Not So Autonomous

Just how much data are cars collecting on us?

What if one of the largest and fastest-growing surveillance networks isn’t run by the government...but comes from the cars driving past you?

Recently, Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society asked me to write a short piece about the most imminent challenges AI is posing to society for its 2024-25 update, aptly titled “The Wolves Closest to the Sled.” My topic? The rise of passive data collection from autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles.

Think about it: Every self-driving car, whether it’s a Waymo or Cruise, a car equipped with GM’s Super Cruise hands-free technology, or one of autonomous trucks that Aurora is putting on the highways — not to mention each of the 7 million Teslas on the road in the US — has up to 25 built-in cameras. It’s constantly recording a 360 view while driving — faces, license plates, the addresses of all the homes you visit, the scene on your sidewalk — and streaming that footage back to HQ. Your license plate might be captured at the therapist’s office or at the liquor store. Maybe a Tesla driver’s commute captures you waiting for the school bus with your kid every morning, leaking data about your child?

And we’re not only unwittingly becoming mobile spy units, that camera and microphone built into the rearview mirror is capturing video and sound inside the car, too.

That’s a whole lot of sensitive data being sent to private servers. We know that data is being used to train AI models. No surprise there. But what is Tesla’s privacy policy, and where else is that data being shared or stored? Is your face scrubbed, like on Google Street View? At least Waymo is operated by Google, which claims that “Waymo’s systems are designed to avoid identifying individuals using camera data.” Waymo also states that it shares data with researchers, affiliates, Alphabet partners and law enforcement.

Will other self-driving car companies turn over your data if subpoenaed by the police or government? When I worked at Twitter, we didn’t just document government requests for user data, we put it up on a public website for anyone to see. These days, you might not find out until law enforcement shows up, claiming you were seen near the scene of a crime. (Conversely, your cameras may have placed an innocent citizen in jeopardy.) Being in the wrong place at the wrong time just entered a new dimension.

When Google Maps first launched, people would look for their homes and businesses, hoping to get a glimpse of their (faceless) image. All you had to do was go to maps.google.com. Where is that transparency today?

Tesla says that camera recordings are erased every hour, and the only time it shares your data is when an accident has been detected. As for the images and sound captured inside the car, those recordings are only sent if the car’s data sharing mode is enabled. But when the Mozilla Foundation reviewed Tesla’s privacy claims and third-party sharing policies, they found them to be too vague for comfort, leaving the reviewers “very worried.” And what about those leaks and breaches we’ve read about? Or the former Tesla employees who circulated some very intimate video snippets from some unassuming drivers? Somebody’s watching. And storing.

Look, I drive a car with cameras all over it. And no, I haven’t disabled data sharing or Sentry Mode, either. But that’s the point: This is happening quietly, pervasively, and without much public conversation. It seems like we willingly gave up our privacy for some cool new cars that accelerate fast and save on gas. But we forgot to ask what the real cost would be — not just to ourselves, but to every person we drive past. In every direction.

So my solution is that this week, I’m changing my sharing settings. I might lose some “smart” functions like less personalized navigation and have less accurate voice commands, but it’s worth it to me. I’d rather be in control of what I’m sharing. However, even if I choose autonomy in my car, I’m making a societal tradeoff: I’m not given the choice to protect the privacy of those around me. I want autonomous vehicles – can we demand more transparency in the data being gathered?

I’m curious: How are you thinking about your privacy in the physical world these days? If you’re being recorded every time you go outside, are you living in public, or are you living under surveillance? What would it take for you to say “Enough!”?