Privacy

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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.

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Driver facing camera in cars (lemmy.ml)

submitted 20 hours ago by aikhae@lemmy.ohaa.xyz to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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.

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[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I don’t see why a vehicle needs to connect to the internet at all.

Remote start (ICE) or remote starting heater (EV, ICE with Webasto) is a nice feature. Ability to check the status of your doors (are they locked), windows (maybe you left them open because it was hot and then the rain sensor didn't close them), etc. All great features. Ability to track it is great if you have kids and let them drive, I guess - mine isn't that old yet.

It would be much nicer if you could route all of that to your HA server instead of the manufacturer's server though.

But the thing is, cars before 2015-ish were actually kinda comfy.

Is why I keep driving utterly depreciated formerly executive/luxury shitboxes! Okay, I had one 2019 Mercedes, best car I've ever owned, other than the privacy issues. But you can get 90% of the actual physical car features that car offered in a car manufactured before they started connecting 'em to the internet. Would only be missing the 9G-Tronic transmission and the super efficient engine that made it feel like I was driving for free.

Now my dream car is a 2010-2012 Range Rover (L322). First of the ones with the good 4.4 diesel engine and the extremely good ZF 8 speed transmission. Last of the ones with the sexy boxy body shape. Connectivity? GPS, radio, bluetooth (only for calls). No internet. Price? About 10-15k EUR for a decent one. Good luck finding a brand new car for less than 100k with the same comfort level and towing capacity. Maintenance costs? OK if you know how to wrench, literal bankruptcy material if you don't.