Since about 2017, video surveillance has begun to appear in the cars of some new forces. At first, people hated this kind of thing that may invade personal privacy, but under the continuous "crusade", the number of car companies that installed various forms of video surveillance in cars has not only not decreased, but also increased, and now, this has almost become the standard for new cars. Of course, the purpose of in-car video surveillance of all car companies is simple: to detect the health of the driver, avoid fatigue driving, and so on.
However, from time to time, there will be some social news, pointing out that some car companies' in-car surveillance video is out, and some of the outflow of surveillance video even involves some indecent pictures, which further reduces the public's attitude towards in-car video surveillance. Recently, many foreign media have said that Tesla will soon upgrade its in-car video surveillance, and the upgraded monitoring system can even monitor details such as the driver's eye movement.
Taking this opportunity, we plan to talk about Tesla's surveillance upgrade this time, and the possible future situation of video surveillance.
The information that Tesla will upgrade the in-car monitoring was first circulated on Twitter, and some "professional whistleblowers" pointed out as early as early May that Tesla is "considering" upgrading its in-car monitoring system, and the new monitoring system can even monitor the driver's sitting posture in real time. In mid-May, another "professional whistleblower" changed Tesla's upgrade of monitoring from "under consideration" to "Tesla is about to upgrade its in-car monitoring system." In the new version of the revelation information, in addition to determining that the new monitoring program will monitor the driver's sitting posture in real time, another point is also mentioned: this new monitoring program can monitor the driver's eye movements in real time.
According to the information mentioned in the revelation on May 22, Tesla will soon upgrade its in-car monitoring system through OTA, and the upgraded in-car monitoring system will be able to monitor all members of the car, while special emphasis will be placed on the monitoring of the driver, and the fineness of the monitoring will be refined to the driver's real-time sitting posture. The amplitude and number of head swings of the driver (depending on real-time road conditions), the driver's hand movements, the driver's eye movements and the number of blinks, the market for each blink, and the monitoring of the number of yawns of the driver.
The news further pointed out that after upgrading the monitoring system algorithm, Tesla will have a built-in set of driver behavior judgment models, which will be based on the above real-time monitoring information to derive the judgment of "what mental state the driver is currently in". If the system believes that the driver is currently showing obvious signs of fatigue, it will inform the driver through sound and dashboard prompts to remind the driver to rest. If the driver is using the AP system (AutoPilot) at this time, Tesla will even force out of the AP system and return the driving right to the driver.
However, according to the current multi-party information, Tesla has no intention and is not prepared to launch a function similar to "driver's foot video surveillance" in the future. Considering that all Tesla models currently on sale do not have cameras installed at the driver's foot position, the idea that some netizens are looking forward to Tesla installing "brake pedal monitoring" may be difficult to come true.
You may think that Tesla's upgrade of in-car monitoring is an invasion of the owner's right to privacy. Because in any case, the interior of the car is a private space, and in theory, the owner has the right to do anything in the car. But in fact, in the current era, there are already many car companies that do fine monitoring in the car. Whether it is a new domestic force, a traditional independent brand, or even a joint venture brand, many have clearly installed one or more cameras in a conspicuous position in the car, clearly telling you that these things are used for surveillance.
But Tesla's monitoring is a little different from these other car companies. Whether it is domestic or joint venture, everyone can find that most of their in-car surveillance cameras are installed on the side of the A-pillar driver, or near the center of the steering wheel, anyway, you can see at a glance that this camera is taken at the driver. And the car machines of these cars generally have relevant functional entrances, which allow you to see your own real-time monitoring video. And if you have seen these surveillance videos, you will find that these cameras are not wide-angle lenses, they shoot the body position, usually the driver's upper body, some cameras are installed on the A-pillar or steering wheel, they can even only shoot the driver's face and neck.
Most of the pictures captured by these cameras can only be regarded as "dashcam quality", with a resolution of up to 720P. And more importantly, all the surveillance cameras I mentioned above, they rely on external memory cards to store surveillance video, and even many cars as long as you unplug the SD card, the monitoring function will not start directly. In other words, most cars are now stored offline, and data is not on the cloud.
But Tesla is different, Tesla's surveillance camera is installed in the center of the center mirror, and it is a wide-angle lens, and it is a 12-megapixel camera that can shoot 2K video. The picture it captures is a panoramic view of the entire cockpit. And the most important thing is that Tesla's monitoring data is stored in real time and is uploaded to Tesla's cloud server, so will there be a problem here?
At present, most independent brands and joint venture brands mostly use two data storage methods. One is complete local storage, the owner can choose whether to save the surveillance video in the car, and can choose the location of the save (built-in storage or external memory card). The other is local + networking. In-car monitoring data will be on the cloud, but the data on the cloud is special data, such as a traffic accident, the real-time video in the car will be on the cloud, for example, the owner of the car starts the distress function in the car, and the real-time monitoring video will also be immediately on the cloud. Or the system determines that extreme situations such as fights and homicides have occurred in the car, and the data will also be uploaded to the cloud, and some cars will even automatically connect to the public security department. But in any case, all this data on the cloud is all filed by the public security system, and the data of some car companies on the cloud is directly the cloud server of the public security department.
In 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued a document entitled Several Provisions on the Security Management of Automotive Data (Draft for Comments), which clearly mentioned that if personal data is to be uploaded to a server, the server must be established in Chinese mainland and subject to the supervision of the CAC and other relevant agencies. Moreover, the Provisions also clearly mention that the auxiliary video surveillance data serving the driver should be set to not be collected by default, and the driver's consent should be obtained for each collection. This authorization expires after the end of driving (i.e. the driver leaves the vehicle and loses power). At the same time, it is also clearly mentioned that the driver can request the car company to delete the relevant data, and the car company must delete the specified data within two weeks after receiving the driver's request to delete it.
The most crucial are Articles 10 to 12 of the Provisions, the original text of which is excerpted as follows:
Article 10 Only for the purpose of facilitating users' use and increasing the security of vehicle electronics and information systems, the driver's fingerprints, voiceprints, faces, heart rhythms and other biometric data may be collected, and alternative methods of biometrics shall be provided.
Article 11: Operators handling important data shall report in advance to the provincial-level internet information departments and relevant departments on the type of data, scale, scope, storage location and time limit, methods of use, and whether they are provided to third parties.
Article 12: Personal information or important data shall be stored within the territory in accordance with law, and where it is truly necessary to provide it overseas, it shall pass a security assessment of data export organized by the state internet information departments.
It can be seen that the regulations have made very clear provisions on various details of vehicle video surveillance data, and there is no "legal loophole" here. Therefore, since Tesla legally sells vehicles in the country, it must comply with all the above regulations. In fact, also in 2021, Tesla cooperated with Amazon AWS cloud services to establish a large-scale data storage server center in Chinese mainland. At present, all Tesla models sold in China, whether or not they are shipped before 2021, the real-time upload of in-car monitoring data has all been transferred to the domestic AWS cloud server storage.
Therefore, at present, all Tesla domestic models sold through formal channels do not need to worry about data security issues, and Tesla imported through formal channels does not have data security problems because it is also mandatory to comply with the above "Regulations". Therefore, Tesla will not cause a greater degree of privacy data leakage after upgrading video surveillance, which is actually not a worry at all. In fact, as long as you are in China, buy any brand of vehicles that enter the market through formal channels, there are no above problems.
But if you're buying a model that comes in through some less legal channel, such as smuggling or some small trade car, it's hard to say.
Therefore, you don't have to worry about whether Tesla will have some problems after upgrading the video surveillance system in the car. Although Tesla is a wholly US-owned enterprise, the country's current laws and regulations can be said to be quite perfect in terms of in-car privacy. In fact, no matter which car company's products, as long as they are legally operated in China and have obtained a regular vehicle production license, everyone can buy and use them with confidence, and there is really no need to worry about privacy leakage.