'Your car is spying on you.'

<https://archive.is/OXWgW>

'It’s not just Tesla. Vehicles amass huge troves of possibly sensitive
data.
Elon Musk’s willingness to share information about the Cybertruck
explosion has highlighted how much data cars collect -- and left some
drivers uneasy.'

'Video footage and other data collected by Tesla helped law enforcement
quickly piece together how a Cybertruck came to explode outside the
Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day.
The trove of digital evidence also served as a high-profile
demonstration of how much data modern cars collect about their drivers
and those around them.
Data privacy experts say the investigation — which has determined that
the driver, active-duty U.S. Army soldier Matthew Livelsberger, died by
suicide before the blast — highlights how car companies vacuum up reams
of data that can clear up mysteries but also be stolen or given to third
parties without drivers’ knowledge. There are few regulations
controlling how and when law enforcement authorities can access data in
cars, and drivers are often unaware of the vast digital trail they leave
behind.
“These are panopticons on wheels,” said Albert Fox Cahn, who founded the
Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, an advocacy group that argues
the volume and precision of data collected can pose civil liberties
concerns for people in sensitive situations, like attending protests or
going to abortion clinics.
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Federal and state officials have begun to scrutinize companies’ use of
car data as evidence has emerged of its misuse. There have been reports
that abusive spouses tracked partners’ locations, and that insurers
raised rates based on driving behavior data shared by car companies.
There have also been cases in which local police departments sought
video from Tesla cars that may have recorded a crime, or obtained
warrants to tow vehicles to secure such footage.
“There’s something deeply ironic that this emblem of personal autonomy,
the idea of a car on the open road, might be one of the most heavily
surveilled places in many of our lives,” Cahn said.
More than 75 percent of car brands said they can share or sell drivers’
data, according to a 2023 Mozilla Foundation report assessing 25
international brands’ data privacy policies. More than half said they
can share information at the request of law enforcement or the
government. Only two, Renault and Dacia — neither of which is marketed
in the United States — said drivers have the right to have personal data
deleted, the report said.
Industry groups say data collection protects drivers and allows
automakers to identify potential defects. Sensitive information can’t be
used for marketing or shared without consent, the Alliance for
Automotive Innovation said in a 2023 memo.
“Yes, your vehicle is generating and transmitting certain safety data.
That’s by design,” the memo said. “No, your car isn’t spying on you.”
Many cars have access to location data and camera footage if they’re
equipped with features such as parking assistance and navigational
systems. But Tesla likely has access to far more data thanks to its
suite of cameras used in its driver assistance features, its onboard
computers and its nationwide charging network.

Three front facing cameras on a Tesla Model 7. (Mark Leong for The
Washington Post)
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk directly assisted investigators in the
New Year’s Day Cybertruck explosion and provided charging-station
footage tracking the suspect as he drove from Colorado to Las Vegas, Las
Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said. Musk offered investigators “quite a
bit of additional information” on the truck and sent a team to Las Vegas
to help investigators extract data and video from the charred remains of
the truck.
McMahill also said investigators were looking for vehicles that may have
been at the charging stations at the same time as the suspect, “because
their vehicles would have also had cameras that would have taped anybody
in and around them.”
On Thursday, the team of investigators in Las Vegas — which includes the
local sheriff and FBI — showed video footage of the suspect, recorded
from multiple different angles, at a Tesla charging station in Arizona.
Las Vegas Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren did not specify how that exact
footage was obtained, but said the Tesla team sent by Musk helped
investigators recover a thumb drive that “records other types of data
that includes video by the Tesla.” The team also helped investigators
retrieve data from the vehicle that determined it was not in
self-driving mode at any point during Livelsberger’s journey to Las
Vegas.
While Musk’s swift assistance was applauded by authorities, his highly
publicized actions also raised complicated emotions for people like
Justin Demaree, a Cybertruck owner and Tesla enthusiast, who runs a
popular YouTube channel called Bearded Tesla Guy.
Demaree said while he appreciates Musk’s willingness to help
investigators — especially in a case the FBI was initially probing as a
potential act of terrorism — the incident showcased just how much
personal information Tesla has at its fingertips about its drivers.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Demaree, 36, as he drove his
Cybertruck in “Full Self-Driving” mode from Orlando to Las Vegas to
attend CES, the prominent annual tech conference. “We want our privacy
and we don’t want our data shared … but you want to help in a situation
where terrorism could be a factor.”

Tesla owner Adam Gershowitz, a law professor at William and Mary who has
studied police searches of digital data, said he is willing to sacrifice
a level of privacy for the convenience of the car’s navigational
systems, infotainment centers and backup cameras at their disposal.

“The thing that makes it so dangerous from a privacy perspective is the
same thing that makes it a terrific automobile,” he said.
Still, Gershowitz said, it makes him uneasy to consider how quick Musk
was to share the information that immediately dispelled speculation that
the explosion was caused by an issue with the vehicle itself. As
investigators pieced together the case on New Year’s Day, Musk has
posted developments on social media — in one case appearing to beat law
enforcement to confirm the explosion was caused by fireworks and a bomb.
He cited the vehicle’s telemetry, the technology that automatically
gathers and relays data.
Carter Gibson, a 34-year-old tech worker in San Francisco who owns a
Rivian — an electric vehicle also chock full of sophisticated technology
and cameras — said he doesn’t mind if the data is used to enhance public
safety or track those who have caused harm and done something illegal.
While the amount of available information opens up new problems around
profiling and data sharing, he said, he believes it could be a net
positive for society — if done correctly.

Carter Gibson, 34, with his Rivian. (Carter Gibson)
Gibson, a Rivian enthusiast who runs a subreddit of more than 100,000
users about the car, said Musk’s willingness to share information so
openly was “creepy” and has shaken his trust in how Tesla deals with
customer data.
“I, like most people, am not reading the privacy policy in detail,
everyone just hits ‘agree,’” he said. “But this is where brand
perception really starts to play a role in how safe people feel with the
car.”
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
The cameras on Teslas and autonomous vehicles can record what is
happening around them — a level of “passive surveillance” that is
invaluable to police, said Matthew Wansley, a professor at Cardozo
School of Law who focuses on the intersection of technology and law.
If law enforcement needs information about what happened outside a club,
for example, they might say, “Let’s just call Waymo,” he said, to see
whether one of the robotaxis now rolling in San Francisco and other
cities was driving by.
Waymo and the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association did not respond to
requests for comment.
Beyond such passive collection of data, drivers unwittingly give away
information about themselves when they rent a car, data privacy
advocates say.
Rental companies typically opt in to tracking services and other
functions that vehicle owners could turn off, said Eva Galperin,
cybersecurity director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
If the car title is in its name, the rental company has control over
location history, biometrics and any other personal information a renter
leaves behind, said Andrea Amico, who founded a company called
Privacy4Cars that works to protect consumers from vehicle data
collection.
“You have zero rights,” Amico said.
The Cybertruck in the Las Vegas case was rented through Turo, which
operates like an Airbnb for vehicles. The company did not immediately
respond to a request for comment, but its terms of service say hosts —
the owners of the rented cars — may collect nonpersonal information like
acceleration, location and direction. Users authorize the use or
disclosure of such data unless prohibited by law, the policy says.
The American Car Rental Association did not respond to a request for
comment.
Amico got the idea for Privacy4Cars while running a used car inspection
company. One day, he saw the navigation system in one of the cars still
had directions to the previous owner’s home.
“I can see the name of the person because they synced their phone … I
know where she’s taking her two daughters to school. I know which cancer
hospital she’s going to,” he said. “That’s when I went, ‘Oh, s--t.’'