"what about the camera on your laptop"
God I hate these people. That camera has been covered by duct tape for years for very good reasons. A lot of them actually apply to a driver-facing camera in my car, coincidentally.
~~Btw OP, I think Renault has a contract with Palantir~~
My laptop also runs a 3rd party OS that doesn't connect to the manufacturer.
I’d love to buy an electric car, but I want one with no electronics, if that makes sense. Electric power train, but no screens, “driver aids” or other nonsense
You want the Slate then
The Bezos-mobile
Bezos has done a lot of horrible things, but making a $20k electric truck is not one of them.
I avoid shopping on Amazon unless absolutely necessary, maybe 2-3 times in the last ten years. I think his financial existence is an abomination. But if his truck company is the only manufacturer offering a $20k base vehicle then people have good reason to hand him money. Hopefully undercutting every other manufacturer by $10k+ will result in there being more cheap cars, and alternatives within that price range
don't worry, this is "casting the net" stage. The enshitification comes later.
This car also comes with a ChatGPT based AI assistant which has a cursed Microsoft's Clippy vibe, so it watches, listens to everything. Why would anybody want that?
Log into your profile? On your car? Your car logs you in to a profile? What the fuck
Wasn't there some news a while ago that talked about how bad car companies handle user data?
Mozilla’s latest edition of *Privacy Not Included reveals how 25 major car brands collect and share deeply personal data, including sexual activity, facial expressions, and genetic and health information
[...]Says Jen Caltrider, *PNI Program Director: “Many people think of their car as a private space — somewhere to call your doctor, have a personal conversation with your kid on the way to school, cry your eyes out over a break-up, or drive places you might not want the world to know about. But that perception no longer matches reality. All new cars today are privacy nightmares on wheels that collect huge amounts of personal information."[...] (source)
Not sure if this was the one I was thinking about. There was also this revelation made by the German CCC (Chaos computer club, pretty famous) about Volkswagen and some leaked GPS data. Here is an English article about it. (There is also the German CCC video, but the English doesn't sound very good. It includes an interesting part where they show examples of how bad this GPS leak actually is. E.g. finding the cars of catering companies for important people.)
Criminals or spies could potentially use such data to create a detailed movement profile of the car owners. For foreign intelligence agencies, for example, it may be of interest to see whose cars are parked daily between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. near buildings belonging to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s foreign intelligence service. Or those which are driven regularly to the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein. The Cariad data provided such information.
Btw. Any person who in the year 2026 response to privacy concerns with "I have nothing to hide" is a certified moron and shouldn't be trusted with anything. They also have so little imagination that it should make everyone sad.
No device should have more than two of these things.
I don’t see why a vehicle needs to connect to the internet at all. Or have a screen whatsoever. I don’t understand why a car can’t just be a thing with a gear shift and a fucking steering wheel that drives from point A to point B
We're being sold this idea of a car being like, a mobile family home or comfort space away from home. But the thing is, cars before 2015-ish were actually kinda comfy. Now they look and feel like robots. Kinda sickening. They all look so fucking ugly too every car is the same ugly round van/SUV shape now.
"Your insurance claim is denied, our algorithm says it's 70% confident your eyes were dilated in a way consistent with taking alcohol. Also, here's your court hearing date"
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.
It's creepy. And it may make me an asshole to say, but I'd never want an interior camera in the event of an accident. It makes the following court case so much more gray, since you now introduce the opportunity to say "they were on the phone, talking, listening to music, whatever" and shift what should be a clear cut case into something more.
I always bring up the magic of Scotch's Magic Tape.
This tape lets most of the light through (useful for dynamic light features) while blurring the image as if out of focus or behind frosted glass. It is also mostly discrete unlike opaque tapes.
Yep, creepy, and point about the laptop camera is often invalid because depending on the model some laptops have a hardwired switch or cover for exactly this reason. Also usually have a light to tell you it's on, and aren't constantly in use.
And they don't pester you if you cover the camera either, and you have more control on whether they're online too.
anybody that doesn't think its an issue is an idiot
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.
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.
I think it's unacceptable and indicative of this dangerous path we are headed down as whole. There's already been a few write ups on how cars are the most privacy disrespecting "devices" out there, which is wild considering we have smartphones.
With the driver facing camera we have no control over it also has complete access to our travel data, probably knows exactly who we are in the car with, records all our private conversations etc. etc.
It's so tiring to hear people defend this as if privacy is a thing of the past and anyone advocating it is being dramatic.
The car complains when the camera is covered. At a minimum that means making annoying sounds every time you drive anywhere, at worst the car doesn't let you drive. You can't just dismiss this, it's going to happen more and more, and they will be increasingly hostile to your workarounds.
I don’t think you are paranoid. This technology is creepy as hell. Almost all cars are connected nowadays and send data back to the manufacturer’s server—visible or not. In the best case it’s just the service history, in the worst case live positions and more. Some cars stop working if the server is shut down *cough. Cameras equipped to unlock based on a face record biometric data. And honestly, would you trust your car manufacturer (!) to handle your biometric data?
As an insider of the automotive industry I can say:
It's an EU decision. It will be coming to many more cars as it will be mandatory from July 2026 for all newly registered vehicles. Renault 5 is simply one of the first new cars to feature it.
According to the same law, it is illegal to use the system in a way that can identify the person, it may not save biometrics, and it must function in closed loop without sharing the data. It's looking for things like head nodding or looking away from the road for more than 3.5 seconds while driving over 50 km/h. The camera is likely using infrared lighting as it should also work at night.
Anyway. According to the manual, it can be disabled by double tapping a button on the steering wheel or through the touch screen menus, though it will default to being enabled everytime you start the car as per the legal requirement.
If you cover it with tape, wear a mask or drive somebody else's car in which you don't have a profile saved, it will simply use the last previous profile and show an icon in the dashboard as a warning that the function isn't working.
This feature is mandatory in all new cars sold in the European Union since 2024
We got a modern BYD recently as a rental on a holiday that had this, it was really annoying. Anytime anything happened the car beeped, it was near constant different beeps - super distracting. Most of the things could be turned off, but had to be turned off each time the car was started, on a tablet buried in various menus.
The attention thing also wasn't working great with the driver wearing sunglasses, it'd randomly start complaining. It also complained when the driver would lean forward to get a better view around a corner or anything.
It was a very fancy car, but I'd definitely never choose a car with these features, even though some may probably be useful.
I'd also never trust one of these companies not to change the policy on what they can do with this camera in the future, at which point you'll have little to no choice about it. Or, to find out they messed up and now anyone can watch you in your car.
I'd go back to the dealership and complain, either ask for a refund or a way to be able to cover the camera, especially if they only disclosed it as you got the car.
I'm cool with just not driving. Fuck you, car manufacturers. If I can't feasibly live a lifestyle on public transit I'll buy the oldest shittiest shitbox on Earth and drive it until it fucking explodes.
Cars collect data about you to sell them to insurance companies. There was a study by the mozilla foundation about this and they said that there is basicly no modern car that does not do that.
The only thing you can do to avoid them is buy an old car.
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.
You have to log your profile into your car?? Fuck everything about that!
It will be used against you at every opportunity.
I fckn hate these laws that force so much tech into new cars under the guise of safety. Not only is it a massive breach in privacy (I don't care if the car manufacturers claim they don't use this data for identification, I won't belive them), but it also makes small cars way more expensive, comparatively. Fck this sh*t, cars have been becoming obnoxiously expensive and forced BS tech like that just makes everything worse.
"what about the camera on your laptop?"
My personal laptop does not have a camera, and my work laptop has a physical camera blocker.
Wait till the 2027 gets the seat rectal probe to verify you by your large intestine. Also, they sell the data to health insurance providers.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
