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Comment by dont__panic | Hacker News Reader

Wait, so parked Teslas always record videos of me when I walk by?

That does not sound legal in quite a few places.

In the USA, as long as you're not recording audio and it's not in a place where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy, clandestine video surveillance is A-OK.

I don’t know why cars don’t come with built in dash cams yet. Seems like there is huge demand for it.

I think it's only a matter of time before all new cars come with front and rear facing cameras. I think the next step after that would be some sort of reporting system. Seems kinda crazy I can click a button to report somebody cheating in a video game but I can't press a button in my car to report soembody for extremely unsafe driving.

Teslas do. Just plug in a USB drive and it starts recording.

That’s a good move.

I have a Subaru with the EyeSight system for lane detection, adaptive cruise control, etc. It’s annoying that the cameras are RIGHT THERE and always on, and they even store a 22-second history that can be accessed by police or insurance in case of a crash, but I, as the vehicle owner with a vested interest in access to the feed, have no way of tapping into it and storing it for myself.

How do police or insurance access it?

Presumably, the police need a warrant unless you volunteer it. The insurance company may need to subpoena the footage from you or you may be required to turn it over as a condition of coverage (I have no idea if any company is actually doing this).

Probably, but then what? The person I'm replying to stated that they "have no way of tapping into it and storing it", and I don't think that changes suddenly if there's a court order.

Sorry, I’m not sure of the details.

My info came from the forum posts I found while explicitly looking for how to use the cameras as a dashcam a while ago. Some of them linked to the spots in the user manual that mention the 22-second loop, but the manual doesn’t have more info on how the access works. All I really know for sure is “we haven’t figure out how to get to it ourselves” and the rest is what I picked up from those threads.

Gotcha, that's frustrating. I was mostly just asking to try and brainstorm, thinking that we might be able to come up with a way for you to access it if we knew anything about how it worked and/or other parties are able to access it.

Some Citroëns do.

It's not legal in Germany and probably a few other countries but its perfectly legal here in the US.

So are the cameras in Teslas in Germany disabled?

It might be the ones sold in germany. You may be able to bring one in with it enabled.

https://www.dw.com/en/dashcams-in-germany-permissible-in-cou...

Looks like it has been updated for a few years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dos8fRzBH24

You’re in a public place, have no reasonable expectation to privacy, and the recording is not intrusive, so perfectly legal.

"quite a few places" can mean "not the US".

At least in Spain* it does not work like that, there are very stringent limitations on what you can record on the street, e.g. through dashcams or tesla sentinel mode:

https://www.aepd.es/sites/default/files/2019-09/informe-juri...

For example, you can't use dashcam recordings of an accident in trial.

* And I don't want to spend a bunch of time reading law but quite sure this is very tied in with GDPR, so I'd say that most probably in all Europe everything you record on the street is still subject to the privacy rights of whomever you record.

> you can't use dashcam recordings of an accident in trial.

Doesn't this entirely defeat the purpose of having a dashcam?

No, because an insurance claim is usually not a trial.

For most people yes, If your willing to take matters into your own hands no.

I don't think it's always part how GDPR is implemented in national laws. I believe it's admissable in court here in the UK, certainly my dashcam footage of a crash caused by a drink driver in 2019 was collected as evidence by police officers at the scene.

In Europe there are directives and regulations, and the former get transposed into local law, whereas regulations apply directly. The R in GDPR comes from regulation :)

> you can't use dashcam recordings of an accident in trial.

What's the rationale to that? Concern over manipulated videos? That would seem dumb if the video files are transferred at the accident (which happens in USA).

You can’t record people without their consent, I believe. No idea about the limitations of this for e.g. security cameras! But I’m sure for dashcams.

many places cars are stationary are not public places, and still visible to pedestrians.

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