Tesla equips its EVs with a ton of Autonomous driving hardware, including sensors, cameras, radars, etc.
A shocking report found that Tesla cars recorded video clips of people in their private space and the internal employees used to share it around. This has raised concerns regarding personal space and privacy invasion, which is a massive topic in many countries worldwide. Tesla installs cameras, sensors, and a bunch of other electronic hardware which act as the eyes of the car. This is done to calibrate the vehicle for autonomous driving, Auto Pilot, as Tesla likes to call it. But there have been instances of Tesla cars recording unwanted videos of people in their private space.
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Tesla Cars Record Private Video
There was a report by Reuters recently where it interviewed nine former Tesla employees. It was revealed that between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared highly invasive video and images recorded by customers’ cars via an internal messaging system. However, Tesla says that the data recorded by its vehicles is kept anonymous and there are no details of the customers to protect their privacy. It is not linked to the person or the car. In one of these instances, a Tesla car owner appeared toward the car naked.
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This is a grave concern that is plaguing the industry and policymakers. While such features are needed to advance in the technological aspect to promote Autonomous driving or even ADAS functions to enhance the safety of the passengers, there can always be misuse of such functions as seen here. In fact, in the EU, the authorities have passed a law prohibiting Tesla cars from recording everything all the time. It is switched off by default and only turns on when the owner wishes to.
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In China, Tesla cars are not allowed in some highly-classified government locations for the exact same reason. Therefore, it is a route that needs to be traversed carefully. The invasion of private data is a huge aspect of modern times. Our data is everywhere on the internet and can easily be misused in the wrong hands. Hence, we must be careful regarding such activities. Also, governments around the globe will need to pass decisive measures regarding this technology to ensure that such cases are not repeated.