Tesla Employees Play "America's Funniest Dashcam Videos" on Internal Messaging System

[Mnky313]

Summary

A group of Tesla employees shared videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras on an internal messaging system between 2019 and 2022, according to interviews with nine former employees by Reuters. Some recordings featured Tesla customers in compromising or embarrassing situations, while others were of crashes, road rage incidents, dogs, and funny road signs. Several former employees said that the program they used at work could show the location of recordings, potentially revealing where a Tesla owner lived. Tesla did not respond to Reuters’ detailed questions.

 

Quotes

Quote

Some of the recordings caught Tesla customers in embarrassing situations. One ex-employee described a video of a man approaching a vehicle completely naked.

Quote

“We could see inside people's garages and their private properties,” said another former employee. “Let's say that a Tesla customer had something in their garage that was distinctive, you know, people would post those kinds of things.”

Quote

Tesla states in its online “Customer Privacy Notice” that its “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.” But seven former employees told Reuters the computer program they used at work could show the location of recordings – which potentially could reveal where a Tesla owner lived.

My thoughts

Holy FUCK. Though I can't say I'm that shocked by this, it's expected they are collecting data/footage to train the AI model however some of the footage is from inside people's garages while the car is 'off'... I'm not sure how much training data could really be gathered from those situations...

Also, Tesla claims the footage is 'anonymous' however it's pretty simple for someone to figure out who the footage belongs to if it has the location (assuming it's parked in their own home).

This is just another reason I hate putting cameras on everything, especially something that's inside your home and always connected to the internet.

 

Sources

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/

https://petapixel.com/2023/04/06/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-captured-by-owners-cars-report/

 

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by Mnky313
Removing quoted link

[Zando_]

Mmmm cloud connected car, what a great idea. 

[da na]

Not surprised, but still...

[StDragon]

Future disclaimer?

"Your video will be recorded and stored for quality assurance"

Got to train that AI you know...yeah...

[DildorTheDecent]

Common Tesla L.

[wanderingfool2]

A few notes, Reuters said they tried contacting 300 former employees; of which they claimed dozens agree to talk but only 9 made those claims (but all of them couldn't back up their claim).

 

Another thing to note, the division that was they are claiming was doing it was all let go a year ago.

 

One other thing to note about this as well; it seems like even based on the claim that it would only apply to the people who agreed send short video clips to Tesla.

[Remixt]

I turned my Tesla in early when I left Germany thankfully.

[soldier_ph]

It's not like they wouldn't already have your address if the Person who drives the Tesla also bought it for themselves. But yes this is very much concerning. I just hate the fact that alot of electric cars in someway have to have IoT features aka be connected to the Internet and have weird Software bugs which might even be able to kill you. I once used to be a fan of their Cars but I wouldn't ever buy one now. I just want an electric Car with no Bullsh*t because I really enjoy how cool and efficient electric Motors are.

[Zando_]

13 minutes ago, soldier_ph said:

I just want an electric Car with no Bullsh*t because I really enjoy how cool and efficient electric Motors are.

Time to do a Tesla swap on a normal car . They lock you out of their systems and chargers after you mess with the hardware anyways, so you just get the chonker battery cell setup and powerful motors, and none of the Tesla brand BS. 

[TetraSky]

Oh the Irony between the Restrict Act / TikTok ban attempt and this... The jokes writes themselves.

 

I'm not even surprised. When something is always connected, it's because it is always spying. But I'm sure daddy Elon will try to gaslight everybody and either not acknowledge this at all, or pretend it wasn't that bad.

[Arika]

2 hours ago, Caroline said:

Ah yes, more fuel to light the fires of my ravenous hatred for smart and cloud connected devices full of cameras and microphones.

This one I can understand why people are upset,  they didn't think this would happen. What I dont understand is people willing putting internet connected cameras all over the outside and inside of their houses.

 

We've seen enough "leaks" where people have been able to access cameras because of an ""oversight"", it's certainly made me never want any iot devices.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Mnky313 said:

Quotes

My thoughts

Holy FUCK. Though I can't say I'm that shocked by this, it's expected they are collecting data/footage to train the AI model however some of the footage is from inside people's garages while the car is 'off'... I'm not sure how much training data could really be gathered from those situations...

 

Not shocked at all. This IS the reason why all this shit is cloud connected. For "telemetry" aka, spying.

 

Maybe the intent was not to find people in compromising situations, but if you think the reason for connecting it to the internet was just for software updates, sorry. No. That was never the case.

 

The intent, was almost certainly to sell the data to insurance companies.

3 hours ago, Mnky313 said:

Also, Tesla claims the footage is 'anonymous' however it's pretty simple for someone to figure out who the footage belongs to if it has the location (assuming it's parked in their own home).

 

It's probably only anonymous as far as to identifying the owner by name. If the owner sits on their car naked, and someone comes to boink them while shouting their name, that's probably not going to be anonymous enough.

 

3 hours ago, Mnky313 said:

This is just another reason I hate putting cameras on everything, especially something that's inside your home and always connected to the internet.

 

 

I'm perfectly OK with cameras in public places if it pushes the crime out of it. Playgrounds, Parks, vehicle Parkades. OK. I don't want cameras inside the home that are connected to anything that connects to the internet, I don't want cameras inside the home to have any wireless functionality.

 

 

[Mnky313]

55 minutes ago, Kisai said:

I'm perfectly OK with cameras in public places if it pushes the crime out of it. Playgrounds, Parks, vehicle Parkades. OK. I don't want cameras inside the home that are connected to anything that connects to the internet, I don't want cameras inside the home to have any wireless functionality.

Yeah, I dislike cameras in general but in certain places it makes sense, like security cameras or even dashcams however I strongly dislike the tread of internet connected cameras. And yeah, if I do put cameras in my home they absolutely will not have access to the internet...

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

The intent, was almost certainly to sell the data to insurance companies.

Except their privacy policy specifically states they won't sell the data or transmit it to third parties (although there is a caveat for crash events)

 

Also it's more to do with the vision system of Teslas...although the other telemetry data is for Tesla Insurance (which is used to charge you based on driving habits)

 

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

It's probably only anonymous as far as to identifying the owner by name. If the owner sits on their car naked, and someone comes to boink them while shouting their name, that's probably not going to be anonymous enough.

I think they said that it doesn't associate the video clips with names and VIN's...doesn't specify it doesn't include location though.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Except their privacy policy specifically states they won't sell the data or transmit it to third parties (although there is a caveat for crash events)

As they say, don't chalk up to malice what might be chalked up to stupidity. 

 

Tesla recording this stuff is to protect their interests. Not their customers. It's likely that maybe it gathers too much "by accident" because the video recordings are triggered by motion sensors. You know for like people banging into your car when it's parked.

 

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Also it's more to do with the vision system of Teslas...although the other telemetry data is for Tesla Insurance (which is used to charge you based on driving habits)

See above.

 

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I think they said that it doesn't associate the video clips with names and VIN's...doesn't specify it doesn't include location though.

It probably doesn't unless a collision event is registered. By which it's likely the car can send MORE data to analyze the collision. But if it's just going "what the hell is this" to tesla staff, and tesla staff have a laugh at it, that's misuse of the data.

 

 

[Fasterthannothing]

I laugh so hard at people expecting any semblance of privacy by connecting cameras to the cloud. 

[suicidalfranco]

the more time passes the more i'm inclined to buy older cars than the one i own, and the one i have now is from 2009. 

[Uttamattamakin]

This is not really a surprise to me.  AI's get trained on data from people and people do stupid ignorant things like this.   This will lead to AI's that reflect, not improve on, what their creators did. 

[Kisai]

9 hours ago, Caroline said:

Just to clarify, normal cameras, not facial and walking pattern recognition cameras.

But you'd need to have someone monitor those cameras, which takes us back to the beginning, employees doing dumb stuff with them instead of alerting the police. In my country an inspector caught employees using the cameras to zoom in on cleavages and butts instead of looking for sus activities. My taxes in action.

Again, don't chalk up to malice what can be chalked up to stupidity.

 

If you deploy cameras in parkades, parks and playgrounds, that is to avoid having to deploy people to patrol those. The fact that the camera is there means the drug dealers, car thieves/B&E's and vandals will avoid those. Whoever is remotely monitoring the camera, be it a human or an AI can go "suspicious activity" and push it to a human to go "send someone, record evidence" or "ignore"

 

I'm not suggesting that bored people are never going to not do stupid things, but because public places are paid for by tax payers, and tax payers ultimately end up paying for repairing vandalism, it's generally in the public's interests to monitor such places owned by the city. If people know there are cameras, they are typically going to avoid doing obvious crimes in front of them. If the cameras exist, but cops are never dispatched when vandals are smashing up the playground, then they may as well not exist.

 

Big city problems are the same as small city problems, but it's far cheaper for the big city to employ people to do something proactive about vandalism, than have to repair things over and over again. 

 

9 hours ago, Caroline said:

For playgrounds and parks just send in incognito cops and it'll work better.

How so? Parks are not going to be full of people every day of the week. They're generally well used during the weekends, and the rest of the week, if it's not a tourist attraction, it might end up being a 3pm-7pm thing, and mostly people taking their dogs for a walk.

 

9 hours ago, Caroline said:

Oh, and it is possible to make an EV that doesn't requires any stupid internet connected "feature", after all it's only a car just with batteries that move motors that in turn move mechanical parts, you don't need internet to do that.

There was never any reason for an EV to be connected to the internet. It gets connected to the internet because people are incentivized to.

 

9 hours ago, Caroline said:

"b-but muh crime whatif it gets stolen" well, the solution to that isn't creating a hellish coffin that tracks every move you make but making the streets safer so criminals don't take your car, I seriously don't get that way of thinking, if it can even be called thinking.

People really over-estimate how well cameras work as security features. It works as a deterrent, primarily. The idea that "oh, if something happens, a camera spotted it" rather than "the camera's never sleep and record everything" It's just impractical to record 24/7, let alone know the difference between a cat deciding to sleep on the hood of the car, and someone trying open the doors without the key.

 

Like people who live in big cities, often just leave the doors unlocked on their cars because people will smash-and-grab, and it's cheaper to not have to repair the windows. Like the people who patrol the shopping parkades will actually leave notes on cars telling people to not leave valuables in cars if to so much as leave an aux-cable plugged in.

 

 

[Quackers101]

EV's dont need internet, but most features do and maybe some updates or security patches. Although wish one had more control, like bought cars to own.

 

To train AI can be nice, if focused on one thing only (to national security risks). To not all cameras need to be connected to that part. Privacy, inside, outside or from third parties to hackers.

 

Tracking, gps, road mapping, cloud point or image reconstruction of privacy related content from all kinds of sensor data? Keys? Number pads/security locks, tracking in a network like tesla, means a lot of other people can be tracked or used for selling data on without knowing. which again could be used with other data points for further personally targeted content or attacks.

 

Not to say tracking has becomed worse over time anyways, be it from space, sensors, apps and devices, to try and stop terror or other crimes. Some said it got worse since covid in general about tracking. Also that in the future/now, we have so much data to go on about, which can target you both inside the home and outside, with greater detail by the decade or every half decades.

 

More signals and collections, that could at some point know behind walls everything you touch or move. As we go for stronger and more advanced tech + AI that can handle large amounts of data.

[wanderingfool2]

On 4/6/2023 at 6:20 PM, Kisai said:

As they say, don't chalk up to malice what might be chalked up to stupidity. 

 

Tesla recording this stuff is to protect their interests. Not their customers. It's likely that maybe it gathers too much "by accident" because the video recordings are triggered by motion sensors. You know for like people banging into your car when it's parked.

Except that the bit you quoted was a direct reply to you saying "The intent, was almost certainly to sell the data to insurance companies." which it clearly isn't as Tesla doesn't sell information to third parties and it's specifically stated in the TOS that they dont sell it.

 

The bit regarding malice with stupidity I would more apply the to all those former employees who were doing such things.  Should again be noted though, if the article is right in the division that got access to this then all those people were already let go close to a year ago (as they shut down that division, where the AI model took over their job)

 

5 hours ago, Quackers101 said:

EV's dont need internet, but most features do and maybe some updates or security patches. Although wish one had more control, like bought cars to own.

Lots of the Tesla features are added utilizing internet (sentry mode being one of them)

 

Again, it seems as though you have to still opt into the telemetry data that was sent.

 

 

As a major side note as well, the US government has regulated the detection of DUI (breathalizer) in order to drive the vehicle (which could come into effect as early as 2026).  So at a certain point either vision systems will need to train on what a DUI person looks like (so needing to grab more user data) or we add an extra thousand or two onto the pricetag of new vehicles to have the devices that can detect alcohol.

[Jito463]

I have zero trust that cameras won't be abused, or at least can't potentially be abused.  I believe this so much, that I make it a point to put a cover over the front facing camera of any cell phone I own and carry.  Not because I believe I am being watched, but because I know it can happen.  I was looking at cell phone replacements recently, and one explicitly touted a feature something the lines of "enhanced facial tracking".  That was enough for me not to want that model.  I don't need my phone to track anything.  If I'm taking a picture of it, I'll do it myself.

On 4/7/2023 at 3:16 AM, suicidalfranco said:

the more time passes the more i'm inclined to buy older cars than the one i own, and the one i have now is from 2009. 

I have two vehicles and both of them are from the 90's, and I'm fine with that.

[Mnky313]

31 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I have two vehicles and both of them are from the 90's, and I'm fine with that.

My vehicle is from 2000 and yeah, I have no intention of replacing it.

One of my favourite parts of it is that it feels like you're in control, not the car. No annoying dings, beeps, or interference for doing anything. I don't need my car to ding 87 times if I don't have my door closed/seatbelt on while driving 3 mph in a parking lot... (to be clear I absolutely wear a seatbelt 100% of the time when driving on the road, I don't need an annoying chime to remind me)

I own the damn car, let me fucking feel like it.