Whenever I walk past a Tesla, I know it might be recording me, can be used to identify me, using its multitude of cameras and other sensors that stream everything to the mothership when in the so-called Sentry mode. Why do we accept this invasion of privacy? Why is it even allowed? And what do other car companies do?
Why this is funny. When I walk home I often see cars illegally parking on the sidewalk. But should I dare taking pictures of that and publishing them here, it is considered to be an invasion of privacy in Germany, unless I make the license plates and other recognisable artefacts of the cars unrecognisable.
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@DontSwitch Yeah. Tried that. Sent pix. Nothing happened as the City of Munich doesn't care.
@jwildeboer My way:
* Police has to take care of written (paper) reports, the city can decide a bit more
* Over 50 € they must not decide if they give a penalty
* Therefore I only report with reasons that bring it far over 50 best up to 80 € with one point, e. g. with describing how they obstructed, parked for over one hour or even caused danger.
@DontSwitch @jwildeboer and later everybody whines, when the ambulance can't get through
@condret @jwildeboer It's Germany. So it's fine if it's blocked by a car... 🙄
@DontSwitch @jwildeboer nah, i keep parking partially on the sidewalk instead

@condret @jwildeboer Oh, I didn't know you are an egoist hating people. Otherwise you would park on a space for cars without blocking anyone, and without shrinking the space for pedestrians or even blocking people in wheelchairs or with strollers, while destroying public infrastructure not made for the weight of your car.

Really funny, since I read your ambulance comment in the way where people park (on the sidewalk) in emergency lanes, at corners or narrow points, where just all lose.

@DontSwitch @jwildeboer if people didn't park on the sideway of the street where i live, ambulance wouldn't pass through
@DontSwitch @jwildeboer why do you assume, that i block the sidewalk so that a wheelchair couldn't get through?

@jwildeboer

Which is a perversion of jurisdiction in its own right. Of course, when an object is left on the street, it must be legal to photograph it and publish the pictures. It is public space.

@CGdoppelpunkt In Germany cars have more rights than humans, it seems ...
@CGdoppelpunkt @jwildeboer I don‘t think so. It is a case of interest for neighbours and the neighbourhood only. But to present such stupid honks here? It's not nice to denounce someone. Everyone knows how stupid drivers can be. They're always sitting in their cars and letting them run, blocking bike paths, taking the right of way away from motorcyclists. The "reporting" reminds me of what this weird guy does. This „Anzeigenhauptmeister“ (https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzeigenhauptmeister).
Anzeigenhauptmeister – Wikipedia

@jwildeboer it's btw also not allowed that the City of Munich takes pictures of all cars to check if they have a valid parking permit, they are allowed to just take pictures of those cars where staff can't spot an permit on the car. Just because a law is missing, and the City is not allowed to make laws. Ridiculous.
@jwildeboer To be fair, if Swasticompany or an individual Swasticar owner publishes your image without anonymization, it’s also protected.
@jwildeboer I'm not a lawyer, but all judgements I've read only speak about the license plate being a piece of "personal information", which has to be protected (and according to the DSGVO this only applies to "real" people, but not to companies/instances).
And if one decides to make their car "recognisable" I guess they have to live with the implications.

@jwildeboer It's always interesting to me how Germany and the US diverged on this, and for good reasons on both sides.

  • Germany has good reasons to be concerned about the risks of scanning, profiling, indexing, and categorizing citizens at scale.

  • America, historically, relied on community policing to enforce laws and norms in circumstances where the centralized authority wasn't strong enough to do so. As a concrete example, income tax records started public because there wasn't a big enough IRS to audit them. If you saw your rich neighbor reported zero income (in the public records), you could drop a dime on them.

I think both approaches are partial, and both have room for growth.

@jwildeboer Interesting. Reading your post I realise that, in NL, your home security cameras are not allowed to film outside your property 🤔
@h5e @jwildeboer which even the police pushes you to violate, we would love a crackdown on this

Other car brands use and sell collected information about vehicle owners too.

In most cases, customers react like this -> 🤷‍♂️, as they supposedly have nothing to hide. They aren‘t the slightest bit aware of the extent of this and aren‘t even interested in it.

@jwildeboer

@HolyCrap I am not a customer, though. I am just a pedestrian walking by. I din't buy that car, I didn't sign any waiver.
@jwildeboer it’s not allowed, but as long as nobody complains it carries on. You can ask @aeris what he thinks about the GDPR implications of Tesla cams…
@jwildeboer between government cctv, cars and doorbells, you have precious little privacy left in public...
@jwildeboer It's strange because you must not film public ground next to your front door (in theory).
@jwildeboer we should wear clothes with adversarial pixel patterns 😁

@DrVeronikaCH @jwildeboer or make the knowledge where Teslas bear their cams wildly available. So anybody who does not want to be filmed can take action.

Using shaving foam for instance to block the cameras causes no permanent damage and thus should have no legal consequences.

Of course this is only a temporary adhoc "solution" and the situation should be fixed. Just suggesting a hands on approach here.

@rhold @DrVeronikaCH @jwildeboer Shaving foam! What a good idea! I was thinking of electrician’s tape.

@ELS @DrVeronikaCH @jwildeboer I also highly recommend getting those liquid chalk markers in case you want to leave a (non permanent) message on a car, which looks pretty much like a permanent.

This shouldn't constitute a demolition of property. However watch your message, so you cannot be punished for it.

@jwildeboer Is there a guide on blinding those cameras on a stranger's car?
@jwildeboer another good reason to flip off every tesla you pass by 👍
@jwildeboer Duct tape usually does the trick.

@TomDB @jwildeboer

Or maybe these stickers?

@jwildeboer They do just exactly the same, since the various "helper-apps" preventing you from speeding, looking for you if it is safe to drive left/right/backwards need these cams.
@jwildeboer
Here’s something good to wear for the cameras if a Tesla does something particularly offensive.

@jwildeboer every strength is a weakness.

is it possible to overload a tesla camera array with noise, junk, non-visible light? can this lead to an upsetting of the mothership and cascade failure?

@jwildeboer Not that it's much of a difference, but Tesla at least claims that the video feed is only stored locally on the USB-drive. Accessing the live feed from the app uses a direct connection to the car and Tesla (claims it) cannot access the contents.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-56703182-8191-4DAE-AF07-2FDC0EB64663.html

Also, Sentry Mode is disabled by default, but one can probably assume that most owners have it activated in public places.

@jwildeboer @Viss Any time you walk past an ATM too, or most storefronts. You don't have an expectation of privacy in public spaces.
*Privacy Not Included: A Buyer’s Guide for Connected Products

All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label – making cars the worst category of products that we have ever reviewed

Mozilla Foundation
@jwildeboer Also, when talking about "safety feature" and "self-driving" 250 m seem really short, like at only 30 km/h it would only take 30 s to hit whatever is 250 m away. And people are driving way faster than that.
Travis (@coloradotravis.bsky.social)

Thanks ChatGPT. My friend who wants to do a funny prank by surprising my other friend will really appreciate this information.

Bluesky Social
@jwildeboer So , what I’m seeing is…that the passenger’s right side of the vehicle is the best, most vulnerable area to “affect change”. Make it so, internet!!!
@jwildeboer
Why don't you feel the same when you walk past the door with Amazon Ring?
@jwildeboer with am IR camera it should be possible to know if sentry mode is on as the tesla CPU is running to do image analysis.
I also think sentry mode is showing some infor on the car display while it's running.
1/2 @jwildeboer @mastodonmigration It might be reassuring for now to know that Tesla uses potatoes for cameras (the text in the image says as much as well). You might be able from the photage to recognize someone you know and expect to be there, but they have to be just a couple of meters away from the car. When they’re 10-15 meters away they become blobs.

2/2 @jwildeboer @mastodonmigration And also, the «sentry mode», as this surveillance is called, is draining the battery, so many owners have it turned off completely. And many are decent enough to have it recognizing that you’re parked at home or at work, setting it automatically to off in those locations so as not to film neighbours and friends.

Not all Tesla owners are AHs. Some of us were just unlucky some years ago to have to compromise in order to get the EV wave rolling. 🙂

@jwildeboer @Monolecte one reason why I am not reassured by Chinese electric cars overtaking Tesla - Tesla is bad, but at least openly so
Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

Tesla Inc assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us.” The cameras it builds <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musks-2018-tweet-tesla-union-campaign-illegal-us-court-rules-2023-03-31/" target="_blank">into vehicles</a> to assist driving, it notes on its website, are “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.”

Reuters

@jwildeboer afaik this is not actually allowed, and you can cease & desist someone for filming you without informing you about it; but the burden of proof is on you for showing that the material was recorded.

(background: we checked the legality of operating a video doorbell, and found out that it is so difficult to do this legally that we taped the camera shut)

@jwildeboer because setting fire to one would be considered "Arson."