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Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars
- sgarrity 3y agoIs this sharing a criminal act?
- codedokode 3y agoYou buy anything with cloud-connected camera, you get this result. Do not buy cloud-connected things.
- dagmx 3y agoHonestly, every time Tesla or their overlord is in the news, I get closer to wanting to sell ours. The only three things keeping me here are: 1. It’s a waste to sell this and buy a new car 2. Tesla still have the best charging network by far 3. Tesla are one of the only car company outfitting their vehicles with decent processors. Which is extra important now that everyone moves their stuff to touch screens running Linux or android automative. The second point will be moot soon with regulations requiring sharing network access. The third is getting less important as more brands support CarPlay , and according to last wwdc, CarPlay is getting support to control more of your car. (Though GM went the other direction) Which leaves the wasteful part…which maybe it’s worth it to have a car that isn’t spying on me and changing its UI around every few months in new and awful ways. Seriously, the driver can’t see the music info anymore because it’s moved to their blind spot AND it’s further for the passenger to control? Do Tesla designers drive the cars before shipping their UI? And now this flagrant invasion of privacy, with seemingly no controls for access or opt-in? Ridiculous.
- helf 3y agoI can understand if you already have a Tesla. What blows my mind are the people continuing to buy new ones.
- jiqiren 3y agopoint 1 and 2 are still leading by a wide margin. Also my pre-order from > year ago for a Rivian is still 1.5 years away from my build date (June 2024 is their estimate). :-/
- toomuchtodo 3y agoTake it as a lesson in what consumers value. Give the market what it wants and you’ll be rewarded, even if you’re not an ideal actor.
- sorokod 3y ago"Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death" great name, great album.
- wilg 3y agoThey’re the best available cars!
- potatochup 3y agoYou can opt out of uploading anything to Tesla, but sharing is on by default.
- magnetic 3y agoAre these 2 different things? (uploading vs sharing) Where are the settings for those?
- potatochup 3y agoSorry, poor choice of words. They are the same thing (uploading/sharing). Sharing/uploading is a setting in the UI. I don't have a screenshot handy but you can see the details on https://www.tesla.com/about/legal https://www.tesla.com/about/legal.
- zaroth 3y agoSettings > Software There is a Privacy section with a big button “Data Sharing” It pops up a large dialog box which says the following; “We are working hard to improve autonomous safety features and make self-driving a reality for you. You can help Tesla in this effort by sharing diagnostic and usage vehicle data. This data includes short video clips, using the vehicle’s external cameras to learn how to recognize things like lane lines, street signs and traffic light positions. The more fleet learning of road conditions we are able to do, the better your Tesla’s self driving ability will become. We want to be super clear that the diagnostic and usage data such as short video clips are not linked to your vehicle identification number. In order to protect your privacy, personal information is either not logged at all, is subject to privacy preserving techniques, or is removed from any reports before they’re sent to Tesla. You may enable or disable the collection of this data at any time Do you agree to allow us to collect this data? Yes. No. Ask each drive. Then there are additional sections concerning the interior cabin camera, and concerning navigation and traffic. I believe all these sections are OPT-IN, I recall getting prompted about sharing interior cabin data after the software update that enabled it, and having the selection be blank to start, but I may be misremembering.
- sschueller 3y agohttps://archive.md/RsKxF https://archive.md/RsKxF
- JeremyNT 3y agoWe've come to expect tech companies to surveil us constantly, so the idea that some Tesla employees could access this footage is unsurprising. I think, however, when a customer buys something this expensive they must have some kind of expectation that the data would be used in a responsible way. The fact that these videos are posted as memes and jokes about customers' private lives, is... well, terrible. Tech startup culture has certainly been known to foster this kind of immaturity (I have very well seen it first hand...), but coming from a car company - as recently as 2022, if not even later - this is horrifying. I'd like to think that the major auto makers are not infected with the kind of culture that would condone this sort of thing, but maybe I'm just naive...
- danso 3y ago> Tesla staffed its San Mateo office with mostly young workers, in their 20s and early 30s, who brought with them a culture that prized entertaining memes and viral online content. Former staffers described a free-wheeling atmosphere in chat rooms with workers exchanging jokes about images they viewed while labeling. > According to several ex-employees, some labelers shared screenshots, sometimes marked up using Adobe Photoshop, in private group chats on Mattermost, Tesla’s internal messaging system. There they would attract responses from other workers and managers. Participants would also add their own marked-up images, jokes or emojis to keep the conversation going. Some of the emojis were custom-created to reference office inside jokes, several ex-employees said. Work environments should ideally be fun and collegial. But I just would've assumed that it's incredibly obvious that managers should not encourage a culture of memeing and shitposting when the job is so centered on private user images.
- lamontcg 3y ago> managers should not encourage a culture of memeing and shitposting a fish rots from the head down.
- millerm 3y agoI was an admin for an ISP in the 90s. I used to read your email. I was a kid. Sorry.
- iancmceachern 3y agoI've heard that the Chinese government doesn't allow tesla vehicles in sensitive areas for fear of exactly this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- meindnoch 3y agoYou bought a car with always-on cameras and always-on telemetry. What did you expect?
- mdhb 3y agoPiss off with this low grade comment. Obviously nobody expected that Tesla employees would be sharing photos of them fucking in their work chats for their own amusement.
- berkle4455 3y agoAt this point we're about a week away from the CEO sharing the images on his garbage social media platform in the name of "free speech".
- mrguyorama 3y agoHe has literally done that. Multiple times he has shared images and videos from tesla's that were involved in a crash without permission.
- simion314 3y agoThere always will be such employees, probably most of them are never find out or not made public.
- vidarh 3y agoThere will always be such employees, which is why actually privacy-minded companies strictly limits access to personal information, and carefully monitors the access of it.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y agoIt would be even better if that data was not collected to begin with. Alternatively, that this data would not leave the local hardware. But no.. everything has to be connected.
- mikece 3y agoWake me up when there's an EV that is just a car and not an always-connected surveillance device on wheels.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sneak 3y agoWake up. I'm told Tesla has an undocumented factory option to buy a car without radios, for heads of state and their security and suchlike. I'm not sure how difficult or possible it is to actually get a car so configured, but you can always rip out the GSM radio yourself if you wish (which voids your warranty, natch).
- jimlongton 3y agoI work in the industry. It's not a "vehicle" any more - it's a "platform" to "engage" with customers, i.e. sell your data and lock features behind ridiculous monthly fees. That is now the mantra of the automotive industry. It really kills any enthusiasm I have for new cars.
- giantg2 3y agoWishing I still had my 89 Caprice with physical buttons and switches. Parts were insanely cheap too (except the transmission, which I part of why I got rid of it).
- amelius 3y agoSmartCar is the new SmartTV
- varun_chopra 3y agoReminds me of the time I bought lunch at work, and a colleague told me exactly what I bought and how much I paid for it. I called him out and said it was a lucky guess, and then he proceeded to tell me my entire payment history for the past 2 days. Turns out when I was buying lunch, he was on the phone with a friend who worked at Paytm and that guy gave away my transaction history for shits and giggles. My trust in private companies has been at it's lowest since then and I absolutely do not trust startups to keep my data safe.
- lm28469 3y agoAnd then people complain about how GDPR is backward and useless :/
- yumraj 3y ago> My trust in private companies has been at it's lowest since then and I absolutely do not trust startups to keep my data safe. Tesla is neither a private company, nor a startup. But, your point is still valid.
- valarauko 3y ago> Tesla is neither a private company, nor a startup. The parent implies 'private' in the sense of non-governmental entity (the Indian terminology), and by that metric both Tesla and Paytm are 'private' (and publicly traded)
- lisasays 3y agoI'm so glad I've never heard of that service and have no idea what it is. Thanks very much for calling them out by name, BTW. Presumably someone from that company is reading this as we speak - and soon enough, will be reporting back to us that that employee has been identified, and of course, duly fired. Right, PayTM? (BTW - that's some "colleague" you have).
- kdkdifo 3y agoJustice is when an Internet mob gets someone fired based on an unsubstantiated comment on an anonymous forum. We did it Reddit!
- wnevets 3y agoThis is absolutely disgusting to hear. Can you imagine if Apple or Google employees were caught doing something like this with photos/videos taken with their products?
- HWR_14 3y agoAbsolutely. Just like Amazon, Facebook, Uber, NSA and other employees have done so as well. The only reason Apple or Google employees might not do that is encryption and decent access controls, not because they are better people. It would not shock me in the least if a Google or Apple employee did something similar. It might shock me a little just because of the risk/reward if they were just snooping on random people. But not if it was exes/crushes/friends/etc.
- rootusrootus 3y agoApple would be the most shocking, given their ingrained company culture of secrecy and compartmentalization.
- lostlogin 3y agoIt would be harder for Apple employees to do too. Have you tried the Mail search? I can’t find things that are definitely there.
- HWR_14 3y agoThat's not unique to Apple. The same is definitely true of GMail.
- rootusrootus 3y ago> Have you tried the Mail search? I can’t find things that are definitely there. I hate the Mail search, because I know it misses all kinds of things. I have to go open up my gmail account in the web browser to find things that I know exist.
- aeyes 3y ago
- snozolli 3y agoThe car crashing into a kid on a bike I can understand, but why are they reviewing videos innocuous events during random charging sessions?
- kevingadd 3y agoPresumably any time the camera captures something the AI classifier doesn't recognize, an image is sent to be labeled manually to improve the AI.
- lostlogin 3y ago> The car crashing into a kid on a bike I can understand I don’t think they were looking because it related to their work. I got the impression that it was quite impressive, and some kind of disaster voyeurism.
- morkalork 3y agoYikes. So turning private images into memes and posting them internally isn't a fireable offence but union talk is? Such impeccable standards for conduct.
- kjs3 3y agoCorp culture comes from the top. So...there you go.
- verdverm 3y agoLet's wait and see if these employees get fired, this just broke. Typically an investigation happens. Reminds me of the Uber Christmas party story where they had things like this on a projector
- morkalork 3y agoIt's not like the memes were posted internally today, firing them now is just a reactionary response. The problem is that they let it go on the entire time before now.
- masswerk 3y agoHum, > Tesla managers sometimes "would crack down on inappropriate sharing of images on public Mattermost channels since they claimed the practice violated company policy," Reuters wrote. somewhat implies that this has been a known issue for a while, already. (This shouldn't be triggered exclusively by a public scandal.)
- aidenn0 3y agoIndeed; policies without consequences for violating them might as well not be policies. My sister and I used to complain that our parents were more strict than everyone else's. My mom talked to my friends' moms and said "they all have about the same rules we do." My reply was "but they get yelled at for five minutes tops when they break the rules, and we get grounded!"
- opportune 3y ago
- liminalsunset 3y agoWhile some of the behaviour here is less professional than I'd expect for user data, I'm wondering what a good architecture for building a system to leverage visual telemetry without harming user privacy would really look like. The problem is that: 1) It's very difficult to manually or automatically scrub identifying information from video, and doing so probably greatly reduces the value of the data for AI training purposes 2) If you allow users to delete videos that have been sent, then you no longer have a reproducible corpus of data 3) If you keep the recordings for say, a week, and allow the user to delete them before they're sent, either users don't have the time to review it (reviewing hundreds of Sentry clips comes to mind), or are going to just forget about it and we'll have the same problem. I suspect they do not want to talk about the data collection too much in general, because just like how Spotify built a major value add (we have lots of playlists) off of tricking users into making user playlists public by default (it's actually very non obvious when playlists are created), having a huge fleet of cars recording video is hugely valuable for development of self driving. I think where I'm conflicted is that at the same time as I personally consider this kind of thing an invasion of privacy and overall a nuisance, I recognize that there is societal good/value to be gleaned from mass collection of datasets. If we asked users whether they wanted to share their playlists or car video recordings, you would end up with almost no data, and the data you got would invariably be biased (see Apple Music and the paucity of good user playlists). Clearly there's a missing middle solution, but I'm not sure there is a good one.
- ctvo 3y ago> While some of the behaviour here is less professional than I'd expect for user data It's like showing up to a school shooting and saying while some of the behavior here is less professional than I'd expect for an interaction with children... They. Are. Sharing. Your. Intimate. Photos. Using. Them. As. Background. For. Their. Memes.
- arbitrage 3y agoYou. Took. Intimate. Photos. In. A. Car. Made. By. A. Company. With. A. Horrible. Track. Record. Of. Security. And. Actually. Acting. Like. A. Professional. Company. What. Did. You. Really. Expect. Would. Happen.
- squarefoot 3y agoIt may seem paranoid, but it is sane to expect that everything that it is closed and consequently not auditable for security and privacy, and goes online on a network we have no control over, even though not a public one, will soon or later be used for spying.
- heavyset_go 3y agoAs long as someone can make a buck, or get a leg up on someone else, without consequence, it'll happen.
- rootusrootus 3y agoThis is true. And it does not exonerate Tesla in the slightest. There need to be consequences.
- rvnx 3y ago+71% year-to-date. Seems like they are paying the consequences.
- idop 3y agoIt's not paranoid, it's simple observation. Anything that can be abused by someone, will be abused by someone. The question is whether the benefits overshadow the potential for abuse. In this case, they don't.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoIt's not paranoid, because... duh. The more places where networks capable of surveillance exist, the less privacy you have, and the less autonomy you have. This has been obvious for decades. It is not surprising. No one on HN should be surprised by either the surveillance capabilities of a smart car, or the assdouchery capabilities of people who work for... ahem. I, for one, took both as a given, and I don't even work in tech.
- thecoppinger 3y ago[dead]
- lnsru 3y agoWanted to get Model Y in the past. Nice comfy car, huge backseat and… a camera filming inside the car. Thanks no. Apparently for drowsiness detection, but I am not buying it. Time of flight camera staring at the driver’s face is kinda normal in car industry. Not a normal color camera filming everything and streaming somewhere like Tesla does.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jackmott42 3y agoA piece of tape can disable it.
- mijowi 3y agoI put tape on mine
- expertentipp 3y agoYou guys buy premium car and then seal the interior components with tape here an there?!
- lostlogin 3y agoHave you seen what people do with laptop cameras?
- Phlarp 3y agoSo much worse than that, because they go online and simp for the company after doing it
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago"Stop making fun of my favorite billion dollar company. I just gave them 80k of my hard earned cash, therefore it must be good, and you should also buy it."
- solarkraft 3y agoThey have a history of this and I don't know why they haven't been sued into the ground in Europe yet.
- bink 3y agoThe NSA uses private data to spy on potential dates, of course Tesla uses private photos they collect to mock customers or for prurient purposes. It makes me laugh when Congress talks about banning TikTok because it can be used by China to spy on US citizens while completely ignoring all the US companies that can and do spy on US citizens. If they really wanted to stop this behavior they'd pass stringent regulations.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- newsclues 3y agoSnowden said that System Admins had access to things they shouldn't in the intelligence community. Many companies are even worse. Something something, the hackers and computer nerds were right about the dangers of data for years and everyone called them crazy.
- giantg2 3y agoThe next porn niche. "Tesla car spies on the occupants of its step-Telsa".
- zevv 3y agoCall me paranoid, but this is one of the reasons I'm still driving my '95 Volvo, the smartest thing in that vehicle is the box with relays.
- jacquesm 3y agoYour '95 Volvo has > 20 CPUs in it. But it doesn't connect to the outside world unless you stick a plug in it somewhere.
- justnotworthit 3y agogive yourself more credit
- ejb999 3y agolol!
- speedgoose 3y agoPrivacy is important but safety is too. It’s a big difference between a Tesla model y and a 95’ Volvo in case of an accident. I don’t mean you should drive a Tesla, but personally I value more my life than my privacy.
- cs702 3y agoIf this is true, shame on Tesla. If this is true, I expect the company will face a mass lawsuit from Tesla EV owners, many of whom have deep pockets. If this is true, whoever enabled or did it should pay.
- rootusrootus 3y ago> I expect the company will face a mass lawsuit from Tesla EV owners Doubt it. Tesla still hasn't really faced any consequences for selling FSD capabilities that don't yet exist, and for a lot of money. They haven't faced any real consequences for removing capabilities from their customers' cars with no renumeration. Tesla owners are a loyal bunch and forgive a lot.
- brandonagr2 3y agoNot sure what capabilities you think don't exist, everything I paid for is working on my car right now.
- rootusrootus 3y agoSure, not everyone is impacted. Some people had significant battery capacity removed without any compensation. Others have had hardware disabled (the most obvious recent example being radar). Edit: oh, you were probably talking about FSD. It can't drive itself yet, in case you didn't notice. Not across the neighborhood, much less across the country. At the risk of being uncharitable, I'm going to assume you're going to disagree about whether sufficient fine print exists to absolve Tesla of responsibility, legally or morally, for what they've advertised FSD to be over the years. We don't need to rehash that, you won't convince me to change my position either. If I had bought FSD for either of my Model 3s, I'd be quite irritated by now.
- rvnx 3y ago"FSD" in Europe is sold for 7500 EUR, and you can barely even get out of the garage with it. Compared to systems from Mercedes it's not performing good at all. It looks like Teslas are optimised or tested in the US.
- realworldperson 3y ago[dead]
- neilv 3y ago> Meanwhile, one "former employee saw nothing wrong with sharing images, but described a function that allowed data labelers to view the location of recordings on Google Maps as a 'massive invasion of privacy.'" I wouldn't trust Tesla's logging of privacy-sensitive data access by employees, but I suspect that Google could figure out which Google Maps accesses those were. Maybe enough violated people could be found that way, such that the costs to Tesla will smack some sense of responsibility into them and any other tech companies that needs it.
- neilv 3y agoThe article mentions disrespectful locker room joking behavior around the images. I didn't see the article touch on that this alleged mockery of "your privacy is important to us" might also include employees/contractors/partners/etc. able to use this private data Tesla collected for targeted purposes. Such as stalking a particular person (because, e.g., attracted to, obsessed with, hated, in dispute with), or selling/furnishing information about a particular person for similar purposes.
- itronitron 3y ago...we value your privacy, especially your most private moments, in fact the more private the better...
- ryzvonusef 3y agohttps://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens... > About three years ago, some employees stumbled upon and shared a video of a unique submersible vehicle parked inside a garage, according to two people who viewed it. Nicknamed “Wet Nellie,” the white Lotus Esprit sub had been featured in the 1977 James Bond film, “The Spy Who Loved Me.” > The vehicle’s owner: Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who had bought it for about $968,000 at an auction in 2013. It is not clear whether Musk was aware of the video or that it had been shared.
- m463 3y agoYou allowed it in the terms of service. :(
- bb88 3y agoSo for those of you who look for hidden cameras, there's a cheap and easy technique you can use to help find them. https://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Hidden-Camera-Detector https://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Hidden-Camera-Detector A similar technique is used to find spiders in the grass.
- squokko 3y agoThis is why I don't use startups' products: at a bigger company I have a lower likelihood of being looked at by a person.
- tensor 3y agoIt's not clear from the article that this footage was from the cabin camera. Filming garages should be off limits, but footage from public roads and parking lots doesn't seem as outrageous.
- josefresco 3y agoIt's pretty clear from the article these cars recorded private property and "intimate" settings - it's the lead quote.
- lucidrains 3y agoWhen I was working at Uber, we had a case of a guy stalking his ex-girlfriend's every movement through the backend. They eventually found out, fired him, and stepped up auditing.
- jimt1234 3y agoDidn't this happen at Google a few years ago? I recall something about a guy that was accessing his ex's Google data, like email, chats, contacts, and so on.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lucidrains 3y agoYikes, didn't know this was an issue at Google as well. That is scary
- sidibe 3y agoThese days pretty sure things are much more regulated and locked down for the giants. It would take a conspiracy with multiple employees in the right groups to access that type of data and there'd be a trail that gets detected fast.
- choppaface 3y agoYou mean like when some eBay execs banded together to harass a user? https://www.npr.org/2022/09/30/1126078948/live-spiders-and-cockroaches-ex-ebay-executives-get-prison-time-in-harassment-pl https://www.npr.org/2022/09/30/1126078948/live-spiders-and-c...
- jimt1234 3y agoWow! Never heard about that. The narrative is usually: Some rando, low-level employee went rogue. As soon as BigCorp was made aware of the situation, the rando was terminated and law enforcement was notified. BigCorp conducted an internal audit and found no other data was accessed. Nothing to see here. Thank God for "state-affiliated media" (https://www.npr.org/2023/04/05/1168158549/twitter-npr-state-affiliated-media https://www.npr.org/2023/04/05/1168158549/twitter-npr-state-...)
- jmclnx 3y agoYet another reason to stay with old autos. If I go looking for a new car, I want one with no internet and bluetooth anything. And if I do look for new, in the sales agreement if any internet connection/bluetooth is found, I get a full refund plus interest. Yes, I know soon all autos will have internet and I think most already have bluetooth.
- peripitea 3y agoThis has been the number one thing stopping me from getting a Tesla. I can't believe how little privacy concerns have come up with them. Until I can have fine-grained control of what data gets sent to the mothership, or opt out entirely, I can't see myself buying one.
- zaroth 3y agoYou know you can just touch a toggle on the UI to turn on/off data sharing? You can opt-out entirely too, but you won’t get software updates.
- Karsteski 3y agoIs there a way to verify that all data sharing is turned off?
- zaroth 3y agoWhat would satisfy you that this was the case? Third parties have analyzed the firmware and sniffed the traffic logs on their network to confirm it. You could go as far as to snip the LTE antenna.
- Shocka1 3y agoCan you clarify on this and give some kind of citation or security audit of opt-out testing? Which third parties were these? Working with Tesla or auditing as a separate entity? The biggest part of my question and what holds me up the most, if the entity was able to verify the metadata from a certain application/process on Infotainment - what if the manufacturer enforces the opt out at the server level? What if it's a server that Tesla doesn't own and belongs to a company are selling their data to? I could go on and on with these questions. The truth is that nothing should satisfy you if you simply opt out from a button on the Infotainment system. My last position involved creating and enforcing security specs at one of the biggest auto manufacturers on what was then fairly cutting edge Infotainment systems. I also did MITM stuff to verify encryption of third party applications from suppliers. This was something I did on the side, not instructed, as protecting customer data was very important to me. One of my least favorite pastimes was arguing with managers over customer data and opt out/opt in. You may or may not be surprised about the rhetoric of the auto manufacturers - they don't look at it as the customer's data. It's their data and you are a product they can keep making money from, long after you bought the car. I lost these battles, and was one of the bigger reasons I left the company. The only solution is to remove the Infotainment system from the car totally. Removing the antenna won't work on it's own. They have auto connecting WiFi's, bluetooth, etc.
- rzimmerman 3y agoIt sounds like the privacy guarantees of “camera data isn’t linked to your ID” and “the interior camera data stays in the car” aren’t really useful if all the data is geotagged, given that these cars spend 70%+ of their time at the owner’s home. I’ll save my outrage for more facts, but if employees can look at my camera feeds without a valid business purpose (and post memes made from them without getting fired immediately) that’s a real problem. If the geotag data is freely available with the video data (and not controlled for privacy) that’s also a huge problem. A company the size and age of Tesla has no excuse for lapses like that.
- LightBug1 3y agoThe apple doesn't fall far from the... Whether I'm right or wrong, my perception is that this is just the kind of nonsense I could imagine Elon Musk having a great laugh about. That must feed through to the employees. I won't touch a Tesla while that foolish child is in charge. And, even then, the brand is so damaged (in my eyes) that'll it'll take a decade for me to even think twice about them again. So glad I thought better about buying one a few years ago when I was a huge fan of Tesla. I delayed the purchase for some practical reason and have seen their brand decline ever since.
- zaroth 3y agoSeems like a lot of commenters came away from this article thinking that Tesla employees are seeing and sharing images from inside the car? Because that’s not what was reported, and it’s not what happened. But they certainly didn’t go out of their way to make that clear. If the car drives past someone who is naked, the cameras record it, and the driver has opted in to data sharing, then someone on Tesla’s labeling team might see it. I think it’s bad the videos were being pulled out of the controlled labeling system / screen-shotted and shared. This is video that drivers opt-in to sharing with a very clear description of what is being sent back to Tesla in the UI. It obviously doesn’t say they’ll make memes out of it, but it’s no surprise at all Tesla has snippets of the external camera video feeds that are being labeled by humans.
- josefresco 3y ago> thinking that Tesla employees are seeing and sharing images from inside the car? It's worse! The cars recorded videos (while off) of private residences, garages etc. The lead quote is "we could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids" If that doesn't cause you concern, I don't know what would.
- zaroth 3y agoThe car doesn’t have an “on” and “off”. There is no switch. The car specifically has Sentry mode for recording continuously while parked. There’s a very detailed Data Sharing settings right in the UI where you turn on or off sharing any clips with Tesla, and you have to click Yes for the car to share these clips.
- animex 3y agoMy friend works for enforcement at the CRA (Canada's IRS) and he often told me about how employees would look up the tax returns of their ex's, neighbors, etc. We need to change the culture to 0 tolerance and just remove people who don't have that ethical/moral character in them, especially in the Public sector.
- nathants 3y agowhile unfortunate and unethical this is not surprising. power asymmetry between provider and subscriber of any product or service will always be skewed towards provider. act accordingly to whatever degree is needed to ensure your safety and mental health. obviously there will be significant variance between persons in that regard. i drive non-internet ice cars with comma openpilot. i’ve used every generation of their device. it also has a driver facing camera with full interior view. i originally ran openpilot without internet except when updating, and would delete all camera data from the device before updating. these days i leave toggled off upload driver camera, it defaults to off. i don’t use cellular, but i do let it connect to my home wifi for the brief moment before it gets unplugged and put in the glovebox. my thinking has relaxed a bit because of the ubiquity of cameras around me. passengers in the car have 4 cameras, some very wide angle, typically being held at face level all the time. so do people in adjacent cars or on the sidewalk. while you can cover your own cameras with easily removable opaque stickers, you can’t do that to the other cameras which inevitably surround you. audio recording is equally challenging to mitigate. while this incident is serious and hopefully results in legal action and changed user behavior, this type of thing will only become more common. the right approach is something like what snowden did in his early videos. be very aware that you are constantly surveiled, and go to extreme lengths to mitigate surveillance when necessary. these days, when typing in our passwords or sharing intimacy, we all need blankets over our heads. that said, public spaces are not a new concept. for better or worse the distinction between public and private space is changing. we will adapt and it will be fine.
- JohnFen 3y agoWell, apparently I wasn't, in fact, too paranoid for avoiding Tesla cars on the basis of them being surveillance platforms.
- bogomipz 3y agoThe article states: >"Tesla says there are "two types of camera recordings that are eligible to be transmitted from your vehicle to Tesla: Safety Event and Fleet Learning camera recordings." The Safety Event recordings last up to 30 seconds and are "captured only if a serious safety event occurs such as a vehicle collision or airbag deployment," Tesla says." The article states that they could see people doing their laundry. Presumably because the washer/dryer was in the garage or else the car was parked in front of a laundromat. Neither of these sounds like a Safety Event or a Fleet Learning So why would allow a video from a parked car in a garage or in front of a laundromat ever be transmitted?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ThorsBane 3y agoI decided I’m never buying a Tesla because of this.
- sdfghswe 3y agoDoes that mean that up until now you thought Tesla is a company full of ethical people? And when I say "ethical people" I mean either the low level individuals wouldn't go violate their customer's privacy, AND the higher level individuals would put in place security measures that would make it impossible for the low-level employees to violate their customer's privacy? Seriously, in your mind what changed?
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoI had considered buying a Tesla, but didn't because the infrastructure isn't good enough yet where I live. But now, no, my next car will be an EV from any other manufacturer. I had no idea that Teslas had the ability to send video back to the company.
- thangalin 3y agoCheck out the Hyundai Kona EV. Had mine for years. No significant problems. About 500 km range. Fully fast charges overnight.
- Consumer8735 3y agoHow do you think they were training their self driving system?
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoI'd hope they'd have it trained before releasing it. Also, opt in and not recording when the car isn't driving.
- dplgk 3y agoNot by recording videos of people doing their laundry while the car is off and and parked.
- buildbot 3y ago…Europe is going to toast them over this. I wonder what impacts this will have on Teslas being in potentially sensitive areas, like parking lots for military bases.
- GravitasFailure 3y agoI know of at least one company that was looking at using Teslas for their executive drivers, but as soon as the security team looked at the always on wireless connections and interior microphone the plan got axed. If that's the conclusion a small team of security guards comes to at a relatively small manufacturing company, I can't imagine the headaches larger teams have at bigger, more sensitive companies.
- exodust 3y agoSounds like another Reuters beat-up. Start with dislike of Tesla/Musk, then write a "special report" on that basis. > "Reuters contacted more than 300 former Tesla employees " 300! They tried extra hard to dig up dirt. > "all speaking on condition of anonymity"... Of course. They don't work there any more, but happy to sling mud anonymously for Reuters clickbait. > "Reuters wasn’t able to obtain any of the shared videos or images"... Oh no! You'll have to write extra-descriptive words about the "shocking" images. > "The news agency wasn’t able to determine how widespread it was" So what exactly was Reuters able to determine? Not much. By the sounds of it, users elected to share video, and some 20-something meme junkies at Tesla shared a few images internally... which is slap-on-write level stuff. Nobody kept any of the images, nothing leaked except anonymous stories from ex-employees! > "Some former employees said the only sharing they observed was for legitimate work purposes".. So... contradictory reports about images that don't exist, that might have been shared internally, to a degree we can't determine. Got it!
- elif 3y agoI surely hope the cabin camera is disabled while in camp mode...
- guywithahat 3y agoAlthough this article seems to imply a lot of things, the only real examples it gives are cases of accidents being uploaded to Tesla and then employees sharing these videos. I don't think you have to worry about normal driving, this seems to be more about edge cases which are reviewed by humans for their FSD. That said I understand the concern about having a camera in your car which will occasionally upload its content to Tesla
- option 3y agoFirst thing I did after getting my Model Y is adding a nice sticker over in-cabin camera. Intentionally or not those incidents will happen. There is no place for a camera inside personal car, but sticker is an easy fix too
- pvillano 3y agoThe cloud is just someone else's computer... Most of my data us on other people's computers