Teslas monitor everything – including you [video] from WIRED

[squarefoot]

And, following recent events, now every parked Tesla is also a potential surveillance device for the surrounding area, with direct connection to the US government, possibly through famous 3 letter agencies.

[ides_dev]

Why even bother with one of those crusty old 3-letter agencies, when you can go straight to the top via your very own 4-letter (1 better!) agency: D.O.G.E.

[shaunpud]

Wasn't this the same with Ring doorbells?

[whamlastxmas]

This is true of literally any camera provider who stores video footage in the cloud

[akimbostrawman]

Nobody should be suprised by this. This applies to all proprietary blackboxes with unrestricted network access. Maybe now that people are comically angry at musk they at least act like they care.

[benterix]

Except the "comically" part (what does even mean? I'd call it "sad" if anything) I agree with you. You had (1) strong marketing and (2) lack of choice on one side, and a few tech folks that were expressing their concerns on this for years, except that the public at large didn't care - or didn't have much choice (e.g. when you buy a vacuum cleaner).

I hope this whole row will make people just a bit more aware. But it's hard to say how much it will help. An average person is powerless when seeing "Connect to Wi-Fi to complete setup" on their screen - whether it's their new TV set or a new laptop.

[whoitwas]

I would like to understand your position. Why do you think people being really mad is funny? To me, this reaction seems to be why Trump and Musk are able to troll and bully. It's because people think it's funny, but why? Are you a child? I mean literally.

[lnsru]

Ok, my old model Y has a camera inside to monitor me. 1€ AliExpress camera cover gave my privacy back. The new model y has a radar. So it will monitor not only my presence, but also my vital parameters as well as vital parameters of all passengers. No radar cover invented for that yet… it’s a bit too much. And since it’s already there it will be abused. That’s the path with all the technology.

[genewitch]

Aluminum foil ought work

[stvltvs]

Does it have a microphone? I don't know the answer, but inside the car, I'd be more worried about capturing conversations than the camera.

[mg]

I wonder if this is an argument for more public transport.

Electric buses make rides pretty cheap and comfortable. And shifting traffic from personal cars to buses would make mobility much more efficient. Because in a bus, 30 people can cross a crossing so much faster than in a line of 30 individual cars.

Would privacy also be better? Because the government is more trustworthy regarding the collection of movement data than private companies?

[kvakerok]

In your car you have an expectation of privacy. Public transport is by definition a public space and thus has no expectation of privacy. Whole different ruleset applies. Anyone can monitor you on a bus. Without your consent too.

[raxxorraxor]

We had electric busses in our city. They were awesome. The were far less noisy and didn't stink. But they were scrapped again. Reason: Diesel busses had a maintenance time of 2%, electric busses of 5%, meaning they spend 5% of their running time in maintenance. That was all, so we now have loud and stinky busses again.

That said, I don't think you can ever replace individual traffic. It is only possible in the most dense cities. Otherwise bus travel is too slow and unreliable for people working 40h+.

[roflmaostc]

In most cities going by bike is even faster. Ofc, it needs some effort to overcome weather, sweat.

But at the end it pays off. Full privacy, free workouts, faster commute, being outside (getting sun, maybe fresh air).

Invest in a good bike (maybe even eletric bike) and commute faster :)!

[palata]

It's quite amazing how every thread related to "public transport" systematically ends up being "the rest of the world" trying to explain to Americans that they may want to get slightly informed about the rest of the world before they say "public transports cannot work anywhere, because in the US they don't work".

Sure, US cities have mostly (1) been designed as far away from anything that is not the individual car as possible, and now it's very difficult to come back. But at least Americans could pretend they are aware of the fact that cities can be built in such a way that public transports actually work.

(1) Because there are cities, like NYC, where it actually works!

[TinkersW]

No, but it is an argument for making it illegal for car manufacturers to monitor you.

[presentation]

If the reason we decide to invest in public transit is privacy, we’re hopeless.

[harvey9]

In general? no - Teslas spying on you is orthogonal to mode of transport. And specifically no where I live because all the buses have CCTV.

[jasode]

>And shifting traffic from personal cars to buses would make mobility much more efficient. Because in a bus, 30 people can cross a crossing so much faster than in a line of 30 individual cars. [...] I would expect travel to speed up when we move from cars to buses. Look at what cars do most of the time. Waiting at crossings, slowing down for crossings, accelerating after passing a crossing. I have not measured it yet, but I would expect buses that carry 20 passengers each to accelerate that by a factor of 10 or so.

Your math is leaving out a lot of other waiting periods which makes it seem like buses save time over cars. Your focus on crossing intersections is distorting the calculations.

Yes, 1 bus can move 30 passengers through a traffic light is faster than 30 individual cars but you have to offset that savings with extra wait times in other places:

+ add additional time to travel to the bus stop

+ add additional time to wait at the bus stop because buses don't come on demand but at spaced intervals. Maybe once an hour or half hour.

+ add additional time for bus to stop at other bus stops that are not relevant to the passenger, or changing buses,

+ add additional time to account for the bus taking a longer convoluted route that deviates from the shortest path between points A and B because they have to accommodate for the bus stops and also optimize the # of buses in the fleet vs passenger counts.

+ add time to travel from the final bus stop dropoff point to travel to the final destination without the bus. Each mile of walking takes about ~20 minutes. If the bus stop is too far away from the destination office or house, then I guess the passenger can take an Uber ride? Not only does that add more time, it negates a lot of benefits of using the bus. People could use the Uber for the entire trip -- or just use their personal car.

There are scenarios where the bus is undeniably faster. Inside dense cities where they have special lanes that can bypass some gridlock. The tour buses with stops that have frequent pickup intervals that do continuous loops around cities for tourists is another example that's faster than cars.

[vaylian]

> Would privacy also be better? Because the government is more trustworthy regarding the collection of movement data than private companies?

It must be possible to buy a ticket that has at least one of the following properties:

1. It is not linked to the times when you use it (flat-rate/monthly ticket). Payment may be linked to your name.

2. It is not linked to your identity (pseudonymous numeric ID). Payment must not be linked to your name.

Otherwise it's easy to track when you travel which route.

And obviously, facial recognition must be forbidden.

[pyeri]

In the interest of minimalism and collective human efficiency, buses are best. Car or SUV makes sense only when a family or friends of 3-4 folks are travelling.

[cafard]

I can ride the WMATA Metrobus anonymously for $2.25 cash or unregistered SmartTrip. Now that I have the senior ($1.10) SmartTrip, I've blown my cover.

And an awful lot of SmartTrip cards are registered with WMATA, people use Apple Wallets, etc. But then a lot of people simply don't pay.

There are cameras on many or all buses, too.

[dudefeliciano]

I started playing a game when I’m waiting at traffic lights, that is to count how many cars have a single driver and no passengers in it. A good portion of those cars are SUVs that have no business being in a city. The results are far from surprising and completely maddening.

[rsanek]

>Electric buses make rides pretty cheap and comfortable

how much public transit have you used in the US? in NYC, busses are somehow even worse than the subway. in SF, same kind of story.

I'll choose to walk, bike or taxi to avoid the implementation of public transit we have.

[tapland]

In Sweden the municipality finances 40-50% of public transport, and owns recorded CCTV and gathered traffic data (from ticket scans etc). But operations are by private companies (regular procurement stuff).

It works somewhat ok

[ben_w]

> Would privacy also be better? Because the government is more trustworthy regarding the collection of movement data than private companies?

On this topic, I think public/private ownership, and public/private usage, makes no difference either way.

Public transport can be privately owned. Back in the UK, the majority of busses I saw were Stagecoach[0].

But even when government owned, that doesn't remove the argument in favour of CCTV: here in Berlin we have BVG[1], which is government owned, and I'm fairly sure the blobs I see on the ceiling are CCTV cameras[2].

I think what does make a difference is rules like GDPR — but cookie popups have shown that it's an uphill struggle to force businesses to actually follow that law rather than demand "consent" before doing business, or to actually minimise their usage of tracking to the level where "legitimate interest" actually applies and therefore they don't need to ask (as opposed to the IMO wishful thinking "legitimate interest" used by some cookie popups).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagecoach_Group

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Verkehrsbetriebe

[2] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/rechtsstreit-mit-sitz-des...

[m463]

public transportation has cameras, lots.

I remember reading about someone who had to track down incidents on the many interior bus cameras.

[blackeyeblitzar]

Many cars monitor the driver now, often with facial recognition enabled cameras. Mazda, infinity, Hyundai/genesis, others. It feels a bit like every brand will end up with invasive tech, ads, and subscriptions.

[palata]

> It feels a bit like every brand will end up with invasive tech, ads, and subscriptions.

It's bad enough as it is, and consumers should try and fight against that by not buying those cars.

Especially now that we see that the CEO can turn fascist and feel entitled to do whatever he pleases with the data. How long before federal employees get fired because their Tesla showed that they arrived late to work?

At the very least, don't buy Teslas. At this point that's probably one of the riskiest choices.

[_kb]

Ford already has a patent for that [1] and Jeep has already started doing it [2] “by accident”.

[1]: https://au.pcmag.com/cars-auto/107185/ford-patents-in-car-ad...

[2]: https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/jeep-in-car-ads-popup-stellan...

[mdhb]

This isn’t normal. Hand waving it away as nothing like you seem to be doing here comes across as extremely weird I have to be honest.

[oneeyedpigeon]

How many is many? Are we talking 1% of all cars on the road? 0.1%?

[vinni2]

It’s a pity original link was not picked up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43187724

[mnewme]

black mirror vibes.

[amelius]

SmartTV vibes

[akimbostrawman]

no, reality of the car industry for over a decade.

[postmeta]

it does help having video of virtuous people vandalizing your car to show the police

[gambiting]

Sure, but it has the same energy as saying it's worth having a camera in your living room recording 24/7(to the cloud) because any potential recording of burglars entering your house is worth having.

[netfortius]

How much of this is applicable to the EU (laws and regulations)?

[justforfunhere]

A ridiculous amount of tech wizardry goes into building software that watches over users. Most software engineers won’t blink twice before jumping on such a project—especially if the paycheck is juicy. But rest assured, they’ll still rush to HN to roll their eyes when someone else does it.

[throwaway784989]

That Teslas are surveillance platforms makes it that much more satisfying to flip the bird at every one that I see.

[kledru]

so Musk potentially has kompromat on everyone?