Tesla, probably the biggest representative of smart vehicles, has become also on a brand that poses a greater risk to the privacy of its usersand in the clearest sign of how crucial at this point in history strict regulations are in this regard, allowing users to enjoy the real benefits that some of these features provide without having to systematically trample on your privacy. manufacturers.

This is not a bar counter opinion, we echoed a report from the Mozilla Foundation over a week ago that made it abundantly clear that connected cars are a privacy nightmare. To this end, they evaluated the vehicle features of 25 brands in an analysis that concluded that all violated user privacy, although Dacia and Renault were the ones that did so to a lesser extent, while Tesla was crowned the worst brand, the only one to break the five points assessed in the study.

This wasn’t the first report to highlight Tesla’s issues with its users’ privacy, and in fact, we learned of a lawsuit filed against the company last April. for the improper use of video footage recorded by the cameras of some cars by its employees. And yes, I can accept the answer that in that case it was the actions of some employees, not official company policy, but the same is not true of the case at hand today.

As we can read in Electrek, Elon Musk wanted to use Tesla cameras to spy on drivers in order to use the footage in lawsuits the company is facing over its Autopilot feature., a feature that, along with its Full Self-Driving, is marketed as a fully autonomous system, when in reality it is not. And again, this is not even a personal opinion, but a conclusion reached by the regulatory authorities in the state of California. As you already know, there have been several accidents in recent years allegedly involving Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD.

Tesla, like other brands of cars that offer some level of autonomy, They integrate at least one camera that is aimed at the driver inside, whose function is to check whether the driver maintains attention while driving. However, in Musk’s biography, recently published by Walter Isaacson, we can read this:

«Musk was convinced that bad drivers, not bad software, were the root cause of most accidents. On a meeting, suggested using data collected from in-car cameras (one of which is inside the car and focused on the driver) to show when a driver has made a mistake. One of the women at the meeting backed down. “We have spoken to the privacy team about this,” he said. “We can’t link selfie sequences to a specific vehicle, even if there’s an accident, or at least that’s what our lawyers are saying.«»

Musk didn’t seem to like the answer, so we can continue reading:

««“I make the decisions 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 was nervous laughter. “Maybe we could have a pop-up where we tell people that if they use FSD, we will collect data in the event of an accident,” he suggested. “It will be OK?”

The woman thought for a moment and then nodded. “As long as we communicate that to customers, I think we’re fine with that.”«.

In addition to the arrogance demonstrated in the bolded part of this last quote, which clearly shows us the mogul’s management style (something we’ve been seeing on Twitter-X for some time), it also leads us to expectations that users of Tesla vehicles may have regarding their privacy. Fortunately, the privacy team acted as a firewall on that occasion. Of course, since we’re talking about Musk, we can’t rule out that he might decide to fire them at any time.