Your Tesla Is Watching You

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
I'm not so sure I like the idea of my car tracking my every move. Who can access that data? Can it be subpoenaed? Can the automaker store it or sell it to third parties? Yeah, I think I'll be sticking with my 45 year old muscle car. Thanks.

In order to use the autopilot’s functions, a Tesla customer must pay for the software system. But even if they don’t choose this option, the built-in sensors are constantly recording information about its environment and how the driver is navigating through it. This enables every vehicle it makes to become a mobile data collector (whether the owner pays for the autopilot functions or not), and has allowed Tesla to begin catching up to Google, which has a significant head start on autonomous drive technology but a limited fleet with which to test and train its system.
 
Wait, the autopilot feature costs money? Like, a monthly fee or a one time purchase?
 
do you remember that article you posted once, of the guy who found an RJ45 port on his tesla , and plugged into it, and got a shell console? and then you remember how Tesla literally called him within the day to tell him they knew what he did and to not fuck with that thing? Big Brother is watching.
 
No thanks, I'll pass. Who wants an "in-app purchase" model for their car? Subscription service?
 
All Teslas are made with the Autopilot hardware whether you order it or not, but you still have to pay for it as an option to enable it. The incremental cost of adding the hardware to every car is mitigated by simplifying the production process, and I assume using the collected data to revise Autopilot. Also, this way a second owner can choose to have Autopilot enabled after the fact even if the first owner chose not to. It's a one-time fee, it's not a subscription or monthly thing. It may seem unfair that every car has it anyway, but they'd either have to give it away for free, or just not put it in the car if not ordered, but then you'd be SOL if you decided you wanted it after all months down the road, and it'd be a drawback when selling the car.

They have lots of logs of all sorts of different data available, but it's anyone's guess as to what they do with it. I know when I would have charging problems, they would pull those logs and see exactly what was going on. Is there a repository somewhere with every car's coordinates and NAV entries? Maybe, but I figure company hacks, smartphones and computers already give up enough about you it's unavoidable these days.
 
Wasn't it Ford who recently was claiming they held the copyright over the data sets they were pulling from vehicles? Likely to be some interesting lawsuits when folks with money and lawyers on staff claim their privacy was violated when one of these companies has a breach and these data sets get downloaded and made public.

Tesla owner #23654, this data download shows you spent 45 minutes at Fred's Adult Bookstore, 20 minutes at The Liquor Emporium, 10 minutes at a known drug pickup point, 5 minutes stopped on a street known for professional sex workers, and two hours at Fast Eight Motel. Any comments?
 
This is part of the bargain for sure if you buy a Tesla car. No one should have their eyes closed about this.
 
OnStar can start your car, unlock your car, shutdown your car and request emergency personnel response. I doubt anyone cares what Tesla is doing.
 
Just duct tape over the cameras.

The only way I'm buying an self-driving car is if it's totally self-driving and the laws have changed so the liability is on the car manufacturers, not the occupants.
 
47834283.jpg
 
You do know how much google (and the other phone/telecom companies) knows thanks to the phone you drag around all the time? There's nothing the car is going to give away that's not already tracked, except maybe your coolant temperature.
 
Jim Kim said:
OnStar can start your car, unlock your car, shutdown your car and request emergency personnel response. I doubt anyone cares what Tesla is doing.
Click to expand...

and can track you whether the feature is enabled or not if an operator looks up the car identification number for that system.. but no one ever complained about it in the 10 years it's been used. but now tesla has it, we better throw a fit about privacy. personally i'm fine with it as long as they notify the customer about it before buying the car. companies that try to hide the fact that they record vehicle information are the ones that piss me off.

either way this is something california's been trying to get installed on ever single new car sold in the state anyways so get use to it because eventually it'll be in every car.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ruoh
like this
Agromahdi123 said:
do you remember that article you posted once, of the guy who found an RJ45 port on his tesla , and plugged into it, and got a shell console? and then you remember how Tesla literally called him within the day to tell him they knew what he did and to not fuck with that thing? Big Brother is watching.
Click to expand...
Well the question is do I own the car? If I do I can fuck with it however I want.

As for this clickbait. You're already being tracked by your phone, and basically any other car that you purchased recently has some kind of online feature that by definition enables your tracking regardless if that is the intention or not.
 
the data should belong to the owner. I'm fairly sure some tech savvy people will be able to figure out how to reverse engineer the protocals for getting the data and deleting it on the owners demand thus eliminating the snooping/spying/privacy issues.

Unless tesla has a way to disable your car remotely, i don't think it's an issue.

Besides, weren't politicians talking about installing a black box in the car that the driver doesn't get access to?

Ohh my bad, they're already installed in all cars: Your car's hidden 'black box' and how to keep it private
 
The age of surveillance is great isn't it?

Data collection is pretty much unavoidable, we pretty much have no rights in that regard. These volumes of data have a tremendous breadth of application and so far the companies that have most of it haven't proven to be too terribly responsible with the data they have.

We're going to need laws, getting any kind of law that doesn't effectively hand over all of your data is going to be a tough one. Governments see the value in that data as well, so do lobbyists.
 
It's not just Tesla. Almost all modern cars have the automotive equivalent of the aircraft black box in them these days. They constantly record everything about the car (throttle, braking, location, etc.) and store that information. And if you're ever in an accident that information is susceptible to subpoena for any court proceedings. Your insurance company can even request it and drop you if you don't allow them access to it. I recall a woman recently who hit a pedestrian and drove away from the scene. Her car called the police to notify them it had been in an accident and they used the GPS in the car to find and arrest her for the hit and run.

We're going to live in a world soon where cars that can't spy on you will be prized possessions. If only I could afford that '69 Bronco!
 
M76 said:
Well the question is do I own the car? If I do I can fuck with it however I want.

As for this clickbait. You're already being tracked by your phone, and basically any other car that you purchased recently has some kind of online feature that by definition enables your tracking regardless if that is the intention or not.
Click to expand...
You might own the hardware in this situation but it's possible you don't own the "software" right? I mean that's a familiar situation for us in the tech world. I primarily mentioned this though merely to state that there is ACTIVE monitoring of these vehicles occurring by tesla, so as opposed to passive observation where they might use data ex post facto, they are watching realtime which is creepier.
 
Honestly, the only thing a subpoena of my self-driving car habits would show is that I read or sleep all of the time. Don't get me wrong, I like driving, and I'm hyper-attentive to point of irritating my wife. Commuting, on the other hand, is just lost time and gained irritation.
 
I thought it was known Autopilot collects data while everyone drives a Tesla with the feature. Our phones track WAY more data along with Google.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Wasn't it Ford who recently was claiming they held the copyright over the data sets they were pulling from vehicles? Likely to be some interesting lawsuits when folks with money and lawyers on staff claim their privacy was violated when one of these companies has a breach and these data sets get downloaded and made public.

Tesla owner #23654, this data download shows you spent 45 minutes at Fred's Adult Bookstore, 20 minutes at The Liquor Emporium, 10 minutes at a known drug pickup point, 5 minutes stopped on a street known for professional sex workers, and two hours at Fast Eight Motel. Any comments?
Click to expand...

Well if someone is dumb enough to do that, shame on him as deserved!
 
Dwango said:
It's not just Tesla. Almost all modern cars have the automotive equivalent of the aircraft black box in them these days. They constantly record everything about the car (throttle, braking, location, etc.) and store that information. And if you're ever in an accident that information is susceptible to subpoena for any court proceedings. Your insurance company can even request it and drop you if you don't allow them access to it. I recall a woman recently who hit a pedestrian and drove away from the scene. Her car called the police to notify them it had been in an accident and they used the GPS in the car to find and arrest her for the hit and run.

We're going to live in a world soon where cars that can't spy on you will be prized possessions. If only I could afford that '69 Bronco!
Click to expand...

Did the car call the police, or did the car tell her phone connected via Bluetooth to call the police? I had a Ford Fusion that could instruct the phone to call 911 in the event of an airbag deployment, but you could turn that off.

Point is, there is a huge difference legally between the car calling the police, and there being a setting the driver has turned on that makes the car REQUEST the police be called by the cellphone.
 
When you run the app where's my tesla? How do you think it finds your tesla? Is the app omniscient?
 
OEM said:
Did the car call the police, or did the car tell her phone connected via Bluetooth to call the police? I had a Ford Fusion that could instruct the phone to call 911 in the event of an airbag deployment, but you could turn that off.

Point is, there is a huge difference legally between the car calling the police, and there being a setting the driver has turned on that makes the car REQUEST the police be called by the cellphone.
Click to expand...

As far as the story went the car used it's built in cell connection to notify the police of the crash. I have to imagine though that the car notified whatever Ford's version of OnStar is that the collision occurred and they notified law enforcement. I don't believe the air bag deployed either but the police did get the GPS location of the car from Ford (presumably by court order) and arrested the woman who owned the car.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top