Driver attention monitoring is very normal and required for any car with significant Assisted Driving technology, which is likely to be all new cars soon. I expect safety scoring schemes like Euro NCAP continue to give AD systems higher and higher weights in their scores over time.

A deadly piece of equipment monitoring a safety critical part of the control system (ie the driver) is totally normal and expected. That same piece of equipment surreptitiously phoning home to the manufacturer with the data is the part that isn't acceptable.

I want my car to monitor both me and the surroundings. I also want to be able to do things like speak in natural language to my phone, use my phone camera to OCR and translate documents from a foreign language, and all sorts of other 90s sci-fi stuff.

Unfortunately the future we were graced with is a dystopian reality where all of this is built on proprietary black boxes that spy on you 24/7. And somehow the government takes no issue with this state of affairs, instead constructing their own data feeds.

i don't read it that way. i take it more they're saying the problem is broader than just tesla.

These are not fully autonomous systems and we live in a very litigious society.

How do you propose these driverless / driver assist systems work?