Drivers access to Tesla’s Complete Self-Driving Beta Program, which costs up to $199 a month, now comes with a pretty surprising new requirement.
According to Electrek, Tesla requires drivers who want to test the Beta to give the company access to the car’s external and internal cameras.
In addition, the company makes it clear that Images will not be anonymous, but will have links to specific cars:
By activating FSD Beta, I authorize Tesla to collect the image data associated with the vehicle’s external cameras and cab camera in the event of a serious security risk or security event such as a collision.
The fact that the data is “associated” with the vehicle identification numbers means that Tesla will know which specific car the images came from.
The fact that the company reserves the right to access data from internal and external cameras In the narrowly defined case of a “security risk”, it leaves Tesla owners open to potential abuse.
Interestingly, this clause contradicts the Tesla’s Privacy Policy, which does not include “security risk” as a reason to access images from cameras linked to specific drivers, but rather a “security event”:
Unless we receive them as a result of a security event (a vehicle collision or airbag deployment), camera recordings remain anonymous and not tied to you or your vehicle.
Unfortunately, abuse of access to security cameras is quite common. In 2020, Ring, owned by Amazon, admitted that employees were accessing private video from customers’ cameras.