Elon Musk remotely unlocked the Cybertruck for law enforcement and provided video from charging stations that the truck had visited to track the vehicle’s location
Wow… Telsa remote controls your car and watches everything you do with your car.
…with YOUR car.
Dystopia much?
Yet another reason not to buy a Tesla. Although in fairness, all cars are privacy nightmares nowadays. It’s just that most manufacturers, being less stupid and less in-your-face than Musk, try to stay low-key about the privacy invasion and don’t go around showing off their dystopian oversight capabilities over your property.
This isn’t surprising at all to anyone paying attention to what the Tesla app lets you do with your vehicle, or if they have interacted with Tesla support. All of that info is available in the app, including viewing not only live camera feeds from sentry mode, but also saved recordings from the USB drive installed in the vehicle now. Clearly if you can do that from the app, the company can do that and more.
Similar stuff is almost surely possible with any of the other manufacturers that have mobile apps with similar functionality as well.
Hell, shit like OnStar had similar functionality to remotely unlock vehicles before Tesla even existed.
What I mean was you can not subscribe to OnStar, and then you don’t have OnStar no more. The spying hardware is there, just not used.
As opposed to modern cars with which you don’t subscribe to anything and they spy on you without your consent, and there’s nothing you can do about it short of - like you said - ripping out the spying hardware.
I’ve wondered how hard it would be to turn off the cellular radio if you really cared enough.
I would suspect though that if you connected the car to your phones internet though it’d do all the snitching stuff that was queued. You’d probably need some sort of firewall on the phone blocking the cars communication, while still letting you play music.
I’ve wondered how hard it would be to turn off the cellular radio if you really cared enough.
You can but it’s not that simple: my neighbor found the antenna for his car’s spyware transmitter in the side-view mirror (can’t remember which car), cut the wire, and almost immediately, the dashboard reported a fault and started bitching and moaning that the car needed servicing.
OnStar freaked me out after an accident in a rental car a few years ago. We had no idea the rental car had it. We got rear ended by a drunk driver and spun 360 degrees off the road. Within a second or two of coming to a stop a voice was asking if we were ok.
My impression is the charging stations have cameras to deter and catch thieves. Tesla isn’t looking at your camera feeds unless you’ve enabled the right data sharing setting, in which case I imagine they could. Otherwise the charging stations / video comment is pointless because they could have watched the driver the entire way, not just at the stations.
Edit: Also the sharing of camera feeds if enabled, I’m pretty sure is only the external cameras, not the cabin camera.
And yes if you go to a charging station, of course they know you were there and can track your path between stations. You use a credit card when you’re at them and it authenticated your vehicle.
Right, but those were the external cameras and they had data sharing on.
If the car is getting data about how to park in a garage, and you have data sharing on, you might send it video of you parking your car in your garage.
Edit: Oh but this part isn’t good, but it sounds like they stopped - One ex-employee also said…Tesla would receive video recordings from its vehicles even when they were off, if owners gave consent. It has since stopped doing so.
With Tesla you can opt out. Other brands that do the same generally have no way to opt out
It’s part of the current trend to not let you be the final decision maker on IT equipment you own. Your phone does all it can to prevent you getting root access. Your home computer/laptop has a second processor in it running code you can’t change to enforce DRM
From TFA:
Wow… Telsa remote controls your car and watches everything you do with your car.
…with YOUR car.
Dystopia much?
Yet another reason not to buy a Tesla. Although in fairness, all cars are privacy nightmares nowadays. It’s just that most manufacturers, being less stupid and less in-your-face than Musk, try to stay low-key about the privacy invasion and don’t go around showing off their dystopian oversight capabilities over your property.
This isn’t surprising at all to anyone paying attention to what the Tesla app lets you do with your vehicle, or if they have interacted with Tesla support. All of that info is available in the app, including viewing not only live camera feeds from sentry mode, but also saved recordings from the USB drive installed in the vehicle now. Clearly if you can do that from the app, the company can do that and more.
Similar stuff is almost surely possible with any of the other manufacturers that have mobile apps with similar functionality as well.
Hell, shit like OnStar had similar functionality to remotely unlock vehicles before Tesla even existed.
Yeah but the crucial bit of difference was, if you thought OnStar was too invasive, you could turn it off or buy a car without it.
Good luck buying a car that isn’t online and snitching on you all the time, or disabling the telemetry today.
You can disable your own access to the service. Short of ripping out the cellular module, you can’t disable OnStar’s access.
What I mean was you can not subscribe to OnStar, and then you don’t have OnStar no more. The spying hardware is there, just not used.
As opposed to modern cars with which you don’t subscribe to anything and they spy on you without your consent, and there’s nothing you can do about it short of - like you said - ripping out the spying hardware.
I’ve wondered how hard it would be to turn off the cellular radio if you really cared enough.
I would suspect though that if you connected the car to your phones internet though it’d do all the snitching stuff that was queued. You’d probably need some sort of firewall on the phone blocking the cars communication, while still letting you play music.
You can but it’s not that simple: my neighbor found the antenna for his car’s spyware transmitter in the side-view mirror (can’t remember which car), cut the wire, and almost immediately, the dashboard reported a fault and started bitching and moaning that the car needed servicing.
This is why those of us who actually are paying attention have been planning to continue driving our 2000s-and-older cars indefinitely.
OnStar freaked me out after an accident in a rental car a few years ago. We had no idea the rental car had it. We got rear ended by a drunk driver and spun 360 degrees off the road. Within a second or two of coming to a stop a voice was asking if we were ok.
Are you… are you god? Am I dead?
YOUR car? I don’t think you’re understanding this correctly…
It sure looks like it was my money that flew from my bank account to the dealer’s.
No you misunderstand you’re actually purchasing a lease to car as a service, of course you don’t really own it.
Well, according to Musk, if I buy a Tesla car, I’m actually purchasing (or leasing, you’re probably factually correct) a robotic AI.
Because ya know… Elon Musk.
My impression is the charging stations have cameras to deter and catch thieves. Tesla isn’t looking at your camera feeds unless you’ve enabled the right data sharing setting, in which case I imagine they could. Otherwise the charging stations / video comment is pointless because they could have watched the driver the entire way, not just at the stations.
Edit: Also the sharing of camera feeds if enabled, I’m pretty sure is only the external cameras, not the cabin camera.
And yes if you go to a charging station, of course they know you were there and can track your path between stations. You use a credit card when you’re at them and it authenticated your vehicle.
I’ll just leave this here…
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/
Right, but those were the external cameras and they had data sharing on.
If the car is getting data about how to park in a garage, and you have data sharing on, you might send it video of you parking your car in your garage.
Edit: Oh but this part isn’t good, but it sounds like they stopped - One ex-employee also said…Tesla would receive video recordings from its vehicles even when they were off, if owners gave consent. It has since stopped doing so.
If you believe them.
I don’t.
With Tesla you can opt out. Other brands that do the same generally have no way to opt out
It’s part of the current trend to not let you be the final decision maker on IT equipment you own. Your phone does all it can to prevent you getting root access. Your home computer/laptop has a second processor in it running code you can’t change to enforce DRM