is that your license plate? just dawned on me that was a tag.....describing anyones problem? :rofl: I'm surprised they let you put that word on there :D

So now everyone knows the truth. NSA captures every, every, single electronic I repeat every single electronic communication.
This has been in place for over 25 years. Snowden brought it to light for the masses.

If you "mess" with you black box, onstar, etc, our friendly law enforcement friends, would likely use that as evidence of intention to destroy or impede case evidence..

Technology is a wonderfully horrible thing.. Two sides, boils down to the use of it. Although we believe we are protected from unreasonable search, that protection assumes our govt abides by our constitutional rights. They don't, and when revealed, they justify the means with the end..

Remember HIPAA... Well now the feds are actively reviewing their employees specific medical and health data. Justification: since the govt is funded by taxes.. They have an obligation to ensure efficient health care, hence their means to justify the end. There is no approval requested or required by the govt to perform this snooping of a fed employee..

old thread- LOL all the people who said no one has time to monitor these things BUT now we find out the government has been all along! These are the very same arguments against people who own AR's.... people say "why would a citizen need that?" Maybe another 20 years from now they will find out just like this but in the case of guns and ownership it will be too late for all the naysayers!

I know its a little off topic, but I feel like I am the only one that never had OnStar installed on an 07 corvette. I was shocked when I got in it at the dealer and didn't see the button.

They still don't have the time to monitor it. All they do is catch the metadata and look for specific individuals if some are highlighted through other means. NSA has a bunch of the fastest super computers in the world and they still can't cut through all of the data they collect without having some way to narrow it down. Even searching on a specific person and the people they contact can blossom into a huge search that can bog down a super computer. You have to be careful collecting too much data. When you get past a certain point it becomes almost useless.

Bill

I bought my last new Chevy in 2000
 

Not sure why that would bother you. First, it is initiated by you when you report your car stolen to OnStar and the police. If you don't report it then it won't happen. If you didn't initiate it the police wouldn't have any idea whether you had OnStar or not and would chose a more violent (bullet in the brain, wreck your car, puncture all 4 of your tires, etc) way to get you off the road. In any case it would be far better for you if they used OnStar Vs the other methods.

Bill

You'd better read this, it is 100% true..
Did you know that each "onstar" unit is identified via YOUR VIN number on YOUR car? Yep.. Do you realize "what" that means? I live in a small town, and am privy to some not-so-well known information.. Recently, I watched our local dispatcher track a suspect's vehicle by guess what? ONSTAR!! If they know the subject's name, then they can enter it and find all his registered vehicles via the tag registration.... If one has onstar, and he is in it, guess what? They have the same exact "tracking software" that the main onstar group has, FACT! I listened as the dispatcher told the patrol units exactly where the suspect's car was.. If my small town, of less than 4000 folks can do it, then any local PD can.. I immediately disconnected fuse 22 on my 2008 Silverado... Not sure which fuse does other models.. This is a true comment!

OnStar communicates through the cellular network. Basically, it is a fancy cell phone identified by its phone number the phone pings off cell towers just like any other cell phone and that is how you can be tracked. Because it is a cell phone it more than likely has the E911 location system active as do all new phones and that can be used to locate you. Don't worry they aren't tracking you because they really don't give a damn where you are. If they are interested you should also turn off your hand held cell phone.

Bill

I am going through this exact same procedure just now.

The Edward Snowden NSA leaks clearly show that the USA intelligence services are systematically monitoring not just your source and destination IP addressing, but also the payload itself. It is all very well saying 'why fear if you have nothing to hide?', but this is a null argument. We all have things to hide. This is the reason we don't snoop on our partners, invade the privacy of our children and we allow people to live individual lives.

The NSA monitors car-networks and data and has access to onSTAR telemetry data. The advanced onSTAR and Car-Net modern modules are trackable and do provide real-time data to the NSA. Is this because those companies are passing the data legally to the NSA? No. It is because the NSA is 'tapping' the data-networks of every provider in our beloved country. Why go to the extent of tapping GPS and other signals when you simply need to collect data at the ISP data-centres instead? I happen to work in this area of expertise and can confirm that is is far simpler to perform than you may think. In addition, the number of whistleblowers from the NSA is such that we now know our country is monitoring the internet internationally but also domestically. Like you, I believe in solving accidents and improving discovery of the cause of an accident, but I do not simultaneously agree with mass government surveillance of our individual lives. To avoid 'big brother'-like statehood we must make some sacrifices in the mean time until there is a better legal framework in place to monitor *only* the criminals or people suspected. At present the NSA is monitoring *every* US citizen passively. Your data is pooled and a simple search of your name, social security number or any unique information can be used to dig into your life, including - crazily - remotely access your cell phone and, as per our forum here, our Corvette monitoring systems. The internet makes this far easier to monitor. I understand it may seem daunting to someone who is not in the Network Security sector, but once the software is designed it is easy to search BigData and reveal individual profiles, such as where you drive to regularly, who you text, what you text. It is important to care about this, because what is accepted now as social norm may not be accepted in future; in the past homosexuality was frowned upon and illegal. What if something you enjoy now will be illegal in the future?

The media has suppressed the Snowden leaks very well; international and European media is far less sanitised. I strongly suggest you read the output findings of these and familiarise yourself:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/the-nsa-files

As someone who "has a career" in cybersecurity, you are not being paranoid; you can't even imagine what uses OnStar's paying partners will have for this data 10 years from now.
It's not OnStar you have to worry about, but Facebook and everybody else they sell the data to.
Protect yourself now or pay for it later, but above all why make yourself an easy target?