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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

When I learned about that interior camera in my Model Y, this is exactly what I thought might happen. But, I didn't want to cover it, because I wasn't sure if that would look suspicious in the case I was in an accident.

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> I wasn't sure if that would look suspicious in the case I was in an accident.

No reasonable person would fault you for covering the camera. Assuming you still have the car, you have endless ammo for doing so. Including the fact that tesla employees were caught sharing video that was supposedly private.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...

People complain that Tesla doesn't do enough to prevent humans from defeating driver assist systems and then also complain about the privacy issues. Can't have it both way. Internal cameras are used to confirm you're attentive and eyes are on the road.

Tesla employees being overprivileged with regards to consumer data access is a corporate policy, legal, and governance issue, not a tech issue. Like any other company, if consumer data is accessed in a way exceeding legitimate business purposes, someone should be fired.

EDIT:

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-EDAD116...

> The cabin camera can determine driver inattentiveness and provide you with audible alerts, to remind you to keep your eyes on the road when Autopilot is engaged.

> 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 Y 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.

> To adjust your data sharing preferences touch Controls > Software > Data Sharing > Allow Cabin Camera Analytics. You can change your data sharing settings at any time.

(own Teslas, you are prompted to agree to different data sharing configurations before it is enabled)

>People complain that Tesla doesn't do enough to prevent humans from defeating driver assist systems and then also complain about the privacy issues. Can't have it both way. Internal cameras are used to confirm you're attentive and eyes are on the road.

Tesla took the cheap way out. Ford Bluecruise uses IR sensors to detect whether you're paying attention or not, as does GM Supercruise. They don't produce potentially embarrassing photos and videos. They also don't send that video back to a mothership for employees to share your private/embarrassing moments.

I thought the IR sensors also use cameras, just with infrared emitters to see in the dark?

You can have it both ways: the internal cameras can be used to compute attentiveness entirely within the car's local computer, any imagery could be immediately discarded after processing (or better, processed in a way where the imagery and algorithms are hardware-isolated from any computing modules connected to a network or permanent storage). This is similar to how Apple computes a successful face ID or fingerprint scan

"People" are not a unified bloc with a consistent set of non-conflicting opinions.

There is a "have it both ways" solution here. Do all the processing of the video feed in the car.

> But, I didn't want to cover it, because I wasn't sure if that would look suspicious in the case I was in an accident.

Now that's some chilling effect

It's suspicious if you habitually cover it right before the sensors show you're driving like a jackass.

I stuck a sliding webcam cover over it and have had no reason to uncover it.

Nothing like buying yourself a telescreen

Could someone invent a hologram cover for the camera that fools it?

> When I learned about that interior camera in my Model Y

Wait, Tesla cars video their users? Seriously?

I'm gobsmacked users tolerate and agree to this.

Yes, and Tesla employees freely share the video recordings when they find something they find interesting.

Or did.. hopefully not anymore.

They probably do. Elon's other company apparently has a global map view of every starlink tereminal and it's exact location that he watches. Why anyone would trust a product of his beats me...

I covered mine with a bit of post-it note. I'm sure masking tape would do the trick as well.

All new cars have cameras, even ones that can see your eyes behind your sun glasses.

All new cars made to me Euro standards, there's still new cars made solely for US markets which don't have these features.

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