesDownunder]

The fact that such technology exists and is in use is what is scary. It is certainly something that should be outlawed.

Imagine having an argument with some smartass customer service guy about a car payment lost in the mail and because he didn't like they way you sounded, the ethnicity of your name or maybe was pissed off his girlfriend wasn't 'putting out'... so he just hits a key on his keyboard... causing your car horn to sound incessantly in a hospital zone or at a funeral...... or your family car to shut down as you passed a truck on a narrow road.

The abuse of technology this way should be illegal in an 'enlightened' society. Is this what the U.S. has come to? Or should we start spelling it ameriKa?

Unfortunately, our societies are rejecting enlightened reasoning as an appropriate tool for our survival.

This technology is really an extension of the Orwellian misuse of technology. It's also only one or two steps behind the Krell, the race who inhabited the Forbidden Planet in the movie of that name. They had built a machine that could manifest into reality any thought they had as individuals. In one night their subconscious thoughts of killing each other were fulfilled by the machine and except for itself, it wiped out any trace of the Krell race.

If we destroy ourselves, never let it be said that Hollywood didn't warn us.

Now there is a plot-line for our authors: "Gays save the human race by teaching people to love each other instead of wanting them dead."

Make Love not War. (old Hippie saying).

[JamesSavik]

This technology has been around for a decade in one form or another.

LOJAC is the best known of these services and allows for stolen cars to be tracked and disabled by remote control. (OnStar can serve the same function)

It has been responsible for catching numerous car thieves in the act and recovering their vehicles.

When it works, it makes everybody happy. If abused it can be a nightmare.

[colinian]

Oh, the lawsuits that are going to result from this action. There are going to be a lot of lawyers who will be kept employed!

Colin