while unfortunate and unethical this is not surprising.
power asymmetry between provider and subscriber of any product or service will always be skewed towards provider. act accordingly to whatever degree is needed to ensure your safety and mental health. obviously there will be significant variance between persons in that regard.
i drive non-internet ice cars with comma openpilot. i’ve used every generation of their device. it also has a driver facing camera with full interior view.
i originally ran openpilot without internet except when updating, and would delete all camera data from the device before updating.
these days i leave toggled off upload driver camera, it defaults to off. i don’t use cellular, but i do let it connect to my home wifi for the brief moment before it gets unplugged and put in the glovebox.
my thinking has relaxed a bit because of the ubiquity of cameras around me. passengers in the car have 4 cameras, some very wide angle, typically being held at face level all the time. so do people in adjacent cars or on the sidewalk.
while you can cover your own cameras with easily removable opaque stickers, you can’t do that to the other cameras which inevitably surround you. audio recording is equally challenging to mitigate.
while this incident is serious and hopefully results in legal action and changed user behavior, this type of thing will only become more common.
the right approach is something like what snowden did in his early videos. be very aware that you are constantly surveiled, and go to extreme lengths to mitigate surveillance when necessary.
these days, when typing in our passwords or sharing intimacy, we all need blankets over our heads.
that said, public spaces are not a new concept. for better or worse the distinction between public and private space is changing. we will adapt and it will be fine.