Child hit by car among videos 'captured by Tesla vehicles, shared among staff' Tesla workers over the past few years have reportedly shared sensitive and embarrassing videos captured by the cameras built into their customers' cars. That would suggest the automaker's privacy policy commitment that "camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle" doesn't mean much because the …
I think we need stronger enforcement and consequences.
As long as fines remain a company's problem and not directly the board members themselves nothing will change, especially not when the height of the fines never amounts to more than a rounding error in the company's books. Add to that the fantastic amount of wiggle room a company gets in most legal systems so investigations and prosecutions can literally take decades and I think laws are not really the issue. It is a dramatically hollowed out legal system that is (that's why I refuse to call it a "justice" system).
Without consequences, laws don't matter.
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Actually, if I pay $8 and then get zapped, is that not missold goods?
Probably not. T&Cs and AUPs are generally vague enough that you could get kicked for calling the messiah a very naughty boy. You could probably find a lawer that would give it a go, in exchange for a lot of your money.
Like others have said, what we really need is stronger legislation and some serious legal fisking to stop all the data rapists taking liberties with our privacy and personal information. Sadly, there's a lot of lobbying firepower from people who think this sort of behaviour is fine. Except when you invade their privacy, then they'll unleash their lawyers.
I keep thinking one way to counter this would be to hire PIs to track execs and monitor their every move. Problem is we also have anti-stalking and privacy laws that would prevent this, it's just they're not equally applied to online activities.
Or may be a poop emoji...
We asked Twitter for comment on Musk's tweet, and a few other aspects of this story, and we didn't receive a serious response, just a poop emoji as expected.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/07/twitter_code_cve_substack/
As long as you collect a bunch of data, you can have this, so the solution tends to be not collecting data you don't need to, like video when the car is off. I'm also not convinced they even got much use from video when the car was on, and there's no way I would have opted in to that. Some misuse will happen whenever there are humans, but we can still take some relatively basic steps to limit the misuse anyone can do.
Depends on where you live. In our part of the world if you're out in public then there's no expectation of privacy.
This idea that you can control who or what's looking at you is quaint, as is the notion that you can set an arbitrary price for your image (which for most of us in most circumstances has "no commercial value"). We're being looked at 24/7 by all sorts of imaging equipment and its only rarely that a price could be put on images that were captured (e.g. Kolbe Bryant).
I think there's an interesting question hiding in there.
If you are out and about in public, but a camera is in the car recording you inside - is that than public too? I would argue it is not, but I think that's the sort of annoying detail lawyers will earn a fortune for before it settles into some sort of precedent..
If you are in a public space, and the car is not, it does not matter. It has the same legal standing as you being in public place, and being caught on a Ring doorbell camera, orsecurity camera of a business.
If the car is outside of it's place of residence, but on private property with you, and records you, then Tesla (and the car's individual owner) are in deep legal shit.
I don't think the important point is whether you're in public or in private. The important point is that Tesla seem to be uploading stuff from their cameras and then their staff seem to be sharing it around.
They shouldn't be uploading stuff without permission.
And even if they HAVE got permission, it shouldn't be generally accessible and shared around.
So yeah, I'll bet this was shared.
If I was a Tesla employee and I saw this, I sure as hell would send this up the management chain saying "hey this needs to go to the authorities"
What's Tesla's responsibility here if they have evidence a crime was committed? Shouldn't they send this to the police as evidence of a hit-and-run?
Was the evidence of a crime a video recorded illegally (the car could have been in the EU and recording the public illegal depending on member state), that the child was hit, or both?
If theres any question that Tesla may have even been slightly close to breaking a law, "doing the right thing" is not what we've come to expect from them.
If the car was being driven by the computer then if it was speeding it would be a serious software malfunction. Same as if it hit a kid on a bike because it didn't see them. My guess (based on real world experience) is that its being driven by a human. Software can make mistakes but doesn't deliberately ignore traffic laws (and common sense).
(There's so much hate for Tesla around here. Why?)(BTW -- I don't own one.)
Software can make mistakes but doesn't deliberately ignore traffic laws (and common sense).
I fear you haven't been paying attention then. Running red lights, entering road areas where it has no business being, running over children and I think there are some laws against running over children crossing and crashing into emergency vehicles with their lights on too - apparently the latter got so bad that investigations started.
It's also worth noting that these are FSD specific problems that other driving assistance systems do not suffer from. If that is because the other car manufacturers DO spring for the full set of sensors as opposed to the limited set that Tesla spends money on I have no idea, but others don't claim things they clearly cannot deliver, and they don't seem to charge quite so much extra for the priviledge of having their customers use other road users as guinea pigs without their permission.
Is that hate? I think it's more a desire to be done with the BS and staying with the facts. Not unusual for people with a technical background IMHO.
"(There's so much hate for Tesla around here. Why?)(BTW -- I don't own one.)"
There are a lot of reasons that account for that, and it's hard to know what a given person's might be. A lot of it is probably related to the fact that it's a Musk-owned company and he is a controversial figure. Amusingly, it used to be that Tesla was automatically opposed by people who hated that the cars were electric, but Musk's recent political moves have flipped the groups that tend to hate what he does. Some people may also think the cars are poorly designed, and I've certainly seen those arguments (at this point, I should probably say that I don't own a Tesla, and for that matter I don't own any car and thus haven't compared models).
Then you have people who have strong views on self-driving technology, which Tesla has at least talked a lot about. Some object to the fact that Tesla's software is limited and has safety problems but yet is running on the roads today. Some may also have a problem with the promises of improvements, all of which have turned out to be lies. There is another group who hates self-driving altogether and would oppose any car that attempts to build it.
There are probably other reasons, such as people who oppose the subsidies that Tesla has received, people who disapprove of the repair policies of the company, and people having strong opinions about which car companies are good or bad and whether expensive cars are better. I'm specifically bailing out on that last one because I know little about the comparative differences between car brands and will make up my mind on those if I buy a car. I've probably missed some others and each detractor probably has multiple reasons that combine to produce their attitude.
Why do you assume it was a hit-and-run? Maybe the driver stopped immediately, called an ambulance and waited for it to arrive. Or talked to the kid and/or accompanying adults, and checked that no-one was badly hurt. Or - whatever was appropriate to the situation.
Apple users are often dismissed as Fanbois, but Apple at least has a USP. Several of them. That makes Apple products sticky - and enables Apple to act somewhat dickishly without a mass exodus from the platform. The same can be said of Microsoft and Google.
But what’s the USP of Tesla? What makes Tesla sticky? It’s a car. It’s job is to get you from point a to point b. But there are a lot of other electric cars you can choose instead. Cars which are safer (VW, Skoda, Honda, Polestar, Volvo, Audi - source EuroNCAP). Cars with matching or longer range (Mercedes, Hyundai, Polestar, BMW - source AutoExpress). Cars which are more reliable (Nissan, MG, VW, Hyundai, Kia - in fact, Teslas model S is the least reliable according to What Car). There are cheaper and more comfortable electric cars.
It seems to me that Tesla had a huge head start in the electric car game, and Musk is busy squandering that lead with a toxic company culture and irrelevancies like childish (and unusable) top speeds, in car games consoles, and whoopie cushion functionality. All they have left is an overinflated stock price, and the supercharger network.
The supercharger network! That is a genuine USP. Except that (in an example of the adage that a stopped clock is right twice a day, and possibly anticipating EU legislation) Tesla is opening its supercharger network to electric cars with a CCS port (i.e. all the rest)
Even with their huge stickiness, if Apple acted as consistently dickishly as Tesla does, I’d drop them (I can tolerate a certain amount, but there are limits!) I certainly wouldn’t buy a Tesla at the moment. The best thing that Tesla could do to salvage their increasingly tattered reputation is drop Musk and put an adult in charge of the company. Or all they’ll be left with for customers is their own fan boys.
I like cars, and I liked the Model S - that was a decent car. All following Tesla models suffered from very clearly visible cost savings that, frankly, I found offensive against the price they were charging for it, let alone the construction problems that would even make Lada look good (who also occasionally forgot to fit the center nut of the steering wheel but they at least ensured the roof was bolted down). That has come home to roost now other car manufacturers are getting into the game who, for instance, don't force me to look away from the road to find out how fast I am going or wade through menus to open a glove box and offer a decent standard of comfort instead of to sell me that the absence thereof is good for me - I drive long distances, so no thanks.
Add to that the copious amount of BS pouring out of Musk at any given time and Tesla's habit for charging for things they then don't really deliver (FSD, trucks) and frankly, it has become a brand that is toxic other than to the Musk fanbase - another aspect of Tesla I would not want to be associated with by buying one. Oh, and let's not forget that Tesla will cut you off from the supercharger network if you have the nerve to reccyel parts instead of buying them from Tesla - grade A dickish move that also highlights their true environmental credentials, apparently absent it doesn't make them a profit.
As for strategies, Apple have a defined strategy which overall agrees with me to a degree that I can tolerate the few things that irritate me (such as the region limiting of the App Stores which is a royal pain in the neck) and as that has remained pretty much consistent over decades I'm OK with it. Tesla's strategy seems to be mainly depending on from which direction the wind blows, which insane thought Musk woke up with in the morning and what failures they have to hide today (Boring company, anyone?). Not a winner for me, but I am not a fan to start with as I like facts and logic.
And before anyone engages in whatabouterism, yes, I know he did Space X and that worked, and I suspect it keeps working because they prised him off the controls. I suspect they're very glad that Twitter keeps him busy if it wasn't for the fact that it acts as a megaphone for his, umm, less than ideal statements..
Yep, I recently had a look at available e-cars. Tesla scores highly on power and range, but is average or below by most other measures. The no-real-button policy is a real deal breaker for me, when driving I don't care what claims Tesla makes, I don't want to take my eyes off the road to hunt through menus. Safety is even besides the point, because even as a passenger I prefer to have real buttons, ideally a click-wheel interface.
Kia and Hyundai have some excellent models matching Tesla performance with better comfort, build quality, longer warranty, and comparably priced or cheaper
Tesla basically refuses to sell spares to customers. That means taking the cultmobile to their service centre where it can languish for weeks if not months because said spares are simply not available.
My local bodyshop refuses to even quote for even fixing a dent on a Tesla and they work on Ferrari's, Lamobo's and Posrsche's so are not a cheapo back street shop.
That says it all about the cult of Tesla.
I did try to like a Model 3 when I was last in the USA and had the chance to rent one. It was built like a Lada on a bad day. 1200 miles on the clock and there was rust already starting to appear because of the shoddy paint job. Sorry fanbois, they are not a Luxury Car. Adequate at best.
Frankly, also made in factories with rather more favourable conditions for the employees too.
Mate of mine swears by the Ioniq. I've done some business travel with him in it, and it's a nice enough car; but the "downsides" of charging infrastructure, particularly the absolutely endless need to register-for-service-after-service to plug your car in need addressing. It's one thing some two-bit nowhere carpark operator having bad billing software, but Shell garages with dedicated EV forecourts?
The latter is something that has to be solved before I'll go for an EV car.
EV bike on the other hand... Already a convert. Amazing machines. Shame the cycling infrastructure is designed by noddies rather than done proper.
I have a Ioniq PHEV, the earlier model. I really like it; it's comfortable, drives nicely, and it's the most reliable car I've had so far. I got the PHEV version because I didn't trust the charging infrastructure on the road - and I was right. I charge at home and just run ICE for long trips 99% of times, but I do try to charge while parking whenever I can, just because I really do believe in EVs as a concept and I want it to succeed.
About half of every charging station I found turns out to be unusable for one reason or another. Is off. Is broken. Is off or broken, but the monitoring app was reporting it as fine. Requires an app which doesn't work. Is located in a mobile not-spot. Is located in a spot that can't be reached without a downtown permit. Is activated via a website that's unreachable. Is activated via a website that's reachable, but broken. QR code is defaced. Is rejecting my CC for unclear reasons. Has two connectors, the one that's the right type for my car is occupied or not working, and the monitoring app did not report this. Everything appears to work, but is not actually charging. Everything appears to work, is charging at trickle levels only. Requires email activation of account, email only arrives two hours later. Demands to use an app or account that only works with that specific network, which you know you will never use again, and the app requires you to prepay a fixed minimum amount. Is so expensive that I'm better off buying gasoline. Take your pick.
In one case, the blasted thing would refuse to let go of my charging cable, and I had to call the helpdesk to have them unlock it remotely, and thank god they actually answered me and were actually able to sort it out.
Last week I was in Switzerland and I went to four charging points during the trip, and I was able to actually charge at two. In one case the website was borked, in another I'd get a "the charging station cannot be reached" message. At the two stations where I was able to charge, it took about five minutes of faffing around with my phone and CC. And this is Switzerland.
To anyone who is designing EV charging points, I would say: pick an ICE car. Drive to any self-service pump station. Buy gas. That is exactly how it should work.
I don't see the point of registering with any site for any of this stuff. At a most basic level it should work, as you say, just like an automated gas pump.
1. verify credit card. This should be on the same network as each and every other CC machine in the world. It's not difficult, and non-operating terminals in real-world scenario should be 1 in 100k not 1 in 10!!
2. Plug in. Cables and connectors should be available from the pump, you should not have to carry your own connector. And 1 or max 2 standards worldwide for all cars (like fuel have petrol or diesel)
3. Verify cable is plugged correctly and send power until car electronics say enough, or until charge is interrupted by removing cable. Monitor amount of power sent through.
4. Bill card for the power taken and issue receipt on request.
There is no need for any website. There is no need for any app. Ideally there is no need for looking up online where there is a free station, because there are always enough or max wait of 10 minutes. None of this requires any out-of-this-world fancy electronics or electric infrastructure, so reliability should be 99% not somewhere in the 70s or less. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of the issues are not due to a charge point being unable to distribute power, but some shit going on with a (completely unneeded) connection to some server or another.
Absolutely agree. Try taking a moderate range trip in an EV and you'll soon see this crap.
The pre-req of must have a mobile phone, and mobile data to drive your EV anywhere outside of the charge-at-home bubble is a significant problem in the reliability chain. Stolen or lost phone while you're away? You're screwed! Flat phone battery? Also Screwed! Petrol station in the boondoggles and no mobile signal? Very Screwed!
The worst of it is adding the layers of crap on top of basic billing per unit sold infrastructure can only have required more effort to screw up.
I seem to be doing fine with just two RFID cards. One is from my home energy provider and is thus somewhat cheaper but isn't accepted by some of the chargers, the other works nearly everywhere. Tap the first one, LED stays green? Tap the other.
Flat phone battery?
Your bum is sitting on a powerbank to dwarf the average pocketable powerbank, and even when your EV battery is flat-ish (you kept driving until the last electron?) the accessory socket should still work.
I'm glad you live in a region where two RFID cards are sufficient. The same is not true for everyone. However, that is not the point.
The point is that automated payments are a solved problem. They have been a solved problem for decades. By now, the solutions are thoroughly standardized, extremely well-tested, very well-understood by the general population, and widely available.
I don't want to argue about why EV chargers have reinvented the wheel badly, or how nice it is that the reinvented wheel actually turns for some customers, or how they could improve their reinvented wheel to make it suck less. I'm saying they should not reinvent the wheel at all.
Get rid of RFID cards, websites and phone apps - just embed a POS terminal in the charger (or put up one that handles a dozen chargers, if you want to save money), like everything else in the world.
Cables and connectors should be available from the pump, you should not have to carry your own connector. And 1 or max 2 standards worldwide for all cars
'Pumps' are an antiquated concept. You can find charge points in public and shopping parking lots, for instance. They're very often unattended. They can be as simple as the common home-use charging box with an RFID reader, mounted to a wall. Some provide a socket, some have a fixed cable and connector. For the ones with a Type 2 socket I use the cable that's part of the car's outfit, like the jack and a spare tyre; when the 'pump' has a fixed cable and a Type 2 plug I get out the Type 1 adapter.
Standardize on Type 2? I still need an adapter, and I don't want to gamble on one being available at the 'pump' so I keep one in the car, as I do with the cable and the granny-charger. Standardize on $other_standard? Same. Retrofit all cars to that $other_standard? Surely you're joking, and of course there will now be n+1 connector standards around that must be provided for.
> I know he did Space X and that worked
From all the reports everything was riding on the final test launch and it was far from certain that everything would work given what had gone wrong previously and their level of understanding of the problems, however they got lucky and the final test was a success, it could of easily gone the other way and Space X would have been finished, just like Virgin Galactic..
While there's possibly a bit of marketing license in the story about the last launch of Falcon One being do-or-die for the company, they had at least planned for multiple launches to get the engineering right fully in the knowledge that rocket engineering is hard.
Virgin Orbit clearly never planned for anything beyond #1.
Even if it had succeeded in orbiting, I'm not wholly convinced there would have been a #2 launch.
Companies like Hyundai and Ford have been selling cars for many decades. They went through their "move fast and break things" phase long ago, and realised it's no way to live for the long haul. That's a painful thing to realise, and it has downsides, but it's a necessary thing for a company that wants to survive.
This would be the same "mature", auto industry that ran out of chips post lockdown because they thought they could cancel orders in a downturn and would have no problem ordering again when the situation improved?
If they misunderstood technology that badly, then I'm not convinced they understand the other aspects of being a computer on wheels. So I expect to see revelations along the lines of Tesla. Probably not quite as bad, but still pretty bad.
<quote>By default, images and video from the camera do not leave the vehicle itself and are not transmitted to anyone, including Tesla, unless you enable data sharing. If you enable data sharing and a safety critical event occurs (such as a collision), Model 3 shares short cabin camera video clips with Tesla to help us develop future safety enhancements and continuously improve the intelligence of features that rely on the cabin camera. Data may also be shared if diagnostics are required on cabin camera functionality. Cabin camera does not perform facial recognition or any other method of identity verification. To protect your privacy, cabin camera data is not associated with your vehicle identification number.</quote>
I think none of the examples where covered by this so the EULA does not cover them doing it!
What camera does "facial recognition " that is some other bit of software, some "rogue software developer" could uploads a still to Facebook and get them to do it. Rather is should say no facial recognition is done on the data.
"some were not bothered by the practice because customers had been informed about company data collection while others found it troubling."
And this is the entire US date protection system(s) in a nutshell. Companies can do what they like with any data they collect so long as users are informed the data is being collected. The only opt-out is to not do business with them. But since they are all doing it, the only way to mostly opt-out is to go off-grid and live in a cabin in the wilds of Alaska.
When it costs $millions if not $billions to get elected to high office, no one is going to upset the campaign donors.
Hey, conspiracy theorists! THERE IS NO DEEP STATE!!! it's just the rich and greedy wanting to hold on to and increase their wealth and power while fighting each other. It's Game of Thrones being played out in modern times on Wall Street and in the Capitol!
Because privacy laws, I doubt Tesla cars are allowed to record videos in public spaces in the EU, unless people's faces are blured.
Beware Tesla's owners, you may be the one legally responsible of illegal recording instead of Tesla
The automaker dissolved its public relations department three years ago.
What is the point to have a BS department anyway? Nobody takes PR seriously (or shouldn't).
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