A woman recently took to social media after discovering that her Audi rental car’s dashboard contained a camera recording her every move. It also gave verbal reminders…
Would it work to put a bag over them?
Hidden AI Camera
Does anyone see it??
The road? No. There’s this giant block covering the entire windshield.
Easy fix:
- Find its fuse
- Disconnect
Given it’s not her property, that sounds like a quick way to a lot of legal liability.
Pulling a fuse isn’t destroying
Covering a camera isn’t either
I will not let a company watch my every move, period
Legal liability can result from more than just destruction of property. It’s not her property, there’s likely limits on what she’s allowed to do with it, period.
I will not let a company watch my every move, period
Then don’t use somebody else’s car? There’s nothing in the law that says you can use another’s property however you like.
So pull the fuse, burn it out, re-insert it.
It’s interesting how many people here don’t seem to have any sort of reservation at all about damaging stuff that doesn’t belong to them. It’s a car that’s been loaned to you for free, that you’re using voluntarily. What exactly makes you feel you have the right to just abuse it?
Rentals aren’t free. Just figured that clarification needed to be made.
Yes, but this wasn’t a rental. It was a free loaner.
Acting as if the cost of the loaner isn’t baked into every service.
Privacy invasion is invasion of human right. They violate my right so i violate their right. Eye for eye reasoning.
Or you could not borrow the car.
There is a significant difference between “property destruction” and “not abiding by the terms of the contract”. IMO this situation would fall under the latter, but watch the video in the linked article first to get the full context.
Facts based on the video:
- The vehicle in question was a loaner vehicle from an Audi dealership, so not a “true” rental in that sense.
- As with most loaner cars, these are offered as a convenience for the customer while their car is being serviced or repaired. In this case, her own car was in for a cooling system repair and had already been driving the loaner for a few days before noticing the camera.
- Not everyone immediately notices otherwise “obvious” things like this since, again, this was a loaner car that she was excited to experience. This is stated plainly in the video.
- There is an implication in the video that she was not informed about the camera. We don’t know if she signed any paperwork that stated as much, since that info isn’t given.
- She acknowledges on camera that, had she known about the camera, she would’ve happily paid $700 for a traditional rental.
There is some expectation of privacy when inside a vehicle, and that includes rental vehicles. Being recorded by a camera installed in a rental/loaner/whatever vehicle that is lent to you based on a contract, without being informed of said camera, is a massive invasion of privacy, no matter how you slice it.
Blue tape
The car is equipped with a cameras so massive pointing directly at you, she’s calling it the “Eye of Sauron”
Wtf is the bullshit title? There’s nothing remotely hidden about it.
They’re naming the car manufacturer and the camera manufacturer and all its features but why did they not name the fucking car rental company??
I have a feeling this article is aimed at people looking for privacy invading cameras.
why did they not name the fucking car rental company?
Because it’s not a car rental company, it was a free loaner from a dealership / workshop. The article plays fast and loose with facts (like the hidden camera) when the thing is the size of your head and right where the rearview mirror is.
I doubt that’s the actual camera in question too. That’s likely just a stock photo.
When I posted about this same thing yesterday, it took a while to find a half decent article about it. DuckDuckGo seemed to bury them. IMO the Daily Dot did a much better job representing it in retrospect (and it’s a name I recognize at least) but the lion’s share of apparent journalism here seems to have been done by the anonymous Twitter account that compiled the clip and… Ugh… AI generated opinion about the camera. Some sources used the video with more skepticism than others.
I guess techspot is not one of them.
I also see a heck of a lot of Techspot articles posted here, a name I’ve never heard of anywhere else in the wild.
There’s a link to a video by the person showing the actual camera. It’s bigger than the stock picture in the article.
Im sure the rental agreement had a disclosure. So wasn’t hidden.
Just your bog standard ignorance and not reading what you’re agreeing too.
Last time I had to rent a car, it was a digital agreement that automatically scrolled to the bottom where I had to sign and the guy got very irritated when I scrolled back to the top to take a look at what I was signing. Now imagine you’ve got a kid or you’re late for work or whatever else is going on… These things are designed to take advantage of you.
‘Hidden clauses’ are a thing, and depending on your locale can be unenforceable if you weren’t made aware of it beforehand.
I’m conflicted about this. 1) it’s an invasion of privacy, but 2) drivers have gotten so awful and self absorbed that some of them need monitoring.
“Unsafe driving detected. Please put down the beer and place both hands on the wheel.”
Maybe all in all not a bad idea for audis and bmws. “Don’t forget to use your direction indicator” or “slower acceleration gets you to the next red light just as fast and consunes less fuel”. Might so a world of good for some brands
AI is overkill though. Just remind them every 5 min
slower acceleration […] and consunes less fuel
I’m not advocating any specific behavior, but this generally is not true for combustion engines. Faster acceleration at lower revs (and then holding a steady speed for longer) is more fuel-efficient than a long, slow acceleration period. This is different for different vehicles, but it holds true as a rule of thumb.
But that’s not the situation needing to be compared. It’s accelerating to a high speed, going at that high speed for a short time and then stopping and waiting, vs. accelerating to a low speed, going at that low speed for a bit longer and the stopping and waiting for less time.
stopping and waiting for less time.
There’s an unstated assumption in there that’s not true. Your average waiting time at the stoplight is mostly independent of your driving speed up to the light. For every time you reach a red light early, there’s also a time you missed a red light.
But does that factor in significantly to gas efficiency? Idling for longer won’t make much difference. The greater acceleration is what will reduce efficiency big time. Yes, you might make more lights and get to your destination faster with the drive-as-fast-as-you-can approach, but you burn more gas, pollute more and wear your tires.
Well you posited 2 scenarios, and this assumption was one of the major differences between the two.
The greater acceleration is what will reduce efficiency big time.
I’m not an expert, but the other comment provided a source claiming otherwise.
The source was a stack exchange comment. And it starts out based on a bad premise - that it’s all about getting the most energy out of the fuel. He’s talking efficiency of engine. But it takes a lot more energy to accelerate quickly then stop than to accelerate a bit, cruise for longer and then stop. In terms of high school physics: kinetic energy is 1/2 m v^2 - so you need to put in 4x the energy to go to double the speed. Your ICE might do 10% better at the higher acceleration in terms of fuel per energy, but it doesn’t help if you need way more energy. On top of that, the stack exchange comment excludes the effects of air resistance, and that’s huge here. Air resistens goes up at approximately the power of 4. So to go 2x the speed, the force of air friction that your car needs to counter to go at a steady pace once accelerated, is 16x the energy per time. It’s for nominally half the time so you are using 8x the energy at that double speed even once you’ve accelerated. And of course since you’re going faster, you have to decelerate at the next lights more so your breaks see the same 4x kinetic energy they need to disperse through wear.
Fair enough, I make no claims about the efficiency of acceleration. I just saw an issue with your scenarios that I pointed out.
I only have two questions. To get a loaner car she had to sign an agreement. Did she read before she signed? Was there a clause in the agreement about the cameras or about being filmed?
Probably buried in the 500 pages of indecipherable legalize written in all capital letters with no paragraph breaks.
Also maybe we shouldn’t be subject to the stuff at all no matter what the contract says? Maybe this shouldn’t be allowed
Mostly I just want to know if an attempt was made to inform her, and if she actually read it versus ignoring that attempt.
If no attempt was made, the company is at fault. If an attempt was made and it wasn’t a sincere attempt (like your example), the company is still wrong. If it was written down in the agreement in clear English and she didn’t read it, that’s kind of on her. I’m not saying it’s only her fault, just that perhaps she shouldn’t have signed the agreement. We all know these companies are trying to use our distraction, poor attention spans, and busy lives to take advantage of us.
Calling it an Audi rental when it seems Audi was barely involved is a stretch.
Also, this may be a safe, secure, and appropriate use. Unless the footage is stored there (for a duration that is not short) there isn’t a big privacy issue as compared to the benefit in the health and safety and property of others.
there isn’t a big privacy issue as compared to the benefit in the health and safety and property of others.
So, now we’re measuring invasion of privacy based on “the health and safety and property of others”?
I strongly disagree with your assertion that “there isn’t a big privacy issue” here. From the top of my head:
- Did the rental company advise the customer before they got into the car?
- What other details were recorded?
- What is the process to erase the data?
- Who has access to it under which circumstances?
- How long is it retained?
So, now we’re measuring invasion of privacy based on “the health and safety and property of others”?
I know you jest, but I can’t think of a single violation of privacy that hasn’t been excused by using this metric! It’s always about saving the children and preventing the crimes.
The article does not provide that data, as far as I could tell at a scroll. They really tried to get up there in the word count so who knows.
Archiving and saving that data seems like a nightmare with little gain. I am going to save my rage for when it is warranted.
In the EU sold cars must have parts of this feature in order to be sold legally. This feels like ragebait.
