Live data from Hacker News

Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

reuters.com

361–370 of 521 posts

Re: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

#361
post #3
post #2

Honestly, every time Tesla or their overlord is in the news, I get closer to wanting to sell ours. The only three things keeping me here are: 1. It’s a waste to sell this and buy a new car 2. Tesla still have the best charging network by far 3. Tesla are one of the only car company outfitting their vehicles with decent processors. Which is extra important now that everyone moves their stuff to touch screens running L…

I can understand if you already have a Tesla. What blows my mind are the people continuing to buy new ones.

They’re the best available cars!

Re: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

#362

When I was working at Uber, we had a case of a guy stalking his ex-girlfriend's every movement through the backend. They eventually found out, fired him, and stepped up auditing.

Didn't this happen at Google a few years ago? I recall something about a guy that was accessing his ex's Google data, like email, chats, contacts, and so on.

Yep: https://www.gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalke...

Re: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

#363
post #206
post #21

Wake me up when there's an EV that is just a car and not an always-connected surveillance device on wheels.

Our Chevy bolt was just that. Just a normal car, but electric. We have an Audi etron now and I can’t stand it. I miss the bolt.

The Bolt itself was excellent, app was hands down the worst app I've ever installed on my phone.

What is wrong with the Audi?

Re: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

#364
post #339
post #67

Wanted to get Model Y in the past. Nice comfy car, huge backseat and… a camera filming inside the car. Thanks no. Apparently for drowsiness detection, but I am not buying it. Time of flight camera staring at the driver’s face is kinda normal in car industry. Not a normal color camera filming everything and streaming somewhere like Tesla does.

It’s not on unless you turn it on. Also: black tape is a thing.

Accepting that privacy intrusion is the default state and putting the onus on users to individually combat it will lead us to some very dark places.

Re: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

#365
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eberhard sued Musk challenging his right to call himself a founder and the case resolved such that Musk gets to keep calling himself a founder. Musk was a major source of funding early on, putting in about 6 million out of a 7 million dollar raise, served as chairman of the board, headed product design for the Roadster, and took over as CEO before they launched the Roadster. Tesla publicly acknowledges him as a found…

Yes, Musk bought the Founder title from Eberhard. In some countries, "moral rights" ban the practice of buying and selling the right to change facts like authorship.

You're allowing your personal feelings for Musk to interfere with facts. Musk provided money, design, and leadership at critical early stages of the company. He's obviously a founder and you are simply wrong for disputing that.

Re: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

#366
post #109

If this is true, shame on Tesla . If this is true, I expect the company will face a mass lawsuit from Tesla EV owners, many of whom have deep pockets. If this is true, whoever enabled or did it should pay .

> I expect the company will face a mass lawsuit from Tesla EV owners Doubt it. Tesla still hasn't really faced any consequences for selling FSD capabilities that don't yet exist, and for a lot of money. They haven't faced any real consequences for removing capabilities from their customers' cars with no renumeration. Tesla owners are a loyal bunch and forgive a lot.

Not sure what capabilities you think don't exist, everything I paid for is working on my car right now.

Re: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

#367
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, that code is strictly worse. Because while the website on the laptop looks fine, there is a database on the laptop which has all the sensitive information. Anyone with access to the laptop just makes a backup of that database and the damage is done.

It's hard for me to say whether you are correct or not; I was under the impression that the data was updated on the DB instance, and in that case I stand by what I said (the prod data would end up on the laptop, but then as soon as the command was run, it would get permanently obfuscated). If the data was just obfuscated on screen, then yes, perhaps you are correct. Something I have seen done before that I thought wa…

Not that it matters greatly, but FYI this app ran on a product called 4th Dimension, a 4GL app-building environment running a proprietary database on Macintosh desktop systems. They also had a client-server version that ran on local networks. There was a runtime engine, or for big money you could buy a compiler that would build standalone executables.

They eventually pivoted to supporting the web (and PHP!), but this story predates all of that.

4th Dimension was orginally called "Silver Surfer," and it is the centerpiece of a story Guy Kawasaki used to tell about how big companies work. Apple was trying to get everyone to write software for the new Macintosh, they gave free hardware and engineering support to Ashton-Tate to port its popular PC database to Mac, &c.

Meanwhile, indie companies like Aldus (who would go on to literally rescue Apple when they released PageMaker) and ACIUS (A company Guy formed in partnership with the original developer to distribute 4th Dimension) shipped software that people actually bought and actually used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Dimension_(software)

Apple would have done better if they'd told people like Ashton-Tate to "Ship or GTFO," but the history of technology companies is one of people skating to where the puck has been...

Re: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

#368
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> thinking that Tesla employees are seeing and sharing images from inside the car? It's worse! The cars recorded videos (while off) of private residences, garages etc. The lead quote is "we could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids" If that doesn't cause you concern, I don't know what would.

The car doesn’t have an “on” and “off”. There is no switch. The car specifically has Sentry mode for recording continuously while parked. There’s a very detailed Data Sharing settings right in the UI where you turn on or off sharing any clips with Tesla, and you have to click Yes for the car to share these clips.

Let's allow for a minute that the existence of the privacy-intruding footage is, as you insinuate, the user's fault. Is it also their fault that it was shared for entertainment and turned into memes?

Re: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

#369
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you must understand is that this is human nature not "private companies." When I was in high school I had a friend who worked at one of those 1-hr photo processing places. People would bring their film in to have prints made. And there were no small numbers of "intimate" photos on those rolls of film. Yes even in the days of film cameras, people took photos of themselves in sexual situations. Of course my friend…

> If you're building something that handles photo/video images you must expect it and build in privacy from the ground up. I agree with this as part of a bigger solution. There should also be privacy regulations with serious consequences for negligence or abuse. If private customer data were a liability due to the risk of huge fines from misbehaving employees, companies would collect a heck of a lot less of it. Right…

To go further, it should also go down on someone's permanent record so that they aren't allowed to work in the same field for someone new. This shouldn't be like being a priest where you just get rotated to a new area but get to continue doing what you got in trouble for in the first place.

Re: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

#370
post #67

Wanted to get Model Y in the past. Nice comfy car, huge backseat and… a camera filming inside the car. Thanks no. Apparently for drowsiness detection, but I am not buying it. Time of flight camera staring at the driver’s face is kinda normal in car industry. Not a normal color camera filming everything and streaming somewhere like Tesla does.

Get a German car. Privacy is taken extremely seriously here in Germany. In all walks of life. Companies, schools, doctor‘s offices, etc. Edit: I wouldn’t want to touch a Tesla even if it was gifted to me. Seeing the founder behave the way he does (latest incident: Changing Twitter’s logo to a shitcoins image) makes him extremely unsympathetic to me.

>Privacy is taken extremely seriously here in Germany

I find this hard to believe considering their numerous lies about their car emissions and the extent they went to cover it up.

Post reply on HN