I'm use to the TeleAid feature in a Mercedes Benz (current owner) but a few of my friends have vehicles with OnStar. I didn't know that it was a conctract company as with TeleAid, MB owns them. At least that's what I think w/ the extent of my knowledge.

What do most people use OnStar for? What is its best quality, etc. Is it that worth it if you already have a cell phone?

Onstar being used to snoop?
FBI EAVESDROPPING: Court overrules LV judge

Company had to help intercept conversations

By CARRI GEER THEVENOT
REVIEW-JOURNAL





A Las Vegas judge erred when he ordered a company to help the FBI eavesdrop on conversations in a suspect's vehicle, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the decision in a civil case involving Assistant U.S. Attorneys Eric Johnson and Kathleen Bliss, who spent more than two years working on a public corruption investigation with ties to strip club magnate Michael Galardi.

Bliss would not confirm that the decision stemmed from the Galardi investigation. The underlying civil case is sealed.

The appeal was filed in April 2002 by an unidentified company that runs a type of onboard system now found in some luxury cars.

That system allows the company to open a cellular connection to a vehicle and listen to conversations within the vehicle, a feature designed to help officials recover stolen cars.

The FBI obtained court orders requiring the company to help agents intercept conversations taking place in a car equipped with the system.

Tuesday's ruling does not identify the criminal case in which Senior U.S. District Judge Lloyd George issued the orders.

Las Vegas attorney Dominic Gentile, who represents former Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone, said his client and Galardi both drove a Hummer that was equipped with a system called OnStar. At different times during the criminal investigation, each of the men also owned the vehicle, Gentile said.

Malone, who worked as a lobbyist for Galardi, was indicted earlier this month with Clark County Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey and former Commissioner Dario Herrera.

Galardi has entered into plea agreements in which he admitted bribing public officials in Las Vegas and San Diego. Authorities allege Galardi used Malone as a middleman to make the payments.

The indictment cites at least four instances in which Malone met with other suspects in a car.

The indictment alleges one of the meetings occurred in Malone's car, which the document does not describe. At that January 2002 meeting, Malone and then-County Commissioner Erin Kenny discussed three issues affecting strip clubs. Kenny has pleaded guilty in the federal investigation and agreed to testify for the prosecution.

During a September 2001 meeting in an unidentified car, according to the indictment, Malone gave Herrera thousands of dollars in cash from Galardi.

Gentile and Las Vegas attorney Richard Wright, who represents Kincaid-Chauncey, said they would seek to suppress any evidence obtained from court orders that led to Tuesday's decision if they determine that the orders led authorities to intercept their clients' conversations.

"There's already a finding in the 9th Circuit that the order was unlawfully entered and unlawfully extended numerous times, so you've got a running head start on suppression," Wright said.

But Wright said the suppression of wiretap evidence requires a "substantial violation" of the federal wiretap law.

Houston defense attorney Douglas McNabb and other defense attorneys interviewed Tuesday said they knew of no other cases in which law enforcement had used an onboard system to intercept conversations of people who were lawfully occupying a vehicle.

"That is absolutely outrageous," McNabb said.

McNabb, who specializes in federal criminal cases, said he owns a Mercedes equipped with such a system.

"I never thought of it being used in that way," he said.

Dallas attorney Bennee Jones, who represents the company that filed the appeal, could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.

In reaching its 2-1 decision, the appeals court concluded that George's orders went too far in interfering with the service provided by the company.

According to the decision, written by Judge Marsha Berzon, the FBI's surveillance in this case disabled the system in the monitored car.

"The result was that the company could no longer supply any of the various services it had promised its customer, including assurance of response in an emergency," Berzon wrote.

Federal law requires communication service providers to furnish the government with any help necessary to accomplish an interception "unobtrusively and with a minimum of interference with the services" they provide.

According to the dissent, written by Judge Richard Tallman, "The FBI established to the district court's satisfaction the existence of probable cause to believe that individuals engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise were using the car as a venue for planning illegal activities."

Tallman argued that the law does not require the method of interception to allow the monitored communication service to continue without any interruption.

"Here, the record leaves no doubt that the company complied with the challenged order in the way least likely to interfere with its subscriber's services and that, in fact, no actual service disruption occurred," the judge wrote.

Tallman argued that the majority opinion "undermines an important investigative tool in a manner that defies common sense."

Bliss said she knows of no other court case that deals with the issue that led to Tuesday's opinion.

"We're going to read the opinion and digest it and consider whatever ramifications it might have and decide whether or not to seek further review," Bliss said.

She said any decision on further action would require Justice Department approval.

Johnson and Bliss were removed from the Galardi case in July for reasons unrelated to the wiretap controversy.

The opinion gives no hints regarding the nature of the criminal activity agents hoped to detect. The unusual level of secrecy is reflected in the way the case is styled: The Company v. United States of America.

http://www.futurismic.com/2005/07/onstar-fbi-tool.html
__________________

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Based on kph3's new thread ( https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=849 ) and others like it I do not even want OnStar and would certainly NEVER use it in place of a regular cell phone. The ONLY advantage I can see from OnStar is for the rare event of an emergency that deployed the air bags, they could contact the authorities IF I (or someone else in the car) could not.

Other than this potential possibility I consider OnStar worthless.

I was originally excited about having Onstar as
a feature in my RL.....

....but then I started thinking, why would I use it?

I have AAA auto club. I have complimentary Acura
Emergency Roadside Service with the purchase of the car.
I also have a bluetooth cellphone that interlinks well.

Though I have a free year of Onstar, I am not certain what
that entails (I have yet to receive my WELCOME packet), but
I hear that the service can cost upwards of $200 per year.

So, I am very interested in hearing why Onstar would be
important for many people like myself.

I totally agree with you......after the 1st year it's history!

I agree! ONSTAR overpriced &

The only unique benefit I see is the stolen car locator feature that appears to work like Lojack, but Lojack is a one-time cost vs a monthly fee for OnStar.

When you purchase your RL you receive 30 airtime minutes free for placing (satellite) phone calls. The reception OnStar provides through their network is hands down the best available. No dropped calls, no distortion, just perfectly clear high quality reception everytime. The downside as pointed out earlier is that it is expensive compared to te wireless providers out there. They unlike OnStar do not offer the same level of clarity and reception. Another downside to OnStar is everytime you place a call you have to push the OnStar button and dictate the number you wish to dial, as opposed to using the HF link. HF Link is simplier to use and requires less time to make a single call. Nothing pisses me off more than having to complete several steps and burn up precious minutes to do something as simple as placing a call. Their packages range in cost up to $800 (per yr) which offers many of the same concierge services that MBZ Teleaid offers. I have Teleaid in both my MBZ's and it sucks! The reception is analog....need I say more? So at the end of the day, I will buy additional minutes with Onstar after the 30 minutes have been burned up just in the event I should forget to bring my cell phone one day or need it in an emergency. The good news about OnStar is you will always get somebody when you need them, especially if you're out in the middle of nowhere. You just can't beat a Satellite phone system. I only wish XM worked half as good.

Onstar does not use satellite phone system. They operate on the verizon network. e.g. if you are in the middle of yellowstone national park, verizon service does not work - nor does onstar. It uses a simple analog/digital phone service. This is why the old onstar systems (couple years ago) that were analog have to be upgraded to support digital as the FCC ruled that analog phone service is no longer necessary (there is a specific date for this; however, I do not remember it)

I agree with the others though, I thought onstar would be great to use - I find myself never using it anymore.

Don't use OnStar at all myself. As for Yellowstone, last time I was in the park I had two bars at Old Faithful and one bar at Morris. I think they've added a cell tower to the park.

My new user welcome pack came today.....

In addition to their "gift" of 30 mins of personal calling, they are offering exclusively for first time purchasers 1,000 mins of airtime
for $299.99! What a joke.....I get 1000 min w/ three phones and
free evening and weekends nationwide for $89.95/mo. now...

"To purchase minutes, just push the blue button."

Who are they going to sell this promo to?

I had coverage at those spots as well. But when driving in many parts there is no coverage.

We have onstar in our Denali and our daughter was locked in it, one quick call and it was open.

I received a mailling from OnStar last week with the terms and conditions of their contract. Does anybody really read this?

I just received the renewal notices for my RL and wife's MDX (both were purchased in Nov 04) and I was thinking about keeping it just for the wife (for emergencies). On the 2 occasions that I tried using Onstar:
1st time...I tried to contact them for the location of a restaurant I couldn't find on the navi, "no signal" or unable to connect, we were on a major interstate at the time.
2nd time, on major freeway also, called to find location of an Indian casino resort in So Cal, the person I got was so incompetent..I had to try repeatedly to spell out and explain what I was trying to find, then she asks me what state that was in? or that I'm calling from? I finally told her to forget it!

The good news, it helped me and the wife make our decision to that renewing would be a total waste of money!

How much is OnStar? Are there other packages besides the one mentioned above?

Basic plan (e.g. just for emergencies) is $199/year

Unless I'm (or a loved on in my car) in an accident and the airbags deploy (thus notifying OnStar automatically) WHEN I am unable to use my much cheaper and redundant (because I will keep my cell phone nop mater what) I do not see the point in OnStar.

ONSTAR is owned by GM;it is called GM Hughes Sattelite. Unlike Lojack that dosen't work in every part of the country, so if your car is stolen in Chcago and the theif takes it to Carbondalle, IL he can ride all day with LOJACK. This happens because LOJACK hasn't installed repeater towers there. The Complimentary Acura roadside assintance won't goo 150 miles from a dealer to find you . I too am a MBZ owner and TeleAid, like onstar will not only open the doors and depending on the service you have start the car in the ugly event that you loose the keys to this 50K toy but should the electronic theft deterent be disabled they will kill the throttle via sattelite. Now alot of things have to happen to justify dropping upto $800 a year for this feature: like going in the woods where you can't get a signal even if you had a cell phone, then loosing your keys, but then you couldn't get in the car to use ONSTAR, be far enough away from a dealer that they won't come and get you and need the ONSTAR monitoring system to start onr stop the engine with out you in it. If all that happenes get the RSX Aspec

yeah saw one of those before at http://www.unlimited-backgroundcheck.com really helps track stolen vehicles

I have Cingular; but when I inquired about the excessive price of Onstar minutes the agent told me you can tie your Verison phone to Onstar and share minutes. I was thinking about buying a cheap Verizon phone just to take advantage of the cheaper minutes.

Thoughts?

$200 is just too steep for what you get.

I'm cancelling my Onstar when my free year is up in 30 days.

I think that is a great idea. I just bought a Verizon Motorola Q tonight and a big reason why is that I am going to pair it to my Onstar via their family share plan. With Onstar basic service, I never feel alone no matter where I am. I always get a signal and the handsfree calling is so crystal clear. You can program in a library of numbers and names and use it just like a cell phone with much clearer and more reliable voice recognition than the RL's intrinsic system. The way I figure it, if you can afford a $50000 car and all that goes with it, you can afford to keep the Onstar active for emergencies, etc. with or without the handy, crystal clear, non-frustrating voice recognition handsfree calling with Verizon option. Just my thoughts!!!! I do agree that the Onstar handsfree calling minutes are a complete rip off without the Verizon option.

For me personally, Onstar is insurance. I just renewed mine and paid full price and added some more minutes...didn't want to play around with trying to get it at a discount. Although it's through Verizon and I see from the other posts here, it is landbased, I can get a signal where I live and in other remote locations where my work is sometimes located when I can't any usable signal with any of my other 3 cell phones. I really haven't used it very much...but it's there if and when needed. My calls to Onstar have so far been one of the pleasant and positive aspects of owning the RL.