Dutch forensic lab says it has decoded Tesla's driving data
reuters.com
reuters.com
That this lab decided to try to decipher the data, and found troves of it that wasn't known to exist before, speaks to how the relationship must be.
They didn't trust Tesla to hand everything over.
In my humble opinion, any region should force all manufacturer of cars that will be sold in that region to hand over data (or methods by extracting the data) in cases like these, lest their license to sell their product be rescinded.
https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-to-data-port...
This is precisely what is required from Tesla in China.
I’m rephrasing it that way to show that, depending on details this might be close to what Apple intended to do w.r.t. child pornography, something ‘the internet’ wasn’t a fan of, to say it mildly.
There’s a difference here in that there’s an ‘investigation’, but you’re also talking of ‘car crashes and accidents’, so this could get reasonably close (we already have cars that call 911 crash; should they also report it when they hear car accident-like sounds that co-occur with unexpected car movements?). Who’s going to decide whether an accident is serious enough to warrant this? Should car owners have the right to disable this kind of recording?
Not to completely disregard your point but its not the same. After seeing a few brain bits splattered across windows and chairs/dashboards, stray limbs...road accidents are in another lesgue entirely. We sort of need accidents to happen so that regulation of technology will use blood as ink/toner.
I am think it is reasonable. Tesla uses these data to protect themselves (for example by showing that autopilot wasn't in use during an accident). It is not really about user privacy anymore, it is about corporate interests, and I think road safety is more important, that's why we have all these regulations.
The data belongs to the car owner. If the owner wants to disable data collection, so be it. If anyone else wants that data, they can ask the owner for the decryption key and access to their car to make a copy.
I don't think it's even remotely reasonable for devices that we own to betray us. My car should protect me, not the manufacturer.
Some things to know:
Tesla hands over all requested data in case of an investigation. But only the requested data. Because we now know what data is stored more data can and will be requested in the future.
The crash was caused by the driver because he thought lane assistance was turned on but only adaptive cruise control was turned on. This caused the vehicle to move to another lane.
So the question about this accident is: how obvious is it for the driver what is going on and what assistance to expect.
- you have to deliberately turn the full assistance on/off
- there are audio cues when it turns on, and whilst it’s on, and when it turns off
- the visuals on the screen are different when it’s on vs. off
- the steering wheel feels very different when it’s on
- when it’s on, there are regular cues to generate torque through the wheel to show you’re paying attention
- the overall concept is that even when it’s on, you should keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention - though this is obviously subject to human failings
TBF, I’ve done something similar once or twice —-only turned on cruise control when I thought I’d turned on full assist—- but if you’ve got your hands on the wheel it’s pretty natural and quick to correct and then realise your mistake.
Not being facetious, but aren’t audio, visual (=the dashboard), and touch (=control forces) the only ways a human is able to interact with a car?
They could make the engagement or not of FSD more obvious in the UI, and maybe have spoken alerts? (Although at the moment there are so many audio alerts in a Tesla, I think it’s approaching saturation - the point where if everything is an alarm, then nothing is an alarm…)
It’s one thing I’d wish they changed in the 3/Y.
Agree that a well-designed HUD might be the best of all worlds; interesting how very few cars implement this, despite it having been technologically straightforward for decades.
That's why you usually use pretty strong color-coded indicators in conventional dashboards to convey mode - hard to miss unlike vague UI differences in an already low-contrast UI, and they can be seen any time unlike an audio cue. Audio cues in such cars usually just mean "recheck the dashboard, a new lamp came on".
The only better thing I can think of (outside a continuous warning beep) would be a HUD display like other high-end cars.
Is it because you must request specific data? Is making a request for all data from the manufacturer not allowed?
Am I missing something here?
* what personal information the organisation holds about them;
* how they are using it;
* who they are sharing it with; and
* where they got their data from.
https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-to-get-copie...
Not having individuals’ names / email addresses etc. in a dataset of multiple people, doesn’t mean that the data is anonymous. See for example https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/locat...
> Tesla however only supplies a specific subset of signals, only the ones requested, for a specific timeframe, whereas the log files contain all the recorded signals
Tesla provided exactly what was requested and nothing more. Now that the government knows what is more in the data they can request that too, even if it's irrelevant to the investigations.
After all, it would be trivial for Tesla to provide essentially unbreakable encryption: just encode all the stored data with a public key where only Tesla has the corresponding private key. But if NFI was able to decrypt, they obviously don't do that, so I'm curious what manner of "encryption" is used in the car.
[0]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355202701_Reverse_e...
1. https://github.com/NetherlandsForensicInstitute/teslalogs/tr...
Take the current idiocy coming from the governor of Missouri, trying to prosecute a journalist for "hacking" for the crime of ... reading HTML. While the governor used the word "decoding", not decrypting, he accused the journalist of going through some complicated intentional procedure to access private data, which is of course bullshit.
Even in the general sense, "decrypting" something strongly implies the original author had the intention of keeping it private and secure. Was this the case with Tesla's data? It seems like not, because it would have been trivial for them to implement unbreakable encryption. Or was this just a case where someone else figured out their file format?
Right now it feels like I’m dealing with a bunch of pirates. I either pay $800 to hack an HDMI cable into my Audi’s virtual cockpit just so I can use a map that’s not 6 years out of date, or $500 to the dealership to install the latest map update pack. Argh!
It would be interesting, how it could avoid the patent madness. I assume EVERYTHING with cars is patented.
Still in the early planning stages, just creating a good toaster that's repairable, open etc. is an interesting undertaking if you want everything above board.
Might have some prior art for folks interested in the topic.
It's a pretty interesting topic from both a technical & business/marketing point of view.
Couple other lists of somewhat related links:
* http://web.archive.org/web/20200119053707/http://www.labrado...
* http://web.archive.org/web/20200119061518/http://www.labrado...
* http://web.archive.org/web/20200119061518/http://www.labrado...
IBM did that with PC architecture and it had profound impact on technology, business and world as a whole I believe.
That was only valuable because the rest was already open.
It also seems that - casually - the omitted data lead to believe that the root cause was Tesla's autoipilot making the car tailgating the one in front of it.
Imagine that an airplane crashes and the decoding of the flight recorder is carried by the airplane manufacturer that omits the part where (say) the tail rudder didn't work as it should have.
Aren’t these the same things twitter.com/greentheonly publishes very often?
Example: https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1431094320296235008
If autopilot was following the car too close would the driver be responsible for not taking action? How much trust is a driver allowed to put in autopilot?
I also wonder how much data other cars collect. As far as I know most cars collect a lot of data you don't know about.
"According to Tesla, each follow distance setting corresponds directly to a time-based distance representing the time it takes the Model 3 from its current location to the location for the car in front of the driver.
For cars manufactured after April 27, 2021, Tesla set a minimum follow distance of 3 or greater. But with the 2021.4.21.3 update, this number has been reduced to 2, bringing Autopilot ‘Pure Vision’ close to parity with its previous radar-based counterpart."
Note they say time based and not second so 2 might be something like a second.
Cars radar sensors are not the F22 ones, they are very simple, limited and it is not the sky in which metallic objects are foreign and there is empty space everywhere.
The world on earth surface is full of metallic objects with very complex shapes and reflections everywhere(and you have military safety standards, my uncle got cancer(and died) after working with military radars as an engineer and working so close to them). My uncle could not prove the connection but if thousands of people start getting cancer after those devices are common it will be much easier to prove.
With cameras you have millions of points array for cheap that lets you differentiate things much better than simple radars do.
Imagine that you integrate all the colors that go in a camera to a single color. That is what you have with radar sensors.
Side note: Sorry about your uncle, but I do wish to point out, radar is non ionizing and extremely unlikely to cause mutation. What is more likely carcinogenic is stuff like degreasers, paints, fluids, and open burn pits the military likes to use.
See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.23988
The more appropriate question if the autopilot is worth it if it has to be carefully watched by humans.
Last time I checked the Netherlands was a different country. lol
By the way: https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/dmca-ignored-countries/
The non-DMCA parts of copyright are pretty much the same in USA as across the whole world, as they have been harmonized with international treaties. The extra requirements of DMCA (e.g. restrictions on circumventing technical measures of copyright protection), however, are country-specific and not widespread elsewhere.
Invade our capital?
NFI does plenty of research on its own.
> The NFI found that Tesla had complied with data requests from the Dutch authorities, but left out a lot of data that could have proven useful.
They asked for data, were given data, when they looked further they found it was incomplete.
I don't think there's anything particularly weird about this; if you're investigating something, you probably shouldn't uncritically trust the object of your investigation.
https://vidstromlabs.com/blog/the-legal-boundaries-of-revers...
Seeing as “the vehicles also record speed, accelerator pedal position, steering wheel angle and brake usage” and that personal data is "information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual", that sounds in scope of GDPR to me. I’d like to know what lawful basis they are using for this. I can see no other valid basis other than consent.
Tesla being less than forthcoming about what personal data they are processing is likely also problematic when it comes to the right to be informed too.