from Hacker News

Musk Wanted to Spy on Drivers to Defend Tesla from Lawsuits

by unsolved73 on 9/19/23, 2:19 PM with 203 comments

  • by legitster on 9/19/23, 3:56 PM

    > By recording driver behavior, Musk could argue that driver error led to the accidents rather than Tesla technology

    We really need the US government to iron out the liability questions around self-driving. It's kind of a joke at this point.

    Tesla is offering people the ability to NOT DRIVE. In the case of an accident, they want to prove that the driver was being negligent by NOT DRIVING.

    Or you can take GM's approach and literally have cameras pointed at your eyes to make sure they are looking at the road and a steering wheel that can tell when you let go. And disable your ability to NOT DRIVE, whenever they detect you NOT DRIVING.

    In comparison, Tesla is at least being an "honest liar". They are giving you what you want, which is borderline illegal, and will rat you out for using it the first chance they get.

  • by JohnFen on 9/19/23, 2:47 PM

    Yet another in the growing list of reasons to never buy a Tesla. I would go further, that this is an instinct that Musk has tells me strongly to avoid using anything Musk has his fingers in.

  • by throwaway128128 on 9/19/23, 4:08 PM

    From the book on Musk:

    Musk was not happy. The concept of “privacy teams” did not warm his heart. “I am the decision-maker at this company, not the privacy team,” he said. “I don’t even know who they are. They are so private you never know who they are.” There were some nervous laughs. “Perhaps we can have a pop-up where we tell people that if they use FSD [Full Self-Driving], we will collect data in the event of a crash,” he suggested. “Would that be okay?”

    The woman thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “As long as we are communicating it to customers, I think we’re okay with that.”

    Glad this guy is the richest man in the world, we are in good hands. It's so comforting to see Musk's attitude when he found out about the privacy team and their temerity to bind him with silly "privacy rules".

  • by dmm on 9/19/23, 3:56 PM

    Every car will soon have inward facing cameras.

    In the 2021 infrastructure bill, by 2026 cars have to include technology that must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”

    The most straightforward way to implement this is with driver-facing cameras: "Sam Abuelsamid, principal mobility analyst for Guidehouse Insights, said the most likely system to prevent drunken driving is infrared cameras that monitor driver behavior."

    https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-te...

  • by mensetmanusman on 9/19/23, 4:18 PM

    First they used the data to defend Tesla from NYT reporters:

    https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/elon-musk-lays-out-his-evi...

    This is our future unless the govt demands companies stop spying.

  • by kneel on 9/19/23, 3:27 PM

    There are several videos on PH of ppl doing the deed while autopilot drives the car for them, not saying that excuses privacy concerns but this issue is complicated by a rollout of autonomous features.

    Tesla wants your car to do most of the work but doesn't want to be liable if you're not paying attention and/or misusing the feature.

  • by travisporter on 9/19/23, 4:07 PM

    I wish there was like a debunking or common counterarguments website or something to everyone who gives the same excuses to forgive this behavior - I have nothing to hide, everyone’s doing it, I’m not significant enough for them to spy on me, they have to make money somehow etc. As it stands, I feel like even if they started live-streaming every camera on YouTube, people would still not care

  • by neilv on 9/19/23, 3:50 PM

    It's a little poetic: the techbros got the money to buy those Teslas through worse secret privacy violations of everyone else.

  • by ilyt on 9/19/23, 3:26 PM

    Actual news would be him not wanting to do it.

  • by mannyv on 9/19/23, 5:46 PM

    It's not spying if consent is given.

    The good thing is that every idea is considered. The bad thing is that every idea is considered.

    The difference, in Musk organizations, is that ideas are aired out. You might think that's a bad thing, but would you rather have this executives slipping backdoors into your products without anyone knowing?

    If you notice, the manager in question wasn't afraid to push back on Musk. That's a big difference between Musk companies and your company: in your company a manager would probably fold and just do it.

  • by User23 on 9/19/23, 3:03 PM

    What legally keeps them from just putting that you agree to be snooped on in the Terms of Service?

  • by pupppet on 9/19/23, 4:23 PM

    Is autopilot really that important to everyone? I can't say I've ever been driving thinking I wish I could be doing absolutely nothing right now.

  • by nojvek on 9/20/23, 1:41 PM

    Tesla has good ideas, but stupid execution.

    Comma.ai has driver monitoring, GM cars have driver monitoring, Hyundai/Toyotas and probably many others yell at you if the hands are not on the steering wheel.

    Tesla pure vision based autopilot makes a ton of bad decisions and sudden turns that no sane human will ever make.

    Yes, on principle I agree that vision via cameras should be sufficient for perception. However the algorithms and training are not there yet.

    Kudos to Waymo and Cruise getting license to operate in California without drivers 24/7 and doing 100s of successful rides per day. We can shit on them for using 250,000 lidar rigs that only companies blessed by infinite VC money can afford but they passed that objective milestone. Tesla has not and probably unlikely for next 5 years.

    Waymo and Cruise have shown that they actually give a fuck about safety, while Tesla has their heads in sand ignoring what their system is actually capable of offloading risk to their drivers.

  • by GaryNumanVevo on 9/19/23, 7:11 PM

    Not to mention Tesla employees were sharing pictures and videos of customer's external cameras. Including Elon's own Tesla.

    https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...

  • by jsight on 9/19/23, 4:01 PM

    If you are a driver suing, wouldn't you want this data to prove your case? That the company recognizes it would help their case instead and the accusers wouldn't want it is itself interesting.

    Also, these cameras shouldn't exist in non-robotaxi use cases. And since Teslas don't exist as robotaxis, that means these cameras shouldn't exist too.

  • by cs702 on 9/19/23, 4:23 PM

    The road to privacy hell is paved with... financial motives.

    (Paraphrasing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road_to_hell_is_paved_with... )

  • by rchaud on 9/19/23, 4:17 PM

    > Musk proposed a pop-up message, informing customers that data would be collected if they used the Full Self-Driving Beta feature. This placated the manager.

    Anybody building Ublock Element Zapper for TeslaOS?

  • by panick21_ on 9/19/23, 5:10 PM

    Is it just me or is it totally reasonable in a review the cars sensor data in a case of an accident?