Originally published at: Tesla workers reportedly passed around private video from customers' cars | Boing Boing
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[insert shocked/not shocked gif]
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That photo… most stupid dash ever.
Tesla sucks, more at 11.
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Elon’s almost certain response: LOL 
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But their CEO seemed like such a charming and upstanding person!
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What a miserable ̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶ company.
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This really shows how assurances mean nothing, how even internal “rules” mean nothing - if you make it possible for employees to do something, they will. (Having it technically be in violation of a rule doesn’t matter; if you don’t want it to happen, you make sure employees can’t do it.) If you have someone like Elno in charge, you know they didn’t bother with anything beyond the assurances - it might not even be against their rules. Elno himself was caught, multiple times, trawling through critics’ supposedly private data to dig up dirt on them, to discredit them. Whatever the rules were in theory, he set an example.
This is why I assume anything that has a camera is (or could be) sharing data incontinently. It’s probably mostly paranoia, but the cases when it’s actually true make up for it.
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the cynic in me wonders if this is why he required tesla to ditch the lidar. ( the cynic in my cynic wonders how many telsas has he gifted to girlfriends in order to keep tabs on them. )
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I think the explanation is simpler: because Elno’s an idiot. He’s dropped a lot of extremely important sensors from the car because: he didn’t like the way it looked, he didn’t like the added (very minor) cost, and because he insists that human beings can drive just by vision, so a car should be able to as well (ignoring the very important fact that human beings also possess a human brain, which can understand what it’s looking at).
Although apparently Tesla employees were using the car cameras to check out the interior of Musk’s garage, looking at his other vehicles… (it’s not clear they knew it was his).
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Aaaugh. Company employees should not have access to customer data! This is enterprise software engineering 101. Bob over in the Python Tools Group should not even have an account on the database where customer video is stored. All other customer data should be anonymized on device before it ever touches a company server. If video is required for debugging systems, it should be tightly controlled through a single company officer and redacted of personal information before being given to the engineer.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but this kind of fundamental software company mismanagement gets me really worked up. I spent my whole career at companies that did this well and some a little less well, but I never saw anything this bad. Companies have known since the 90s how to do all this properly. To see Tesla doing it this poorly in 2023 is enraging.
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As usual, when level-headed, to the point and informed analysis is due, VeronicaConnor delivers.
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Honestly, I don’t buy this train of thought. Elon sell unaccountability; it’s no wonder why his employees practice it.
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Yeah, exactly - he’s setting the example for the workplace culture with his acts, and at the same time giving this data to employees and allowing them to share it (including videos they had no legitimate reason to access) with no repercussions; public assurances that data privacy is being respected mean absolutely nothing. The claim that the systems were “designed from the ground up to protect privacy” is not just wrong but the opposite of what was actually done. The very design of the systems violated customers’ privacy (whatever example Musk set).
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