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>At Tesla we believe that security and privacy are core tenets of any modern technology. Customers should be able to decide what data they share with third part

by leoh 3y ago

>At Tesla we believe that security and privacy are core tenets of any modern technology. Customers should be able to decide what data they share with third parties, how they share it, and when it can be shared. We've developed a decentralized framework: "Fleet Telemetry" that allows customers to create a secure and direct bridge from their Tesla devices to any provider they authorize. Complete non-sequitur. “We care about your privacy” “Here’s a way to share private information with others” Also, un-stated “there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” Cool that they give you a way to access some of your data at all though, I guess

darknavi 3y ago
> “there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” FWIW there are settings in the car to disable certain things. Not sure how much it _actually_ disables though.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Disable and delete seem to just mean "hide from the end user" these days.
  - jackmott 3y ago
    [dead]
  - the_sleaze9 3y ago
    "Soft delete", and it's a requirement in almost everything
    - moffkalast 3y ago
      So is 'the right to be forgotten' under GDPR. As such, Tesla, OpenAI, etc. cannot legally train their models on EU customer data because we can at any point request a hard delete, and they wouldn't be able to comply without removing it all from the dataset and retraining. In reality though, I assume they still do it and merely pretend they comply with it.
jackmott42 3y ago
>“there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” You can turn off lots of data sharing and monitoring settings in the standard UI in the car, last I looked it wasn't even hidden behind any dark patterns.
oh_sigh 3y ago
Privacy isn't "no one can know anything about me, ever, even if it is my choice to tell them". By this logic you are violating your own privacy when you introduce yourself to someone with your name. The actual concept of privacy is entirely in line with their idea that you "should be able to decide what data [you] share with third parties, how [you] share it, and when it can be shared"
Casteil 3y ago
>At Tesla we believe that security and privacy are core tenets of any modern technology. Seeing this after the whistleblower/leak regarding Tesla employees having unfettered access to onboard camera footage (and that embarrassing/compromising footage of customers was actively shared internally) is... rich.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  That sounds like a subtle mischaracterization of the leak to me. The leak sounded more like, "the teams responsible for tagging data uploaded by Teslas had access to data uploaded by Teslas". The fact that they could share them amongst themselves is also not particularly surprising. While I understand the alarm, it was also completely unsurprising even based purely on the company's public statements about how they use data from the cameras.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    I think few who enabled Sentry Mode thought it was reasonably likely that Tesla employees would share titillating personal moments spotted by their cars for the luls.
    - Casteil 3y ago
      Exactly. People shouldn't have to worry about their car being a serious privacy risk. Video footage being shared with/accessible by Tesla should be strictly opt-in - especially for "sentry mode", which is the most likely to catch someone in their skivvies (or worse) in their garage.
    - ribosometronome 3y ago
      I think few who read the comment he was replying to thought that we were discussing what people thought about Sentry Mode data labeling privacy issues and instead about "unfettered access to onboard camera footage".
    - _ea1k 3y ago
      I get your point there, but I bet not all of these were sentry. But even with sentry, there's some smarts to it about object detection. If you know how that works, you'd expect some human-in-the-loop labeling. I'm not saying that it is right. There's a real lack of transparency here, especially considering how many people seem blissfully unaware.
benced 3y ago
Privacy advocates should reconcile themselves with the idea that sometimes people want to share their data. If I owned a Tesla, I’d enjoy using this framework to put data about my driving into a google sheet. Private information means the user controls their data. They will often do things privacy advocates don’t like or think are dumb. That’s the privacy advocate’s problem, not the user’s.
- creata 3y ago
  If you're using the data yourself, how is that "sharing" your data?
  - belltaco 3y ago
    Google Sheets can't be self hosted, so the data must be shared with Google in their scenario.
oittaa 3y ago
> Also, un-stated “there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” Are predditors now coming to this site to spread their "spaceship man bad" propaganda? There are obvious switches that toggle data sharing. A quick googling would have revealed that: https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/tesla-data-sharing-policy.png https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/tesla...
stetrain 3y ago
The current situation for third party apps (which do exist, plenty of them) is you either give them your Tesla account username/password (super bad) or an access token that you get by signing into your Tesla account, which is less bad but still gives the app the same access as your full Tesla account. So yes, by building a framework to allow users to authorize third party apps to receive limited telemetry data without handing over their full Tesla account keys this may allow for an improvement in privacy for those who want to use such apps.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Hard agree. I give my Tesla creds to other third party apps willingly, because I want the benefits those apps offer (we own several Teslas, and both the historical data and remote vehicle control has value add). The effort to move to a more secure auth mechanism is welcomed, and it's my data, so I don't get the outrage. This is part of the value in my purchase decisions, and within the risk appetite of my threat model. This is also more efficient on Tesla infra (streaming telemetry data), vs aggressive polling (what current apps do, typically slow polling when vehicle updates are minimal, such as when parked, and then switching up to aggressive polling when traveling at speed).
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    And if your local police department wants to buy that data? What if a large law firm wants to buy all the data for use in lawsuits? Once you have pass it on to "third parties" then there isn't much you can do to stop such things. It happened a few decades ago as in-car GPS rolled out. Some rental car companies started issuing speeding tickets. That game lasted about a week. >> Feb. 2002. A Connecticut man has taken a local rental-car agency to court, after the company used Global Positioning System technology and fined him $450 for speeding. https://www.cnet.com/culture/rental-car-firm-exceeding-the-privacy-limit/ https://www.cnet.com/culture/rental-car-firm-exceeding-the-p...
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      I’m not ignorant of your concerns, but that’s what privacy laws are for. These third parties have been scrapping Tesla APIs at the behest of their customers for years. This is nothing new, simply more formalized. If the laws are insufficient, that’s a call for better laws (which I agree are needed). The apps I use do not sell their customer data, but Tesla should probably stipulate API integrations aren’t permitted to as extra guardrails (with violations being an API access death sentence, killing the app business).
mensetmanusman 3y ago
"others" I.e. my own home server.
dotBen 3y ago
Our Teslas sends an insane amount of data home, even down to event calls for rolling down the window or opening the car door. But you kind of know that going into it - ok not everyone does but anyone who is reasonable technical and most likely to care about privacy and understand the issues is aware. And it's technically in the small print which of course everyone reads fully when they buy the car. /s They also record the road and the way you drive it using cameras in the vehicle you own and paid for, upload it using your home internet connection and improve their self driving model which will no doubt represents $billion's, maybe $ trillions of enterprise value over time. A Tesla is not a normal 'dumb' car, and you accept that going into it. Allowing consumers to have fair access to that data in a safe manner that doesn't involve sharing usernames and passwords is actually the right and responsible action on Tesla's part.
m463 3y ago
Same as apple. "privacy is a fundamental human right" ...can't activate a phone without connecting to apple ...privacy policy is hundreds of pages ...can't block apple
- Zambyte 3y ago
  You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.

by leoh 3y ago

darknavi 3y ago

> “there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” FWIW there are settings in the car to disable certain things. Not sure how much it _actually_ disables though.

moffkalast 3y ago
Disable and delete seem to just mean "hide from the end user" these days.
- jackmott 3y ago
  [dead]
- the_sleaze9 3y ago
  "Soft delete", and it's a requirement in almost everything
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    So is 'the right to be forgotten' under GDPR. As such, Tesla, OpenAI, etc. cannot legally train their models on EU customer data because we can at any point request a hard delete, and they wouldn't be able to comply without removing it all from the dataset and retraining. In reality though, I assume they still do it and merely pretend they comply with it.

jackmott42 3y ago

>“there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” You can turn off lots of data sharing and monitoring settings in the standard UI in the car, last I looked it wasn't even hidden behind any dark patterns.

oh_sigh 3y ago

Privacy isn't "no one can know anything about me, ever, even if it is my choice to tell them". By this logic you are violating your own privacy when you introduce yourself to someone with your name. The actual concept of privacy is entirely in line with their idea that you "should be able to decide what data [you] share with third parties, how [you] share it, and when it can be shared"

Casteil 3y ago

>At Tesla we believe that security and privacy are core tenets of any modern technology. Seeing this after the whistleblower/leak regarding Tesla employees having unfettered access to onboard camera footage (and that embarrassing/compromising footage of customers was actively shared internally) is... rich.

_ea1k 3y ago
That sounds like a subtle mischaracterization of the leak to me. The leak sounded more like, "the teams responsible for tagging data uploaded by Teslas had access to data uploaded by Teslas". The fact that they could share them amongst themselves is also not particularly surprising. While I understand the alarm, it was also completely unsurprising even based purely on the company's public statements about how they use data from the cameras.
- mlyle 3y ago
  I think few who enabled Sentry Mode thought it was reasonably likely that Tesla employees would share titillating personal moments spotted by their cars for the luls.
  - Casteil 3y ago
    Exactly. People shouldn't have to worry about their car being a serious privacy risk. Video footage being shared with/accessible by Tesla should be strictly opt-in - especially for "sentry mode", which is the most likely to catch someone in their skivvies (or worse) in their garage.
  - ribosometronome 3y ago
    I think few who read the comment he was replying to thought that we were discussing what people thought about Sentry Mode data labeling privacy issues and instead about "unfettered access to onboard camera footage".
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    I get your point there, but I bet not all of these were sentry. But even with sentry, there's some smarts to it about object detection. If you know how that works, you'd expect some human-in-the-loop labeling. I'm not saying that it is right. There's a real lack of transparency here, especially considering how many people seem blissfully unaware.

benced 3y ago

Privacy advocates should reconcile themselves with the idea that sometimes people want to share their data. If I owned a Tesla, I’d enjoy using this framework to put data about my driving into a google sheet. Private information means the user controls their data. They will often do things privacy advocates don’t like or think are dumb. That’s the privacy advocate’s problem, not the user’s.

creata 3y ago
If you're using the data yourself, how is that "sharing" your data?
- belltaco 3y ago
  Google Sheets can't be self hosted, so the data must be shared with Google in their scenario.

oittaa 3y ago

> Also, un-stated “there ain’t nothing you can do about sharing your private data with us” Are predditors now coming to this site to spread their "spaceship man bad" propaganda? There are obvious switches that toggle data sharing. A quick googling would have revealed that: https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/tesla-data-sharing-policy.png https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/05/tesla...

stetrain 3y ago

The current situation for third party apps (which do exist, plenty of them) is you either give them your Tesla account username/password (super bad) or an access token that you get by signing into your Tesla account, which is less bad but still gives the app the same access as your full Tesla account. So yes, by building a framework to allow users to authorize third party apps to receive limited telemetry data without handing over their full Tesla account keys this may allow for an improvement in privacy for those who want to use such apps.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Hard agree. I give my Tesla creds to other third party apps willingly, because I want the benefits those apps offer (we own several Teslas, and both the historical data and remote vehicle control has value add). The effort to move to a more secure auth mechanism is welcomed, and it's my data, so I don't get the outrage. This is part of the value in my purchase decisions, and within the risk appetite of my threat model. This is also more efficient on Tesla infra (streaming telemetry data), vs aggressive polling (what current apps do, typically slow polling when vehicle updates are minimal, such as when parked, and then switching up to aggressive polling when traveling at speed).
- sandworm101 3y ago
  And if your local police department wants to buy that data? What if a large law firm wants to buy all the data for use in lawsuits? Once you have pass it on to "third parties" then there isn't much you can do to stop such things. It happened a few decades ago as in-car GPS rolled out. Some rental car companies started issuing speeding tickets. That game lasted about a week. >> Feb. 2002. A Connecticut man has taken a local rental-car agency to court, after the company used Global Positioning System technology and fined him $450 for speeding. https://www.cnet.com/culture/rental-car-firm-exceeding-the-privacy-limit/ https://www.cnet.com/culture/rental-car-firm-exceeding-the-p...
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    I’m not ignorant of your concerns, but that’s what privacy laws are for. These third parties have been scrapping Tesla APIs at the behest of their customers for years. This is nothing new, simply more formalized. If the laws are insufficient, that’s a call for better laws (which I agree are needed). The apps I use do not sell their customer data, but Tesla should probably stipulate API integrations aren’t permitted to as extra guardrails (with violations being an API access death sentence, killing the app business).

mensetmanusman 3y ago

"others" I.e. my own home server.

dotBen 3y ago

Our Teslas sends an insane amount of data home, even down to event calls for rolling down the window or opening the car door. But you kind of know that going into it - ok not everyone does but anyone who is reasonable technical and most likely to care about privacy and understand the issues is aware. And it's technically in the small print which of course everyone reads fully when they buy the car. /s They also record the road and the way you drive it using cameras in the vehicle you own and paid for, upload it using your home internet connection and improve their self driving model which will no doubt represents $billion's, maybe $ trillions of enterprise value over time. A Tesla is not a normal 'dumb' car, and you accept that going into it. Allowing consumers to have fair access to that data in a safe manner that doesn't involve sharing usernames and passwords is actually the right and responsible action on Tesla's part.

m463 3y ago

Same as apple. "privacy is a fundamental human right" ...can't activate a phone without connecting to apple ...privacy policy is hundreds of pages ...can't block apple

Zambyte 3y ago
You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.