Hi folks, and happy Friday! Kylie Robison from the tech team, filling in again.
Yesterday, Reuters released a damning report on automotive maker Tesla that revealed employees at the company have had access to, and shared with each other, the videos that customers’ cars record.
If you live in a big city, more likely than not you’ve passed a Tesla and triggered its “sentry mode,” which throws an Eye of Sauron on the console screen and records you for added security. According to Reuters, Tesla employees had unfettered access to those videos of you—and more. The videos ranged from the graphic, like a clip of a child getting hit by the car, which one employee said spread around employee’s private group chats “like wildfire,” to the mundane, like clips of dogs and funny street signs that Tesla workers made into memes.
In some cases, the reason for these very 1984-sounding recordings relates to Tesla’s autonomous driving capabilities—in order to condition the car to, you know, not hit people, Tesla needs to train the machine to recognize objects like cars, signs, construction vehicles, garage doors, and again, people, by having its staffers label the objects manually. Some employees told Reuters they had no ethical dilemma sharing these videos since Tesla owners had given their consent.
I use Loom and Zoom (rhyme not intended) to record videos of myself for work, and I’ve accepted the terms of those products. Would I be surprised to find people sharing videos of me checking my teeth in the camera because it was supposedly in the fine print when I signed up? Yes, indeed I would be surprised and more than a little upset. And I can't imagine that anyone thinks they consented to be turned into a meme!
No matter how you slice it, it’s not ethical to share video clips of individuals who are probably unaware of being recorded, or if they are aware, would not expect the recordings to be used in a manner beyond what they thought they agreed to in order to use the product. The Tesla report is a reminder of how exposed we all are to such misbehavior these days given the pervasiveness of video and audio recording devices that surround us, from our phones and smart speakers to some of the fancy new cars we drive.
According to an employee who spoke to Reuters, the distribution of sensitive and personal content could lead to the intervention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible for upholding federal laws related to consumer privacy.
It’ll be interesting to see how Tesla addresses this report, if at all. One thing’s for sure — I’m going to be extra careful about checking the webcam cover on my laptop.
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Kylie Robison
Data Sheet’s daily news section was written and curated by Andrea Guzman.
