Privacy

48886 readers

1031 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

428

Driver facing camera in cars (lemmy.ml)

submitted 21 hours ago by aikhae@lemmy.ohaa.xyz to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

253 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello people, my family recently bought a Renault 5 e-tech. The car itself is great, but there are some aspects that creep me out, especially the driver-facing camera. We didn't actually know that such a camera existed before we bought the car, it was only mentioned as the car was given to us.

The cameras official purpose is to see, if you are tired and paying attention to the road, by some "AI magic", I suppose. You can also let it scan your face, so that you automatically get logged into your profile.

I personally think, that that is kinda creepy, especially as there is no visual indication if the camera is currently recording and no official way to disable the camera hardware-wise. When it is being coverd, the car immediately complains about it.

When talking to friends or family about it, I got one of two reactions: equal concern, or "nice feature actually", "what about the camera on your laptop?", "you are way too paranoid", "I have noting to hide; it is only me driving being recorded".

I have also seen such cameras in other cars, BYD for example.

What do you think, is this creepy or am I too paranoid? Does anyone know where the actual data is processed, on device or on some cloud server? Do you have any experience with such cameras? I couldn't really find any information about it on the internet.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] valar@lemmy.ca 8 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

If you're in the EU these systems are mandatory which is also why the car complains when the cameras are covered.

Mind-boggling if true. There's no way I would own such a car.

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I mean, there is a fairly good argument to be made for safety features that actually increase road safety. The tech and legislation requiring it is not bad, it's the unnecessary data-hoovering that can go on top of it that's bad. This is where we sort of rely on GDPR to provide at least some guard rails, although it isn't currently enough.

[–] valar@lemmy.ca 8 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I'm sure it does save lives. That does not justify invading everyone's privacy with a video wiretap in every car. As you and another commenter pointed out, it would be fine if it was self contained and we could trust the car wasn't radioing to various corporations and governments. But we know for a fact that they are. As long as the car is able to transmit that data out of my control, I don't trust GDPR to protect me from being spied on with this camera.