Hello people, my family recently bought a Renault 5 e-tech. The car itself is great, but there are some aspects that creep me out, especially the driver-facing camera. We didn’t actually know that such a camera existed before we bought the car, it was only mentioned as the car was given to us.
The cameras official purpose is to see, if you are tired and paying attention to the road, by some “AI magic”, I suppose. You can also let it scan your face, so that you automatically get logged into your profile.
I personally think, that that is kinda creepy, especially as there is no visual indication if the camera is currently recording and no official way to disable the camera hardware-wise. When it is being coverd, the car immediately complains about it.
When talking to friends or family about it, I got one of two reactions: equal concern, or “nice feature actually”, “what about the camera on your laptop?”, “you are way too paranoid”, “I have noting to hide; it is only me driving being recorded”.
I have also seen such cameras in other cars, BYD for example.
What do you think, is this creepy or am I too paranoid? Does anyone know where the actual data is processed, on device or on some cloud server? Do you have any experience with such cameras? I couldn’t really find any information about it on the internet.
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I don’t know the purpose of this camera but sadly I have seen numerous driver battling against falling asleep, including on highways, so going faster than 100km/h on a 1ton machine.
You all might be excellent conscientious drivers who are horrified that the car might check on your ability to drive but I can tell you with 100% certainty that not all drivers, including otherwise very kind and caring people, are not always able to drive, yet still do so.
To be clear I am not advocating for any data to leave the car at any point. I’m only point that some usages of cameras pointing to the driver might be both beneficial to everybody and not be a privacy problem. How? Well detect the presence of eyes and if there is not, demand a conscious action (e.g. pressing a button) and if this does not work, increase stimulus, etc. This does NOT require any data from being sent to anybody.
Unrelated but I’m also for speed limiters for cars. I also do not think it’s a privacy issue.
Still, to clarify, safety MUST be improved WITHOUT hindering on privacy of anybody involved.
I mean I would like a dashcam that records front, my face and out the rear window. But it has to be under MY control.
I’d never buy a car with a camera I can’t control. No doubt they’ll soon turn it into some subscription shit or spy on you.
I do find this attitude interesting. You don’t want yourself to be recorded, but you’ll happily record random pedestrians without their knowledge or consent.
So in my country it’s pretty “limited” because of that. You’re allowed to use a dash-cam as long as it doesn’t permanently record. ONLY if there is a crash or a crime you may press the “record and keep the last X minutes” button. I mean that is how most dash-cams function anyway. And you can’t publicly share it without consent of people you filmed or blur their faces and tags. So a legal framework already exists that protects citizens privacy while still allowing to collect video evidence.
Hmm… of course next step would need to be to have dashcams that have a sensors that encrypt and authenticate the video using a random key, to have a higher confidence that you haven’t generated AI footage showing the other person at fault.
Ehm, what do you mean by soon?
You might be able to remove the corresponding fuse
I used to be on the engineering team that worked on the development of a similar camera. For what it’s worth, at the time: there was no AI involved, we only used good old image processing algorithms. And the camera (all cameras, lidars, or radars on the car BTW) does not record anything. It treats images as they come. There’s almost no storage space on the car for all the image data generated.
All this might have changed since then (especially the AI part) but I’m still relatively confident that car systems don’t have the storage for all this data.
Additionally, since this is a European brand, I think it would be quite difficult to legally retain personal information like that. It was already difficult during the development phase.
I’m not saying they wouldn’t be above ominous shenanigans, but it would be difficult.
As an insider of the automotive industry I can say:
- these devices are added due to regulations
- Yes. It is creepy
- functionality is computed and performed onboard the car, it doesn’t rely on any connection to the outside to function
- however, it could very well be sending data back to the mothership. They are legally obligated to get your explicit consent as per GDPR law
- the software is completely closed-source and there is no chance we get any information about it. It’s all private intellectual property. Actually, the Car manufacturers (in this case Renault) almost always requires all suppliers of such equipment to ensure there is ZERO Open-source code in the delivered product. Suppliers are audited to prove they have not reused any Open-source code, piece of code or libraries.
I have a BYD Han, and the camera has a sliding cover, which has never been opened. Its crazy that you can’t cover it without the car complaining.
break that shit with hammers
Nothing a piece of tape won’t fix.
It’s definitely creepy, but i can see someone who has gotten in trouble driving sleepy might want it?
Good to know, thanks!
It is actually creepy, privacy invading, and dangerous in some cases, I think about the guy who made a video working in the woods, simulating a chainsaw accident, and the car would not start because the driver is not 100% able due adrenaline rush visible on his face.
That said, it is a mandatory feature from EU made in 2019 for public safety, with an affiched goal to reduce road deaths. The datas would be anonymous, exploited for statistics and must respect UE rgpd. In theory!
In one hand I find dangerous to track and supervise a population, in the other hand I see way too much dangerous behaviors on the road, especially around pedestrians and bikers, and a system that would say to the driver “hey you fucked up here, don’t do it again” would be nice.
Just an anecdote, an emergency brake system detected me walking and saved my life by breaking hard cause the driver was distracted (I was on a crosswalk), otherwise I would have been send to orbit.
When you drive the car, play Rockwell, Somebody’s Watching Me.
That spot looks like it could use some decoration. Might I suggest a nice piece of thick black tape?
And this is why I have 2 cars from the 80’s that I refuse to give up. They’re nearly 100% mechanical, carburated and with almost no necessary fuzes to run the two.
Thank god for duct tape
I’ve taken apart the screen bezel on my laptop to disable the webcam before -then covid happened. Now, i just cover the camera with taped paper. -I will never have one of these cars but if i found myself in your situation i wouldn’t be above using a hammer and screwdriver to remove the camera and dealing with the consequences after.
