>The nature of this (radio, etc) doesn't really matter. There will be a receiver on the car that can and will be identified and removed by criminals, rendering the stated purpose moot. Of course removing the receiver will be made illegal, as if this will accomplish anything.
It has been effectively impossible to hotwire a new car for over a decade, because modern cars simply will not start without the say-so of the ECU, which is a highly secure black box. Stealing a modern car means stealing the keys, because highly sophisticated organised criminals have failed totally in developing practical attacks to circumvent immobilisers. Build the remote shutdown facility into the ECU and it will be essentially impossible to disable. Send the remote shutdown instruction over a suitably designed radio link and jamming becomes utterly impractical. I have very little doubt that the motor industry is capable of designing a very effective remote shutdown systems; Relatively crude aftermarket solutions are already being used very effectively by fleet operators.
There are perfectly legitimate civil liberties objections to such a scheme, but the usual hacker trope of "technologies that I don't like can always be circumvented" is just plain wrong. Crime can be prevented or substantially curtailed through the effective use of technology, as we have seen in Europe with IMEI-based blocking of stolen mobile phones. Cash-in-transit robberies are now quite rare, due to design improvements in CiT boxes. Security technology isn't perfect, but that doesn't make it useless.
> Send the remote shutdown instruction over a suitably designed radio link and jamming becomes utterly impractical.
Unless the radio link must be always-on for the vehicle to move, I think you've underestimated what is required to construct an RF link that is impervious to interference.
We still have problems with shmucks using GPS jammers to prevent employers from tracking them halting traffic at major airports: http://www.insidegnss.com/node/3676
"It took the FAA and FCC from March 2009 until April 2011 to locate a GPS jammer operated by another trucker on the New Jersey Turnpike, according to a presentation by John Merrill, Department of Homeland Security program manager for position, timing, and navigation, at the 2012 Telcordia-NIST-ATIS Workshop on Synchronization in Telecommunication Systems."
It has been effectively impossible to hotwire a new car for over a decade, because modern cars simply will not start without the say-so of the ECU, which is a highly secure black box. Stealing a modern car means stealing the keys, because highly sophisticated organised criminals have failed totally in developing practical attacks to circumvent immobilisers. Build the remote shutdown facility into the ECU and it will be essentially impossible to disable. Send the remote shutdown instruction over a suitably designed radio link and jamming becomes utterly impractical. I have very little doubt that the motor industry is capable of designing a very effective remote shutdown systems; Relatively crude aftermarket solutions are already being used very effectively by fleet operators.
There are perfectly legitimate civil liberties objections to such a scheme, but the usual hacker trope of "technologies that I don't like can always be circumvented" is just plain wrong. Crime can be prevented or substantially curtailed through the effective use of technology, as we have seen in Europe with IMEI-based blocking of stolen mobile phones. Cash-in-transit robberies are now quite rare, due to design improvements in CiT boxes. Security technology isn't perfect, but that doesn't make it useless.