Life in Prison for Car Hacking? Michigan Takes the First Steps

Well gee whiz, aren't murder, reckless homicide, reckless endangerment and computer hacking already illegal? Oh right, but they can't use those crimes to terrify anyone who even thinks about modifying their car.

Allow me to state up front that I have only skimmed the text of the proposed acts in question; my understanding of them is likely not what could exactly be referred to as 'comprehensive'. With that out of the way: I am wondering how Michigan's lawmakers are going to reconcile the provisions of these proposed acts with the existing ones at a Federal level in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which permit reverse engineering (including circumvention of encryption, encoding, and other methods of protection) for the purposes of security research. Note that I am not stating an opposition to third-party research into automotive control systems: I'll put my bias out in the open and state that I am entirely in favour of it. But it does appear as though Michigan's proposed laws run afoul of at least a couple of DMCA provisions which could ultimately put this law into contention with existing Federal ones. If anything, the onus should be on the manufacturers to design inherently more-secure control systems which have been reviewed by third-party auditors and testers prior to placing them in production vehicles. Given both the potential for risk to human life and property as well as the liabilities involved with not doing so, one would think that if for no other reason than due diligence manufacturers would require this to be a mandatory part of their software development processes. It would be interesting to know who (if anyone) is backing these pieces of legislation beyond the Senators involved. They appear to be a handy way to - in Michigan, at least - criminalise exposing automobile manufacturers' shortcomings in securing their in-the-marketplace vehicle control systems while simultaneously silencing publication of the efforts of that research.