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Does anyone else find it creepy that Tesla can track every door and button press across their entire fleet in real time? Does Tesla release reports on how ofte

by Phlarp 10y ago

Does anyone else find it creepy that Tesla can track every door and button press across their entire fleet in real time? Does Tesla release reports on how often this usage information is requested by law enforcement agencies and or how many requests are complied with?

w4 10y ago
Why is this being down voted? The highly detailed log of the driver's every action is crazy creepy. I get that the data is likely useful for debugging, and may very well be a function of the feature's beta status (can someone confirm? Or is this something that Teslas do all the time?), but it's still insanely creepy that every single action this guy took in his own car was remotely logged and accessible. This guy is basically driving a Telescreen from 1984 to work.
- vvanders 10y ago
  Looks like there's someone doing a carpet-downvoting everything in the subthread(my root post dropped ~3 pts just as these were downvoted). Yeah, it's a double-edged sword. On one hand it's a ton of data, on the other there's multiple cases where you don't need to bring the car into the dealer for them to diagnose something.
- TYPE_FASTER 10y ago
  Throttle position and other data have been logged for a long time: http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/your-car-as-a-witness-for-the-prosecution http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/your-car-as-a-witness-fo... http://www.edmunds.com/car-technology/car-black-box-recorders-capture-crash-data.html http://www.edmunds.com/car-technology/car-black-box-recorder... Now it's standardized: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-law-mandates-black-boxes-in-all-cars-by-2015/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-law-mandates-black-boxes-in-...
  - w4 10y ago
    But that seems to mostly be speed and throttle information stored in a black box in the car that logs in the event of an accident and isn't remotely accessible. That sort of thing is a far cry from "our server logs show you opened the driver side door at 5:53 PM" like Tesla is doing. If other manufacturers are recording that sort of granular data, too, then yikes.
    - cynix 10y ago
      I don't think the car's logs are automatically transmitted to Tesla. They reside on the car, and Tesla can login remotely to view them if they have a valid reason to.
      - brokenmachine 10y ago
        Who decides if it's a valid reason, and who authorizes such access? If it's not the owner... then they aren't really the owner. With the number of cameras/sensors on a Tesla, it's a privacy nightmare... I won't buy one until the answers to these questions are the ones that I want them to be.
  - marssaxman 10y ago
    Oh wow. I have been anti-Tesla due to their creepy "we still own your car" auto-update craziness but that just takes it up another level. No, Tesla, I will not buy your cars, not now not ever, because you don't trust me and therefore I do not trust you.
pnathan 10y ago
It calls into question the idea of ownership, too. Do you own a Tesla or license a Tesla? Ownership implies to some degree, control of possession. Something to chew on with the IoT.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  Just like the guy who plugged something into his car's ethernet port. I think he discovered the Model X (or 3?) referenced in software. As a present, Tesla remotely disabled the ethernet port and downgraded his software "so he couldn't do that any more".

by Phlarp 10y ago

w4 10y ago

Why is this being down voted? The highly detailed log of the driver's every action is crazy creepy. I get that the data is likely useful for debugging, and may very well be a function of the feature's beta status (can someone confirm? Or is this something that Teslas do all the time?), but it's still insanely creepy that every single action this guy took in his own car was remotely logged and accessible. This guy is basically driving a Telescreen from 1984 to work.

vvanders 10y ago
Looks like there's someone doing a carpet-downvoting everything in the subthread(my root post dropped ~3 pts just as these were downvoted). Yeah, it's a double-edged sword. On one hand it's a ton of data, on the other there's multiple cases where you don't need to bring the car into the dealer for them to diagnose something.
TYPE_FASTER 10y ago
Throttle position and other data have been logged for a long time: http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/your-car-as-a-witness-for-the-prosecution http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/your-car-as-a-witness-fo... http://www.edmunds.com/car-technology/car-black-box-recorders-capture-crash-data.html http://www.edmunds.com/car-technology/car-black-box-recorder... Now it's standardized: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-law-mandates-black-boxes-in-all-cars-by-2015/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-law-mandates-black-boxes-in-...
- w4 10y ago
  But that seems to mostly be speed and throttle information stored in a black box in the car that logs in the event of an accident and isn't remotely accessible. That sort of thing is a far cry from "our server logs show you opened the driver side door at 5:53 PM" like Tesla is doing. If other manufacturers are recording that sort of granular data, too, then yikes.
  - cynix 10y ago
    I don't think the car's logs are automatically transmitted to Tesla. They reside on the car, and Tesla can login remotely to view them if they have a valid reason to.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      Who decides if it's a valid reason, and who authorizes such access? If it's not the owner... then they aren't really the owner. With the number of cameras/sensors on a Tesla, it's a privacy nightmare... I won't buy one until the answers to these questions are the ones that I want them to be.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  Oh wow. I have been anti-Tesla due to their creepy "we still own your car" auto-update craziness but that just takes it up another level. No, Tesla, I will not buy your cars, not now not ever, because you don't trust me and therefore I do not trust you.

pnathan 10y ago

It calls into question the idea of ownership, too. Do you own a Tesla or license a Tesla? Ownership implies to some degree, control of possession. Something to chew on with the IoT.

FireBeyond 10y ago
Just like the guy who plugged something into his car's ethernet port. I think he discovered the Model X (or 3?) referenced in software. As a present, Tesla remotely disabled the ethernet port and downgraded his software "so he couldn't do that any more".