Blind faith

Brad Stone’s article for Wired about the intransigence of US car insurers in the face of claims that even cars using RFID-based security devices can be stolen makes for depressing reading:

John Hutton, an architect from Fairfax, Virginia, lost his Acura RSX last fall and was reimbursed only after six months of aggressive wrangling with Geico. “The inspector treated me like I was a liar and a criminal,” Hutton says. “It all kept going back to the transponder system and their belief that ‘You can’t steal it! You can’t steal it!’” Sally Nguyen’s Acura TL went AWOL last New Year’s Eve and was later found gutted and submerged in the Sacramento River. When an investigator from her insurance company, Esurance, dropped by her house, he left a business card on which he’d scrawled, “Regarding your ’stolen’ Acura.” Six months later, Esurance denied the claim, citing her car’s security system. Esurance wouldn’t talk to me about her case. Mohammad Awan lost his 2002 Ford Explorer last year; his son wrote to tell me that his insurer, Progressive, felt the existence of a transponder system – plus other “red flags,” like Awan’s outstanding debt – amounted to enough evidence to deny the claim. “Your vehicle is equipped with an immobilizing trans-ponder system which will not allow it to start without the use of a proper transponder key,” read the denial-of-claim letter.

Stone’s article goes on to point out how easy it is to circumvent even modern security systems once they’ve been around for a little while and word has spread as to how to disable or bypass them. Even if you discount a portion of the stories on the grounds that the individuals involved may be telling only part of the story, or might have been seeking to defraud the insurance company, the discussions of all the ways the technology can be beaten with just a little knowledge and planning are impressive.

(If you think the insurance companies’ attitude is bad, just watch what happens if the government goes ahead and introduces a National Identity Register and an accompanying ID card. The technologies involved may not be all that similar, but I guarantee you the stubborn refusal to own up to the fallibility of the hardware and software will be identical.)

[Via Slashdot]