Where the gps in your car isn't yours and the car isn't either

I'm going to play devil's advocate here: how is the guy on the phone supposed to know it really is the police on the other side and not just some guy trying to scam his way into a freebie?

At the individual level this is actually pretty simple. I work in IT and when I used to do security training the way we’d validate is with a known contact.

In this situation you get the contacting officers name and department, disconnect the call, call the non-emergency listed number for that department and ask for that officer by name.

There’s a lot of other failure point potential in this scenario but validating the person calling is actually law enforcement shouldn’t be one of them.

In a normal business that is not a mega corporation you would just do it. You can just activate it for a limited period if you really feel suspicious, after two or three tries you will quickly spot the people trying to abuse the system.

Even if people could abuse the system for free aubsceiptions, I don't agree with the fact that preventing people from getting free subscription is a higher priority than helping a mother getting her 2 years old back.

It's not like they don't know who owns the car. They should be able to check afterwards if it was a real emergency, and if it was faked, send the bill and maybe report them for impersonating a police officer.

Won’t someone think of the billion-dollar megacorps‽ They may lose a few bucks saving kidnapped children on the off-chance some fakers pretend to be cops! GASP!

You’re acting as if this is some sort of widespread form of criminal activity and that it’s not already a crime to impersonate a cop or to commit wire fraud while committing a kidnapping. Because who gives a shit about any of that when a few bucks could be made?

how is the guy on the phone supposed to know it really is the police on the other side and not just some guy trying to scam his way into a freebie?

Cop only number or internal group to transfer to? Fax number to send a warrant with contact info so VW can call back and investigate if need be? Get the police department number, google to confirm they're legit, and call back? Thats just off the top of my head.

If VW doesn't have an option like that its poor design. If the guy didn't know, poor training. One or both are gonna be resolved now that the spotlight is on them.

If only there was some system in place where police could verify their authority somehow.

Erring on the side of caution is to say no to the random that calls you asking for GPS coordinates

You don't have to go that far. The rep could just be soft-blocked to enable the feature unless a card was processed first.

Overriding or adjusting payment isn't an edge case. The article says the reason they refused was company policy. They had the option and said no.

No one thought that theft deterrence might be a use case for a fucking remotely-accessible car GPS?

Management doesn’t have an override button (which tracks their actions) to activate someone’s unit without payment?

I call 1000% bullshit.

That's a huge, glaring edge case to ignore for a company as large as VAG. Shouldn't be acceptable.

What kind of a braindead comment is this? The only reason they refused is because they wanted to get paid even though it was an emergency.

It was the victims asking. VW doesn't need a fee to process a liability waiver, and VW was fine with the police paying the fee to gain access.

I feel like this is a brainworm capitalist take. The capability was there, were their profits actually more important than locating a kidnapped child?

It’s not like this was going to drain a risk pool of equity and put other people’s coverage at risk; literally ping the fucking car and find out where it is. The capabilities are already there. Save the baby.

Why is this even a question?

the service is not primarily for emergencies though. This is like cell phones. Phones not on contract are still required to be able to dial 911

It's not like their GPS capabilities are disabled. They use it to track you and sell the data. If the life is someone was not in danger I would agree with you, but a life was at risk.

Emergency response and recovery has always been a problem of the commonwealth, not of individuals. Private insurance is and has always been a scam.

The cost of lives lost became conspicuous during the prison boom of the 1980s in which the Reagan—George H. W. Bush tough on crime policies literally more than decimated neighborhood populations. When police busted someone for possession, or loitering or contempt of cop (or was gunned down in spite) it wasn't just an alleged thug removed from society, but also typically an employee, a parent, a renter, a consumer who bought food and paid bills. (The You're Wrong About pod, amusingly on Dan Quayle vs. Murphy Brown gets into the 80s era conservative policies of broken window policing and harsh sentences for nonviolent petty crime)

So whenever someone's life is demolished by a natural disaster, an untreated health problem, a vehicle collision, a rampage killing, police on a bender, whatever, it hits like a bomb in the community. Almost everyone has others who depend on them, as family, as a friend, as a customer or laborer. And when something makes them disappear, collateral crises manifest like shrapnel.