Police in Cleveland, Ohio, were able to apprehend the suspect in a car theft by slowing down the SUV via OnStar earlier this week. The Cleveland Division of Police indicated that it wasn’t the first time it used OnStar. While the remote communications capabilities prevented a potentially dangerous police pursuit, it does raise the question of how much control law enforcement agencies have over modern cars.
WOIO reported that a woman called the police early Monday morning to report that her SUV was stolen. She also informed officers that she had activated her vehicle’s OnStar features. The Cleveland Police Division’s public information officer told the TV station:
“Upon receiving that information, the officers were able to communicate through OnStar, which helped us identify the locations of this vehicle. They are able to completely deactivate the car, slow it down almost to a stop to where officers can get to the location and arrest the individuals responsible for it.”
With OnStar’s assistance, officers were able to locate the stolen SUV and bring it to a near standstill to arrest the person behind the wheel. OnStar first introduced its Stolen Vehicle Slowdown (SVS) System in 2008, but onboard vehicle systems have advanced leaps and bounds over the past 15 years.
SVS is a vital tool for law enforcement and requires the cooperation of OnStar and the vehicle’s owner. However, there’s a trove of unsecured data stored in modern cars that police can access. Law enforcement can pull data from when and when doors were opened to call and text logs from phones connected to the infotainment system. The intelligence gathering method can prove crucial, like in a 2017 murder case in Michigan, and an unregulated backdoor into our private data.