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Transportation Advertising Privacy

Car Manufacturers Want To Monitor Drivers Inside Their Cars (reuters.com) 218

Startups are demonstrating "sensor technology that watches and analyzes drivers, passengers and objects in cars" reports Reuters -- a technology that "will mean enhanced safety in the short-term, and revenue opportunities in the future."

SonicSpike shares their report: Whether by generating alerts about drowsiness, unfastened seat belts or wallets left in the backseat, the emerging technology aims not only to cut back on distracted driving and other undesirable behavior, but eventually help automakers and ride-hailing companies make money from data generated inside the vehicle... Data from the cameras is analyzed with image recognition software to determine whether a driver is looking at his cellphone or the dashboard, turned away, or getting sleepy, to cite a few examples... European car safety rating program Euro NCAP has proposed that cars with driver monitoring for 2020 should earn higher ratings...

But automakers are more excited by the revenue possibilities when vehicle-generated data creates a more customized experience for riders, generating higher premiums, and lucrative tie-ins with third parties, such as retailers. "The reason (the camera) is going to sweep across the cabin is not because of distraction ... but because of all the side benefits," said Mike Ramsey, Gartner's automotive research director. "I promise you that companies that are trying to monetize data from the connected car are investigating ways to use eye-tracking technology...." Carmakers could gather anonymized data and sell it. A billboard advertiser might be eager to know how many commuters look at his sign, Ramsey said. Tracking the gaze of a passenger toward a store or restaurant could, fused with mapping and other software, result in a discount offered to that person.

The Cadillac CT6 already has interior-facing cameras, Reuters reports, while Audi and Tesla "have developed systems but they are not currently activated." And this year Mazda, Subaru and Byton plan to introduce cameras that watch for inattentive drivers.

But where will it end? One company's product combines five 2D cameras with AI technology to provide "in-vehicle scene understanding" which includes each passenger's height, weight, gender and posture. And while low on specifics, Reuters reports that several companies that sell driver-watching technologies "have already signed undisclosed deals for production year 2020 and beyond."
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Car Manufacturers Want To Monitor Drivers Inside Their Cars

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  • by DewDude ( 537374 ) on Saturday January 12, 2019 @11:38AM (#57949816) Homepage
    You sell us a car and spy on us to make money?

    Fuck you. I can't wait to see the industry that pops up having to protect us from THE SHIT WE OWN!
    • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Saturday January 12, 2019 @11:46AM (#57949860)
      Exactly. Now someone explain to me how ignoring consumer needs and wants is market forces at work. Such top down diktat is something one would expect from a communist central planners.
      • by DewDude ( 537374 )
        I mean..I'd go along with this if they weren't charging insane amounts for a car. Sure..I'll buy the car with the spy-on-me-technology; but I'm not going to pay more than $100 for it. The rest you'll make selling my personal information.

        They just want their cake and to steal our ice cream.
        • It will probably be like this:
          Today - Normal car €25,000
          Tomorrow - Car with Spyware €24,000, Car without Spyware €30,000 and a double insurance premium.

          I'm not against this sort of technology on principal grounds, but what scares me is that we'll end up in a situation where we will have no choice but to have them invade our privacy, either because all products do it or they make the non spying ones prohibitively expensive. I'd be in favour of beefing up the GDPR a little, so that any dat
          • The solution is simple - create 3D printers large, fast & sophisticated enough to let a few hundred consumers band together and create their own mini-car-manufacturing plant. I mean, what is sooo special about a car's chassis, engine, drivetrain or other components that a truly advanced 3D printer couldn't metal-print these components on-demand and in a highly customized way? It may be as simple as going on a website, answering two dozen questions about how you want your car to look and handle, and pres
            • "The solution is simple - create 3D printers large, fast & sophisticated enough to let a few hundred consumers band together and create their own mini-car-manufacturing plant"

              OK. Let's forget for a moment how astoundingly stupid your idea is and let's imagine that it works.

              There: here's the car, at the factory's door. Now, what? You don't expect to put it on a public road, right? Where's the crash safeness approval for it? and the anti-pollution one? and the other few dozens you will need?

              What the in

        • Your personal info is probably only worth about $250, unless you're wealthy, so the only $100 car you're getting is a Power Wheels model.

      • It's simple, all manufacturers will do this, and the customer can walk or ride a bicycle if they don't like it. Isn't that how all "progressive" technology works?
        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )
          One of many reasons why I hope for economic and social collapse in the very near future -- if it sets tech back a few decades and puts us in a new dark age, this might actually be a good thing for humanity.
        • You do realize you can sue a company for Deliberate Violations Of Your Human Rights, don't you? A scanning 3D camera staring at you, your wife, your kids, and personal belongings in the car with a realtime data-uplink to a remote datacenter is a SEVERE violation of your basic right to privacy. There is NO WAY car manufacturers can get away with this one without either a) 77% of consumers not wanting a new car anymore or b) getting sued to hell in 10 digit class-action lawsuits.
          • Maybe in Europe, where privacy is considered by the EU to be a civil right. Not in the US, where a lot of judges read the Constitution literally and would laugh at UN authority over anything.
      • by dryriver ( 1010635 ) on Saturday January 12, 2019 @11:51AM (#57949882)
        What makes you think that you'll even be able to OWN a car made by these motherfuckers in the future? How long before these douchebags go Adobe/Autodesk on us, and cars become FORCED RENTALS that you can RENT and not BUY, just like some software today? Because THAT is how they can actually force 24/7 in-car-surveillance on people. Its a RENTAL, so you can't take any of their electronics out of the car you drive. And yes I agree, these are COMMUNIST MOTHERFUCKERS at heart. No self-respecting capitalist or industrialist would have dared put REMOTE SURVEILLANCE inside a production car.
        • by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Saturday January 12, 2019 @11:54AM (#57949898)
          No. They're corporatist filth -- corporate paternalism dates back to Henry Ford (rot in hell), who used private investigators to catch his employees drinking off the job and fire them. Unfettered capitalism and Soviet-style Communism are just two sides of the same authoritarian coin.
          • by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Saturday January 12, 2019 @02:21PM (#57950600)

            >"Unfettered capitalism and Soviet-style Communism are just two sides of the same authoritarian coin."

            You don't need to imagine extremes to describe the existing and ever-growing nanny state we have RIGHT NOW that tells us what we can put in our bodies, that we have to wear seat belts, that we must have 1,000 restrictions on Constitutional rights, what words we are allowed to say, that we aren't allowed to use plastic straws, etc.

            I am certainly not in favor of anarchy, but there is a line we crossed, sometime, a long time ago. And each generation is more than willing to allow more government intrusion into their lives for "safety" or "convenience". Generation after generation, it is rapidly adding up. My great, great grandparents would be utterly shocked what the "land of the free" has become, especially people's lack of responsibility for their own actions and lack of respect for one another.

            • I see your point, but I also see that you're throwing out some false equivalences.

              Having restaurants not give out straws unless a patron asks for one is good policy -- no one is losing anything, and straws that people don't use don't end up polluting the environment.

              It's a real reach to compare such a policy with cameras inside homes and cars.

            • A good nanny state doesn't prevent what you put in your body, but instead stops companies from selling you poison while labeling it as food. This is what starts nanny states, cracking down on crackpot devices that hurt, maim, or even kill customers. Why do we test cosmetics on animals? Because in the past cosmetic products could be dangerous, and people used them because there was no indication that they were dangerous, and there would be several people hospitalized before there was enough public pressur

        • You're not wrong. There has been for quite some time now a quiet movement by The Rich to put barriers in the way of everyone who is not The Rich from owning anything of significant value, like homes and cars, and force rental/leasing instead, so you PAY PAY PAY continually. Streaming video/music, Microsoft and their 'X as a service' bullshit (want you to rent your gods-be-damned OS, FFS). Everyone must fight all this as hard as they can or be trapped.
          • "You're not wrong. There has been for quite some time now a quiet movement by The Rich to put barriers in the way of everyone who is not The Rich from [becoming The Rich]"

            What a surprise!!!

            You know, they call it "capitalism" for a reason: capital is the goal and capital is the way to make it happen, so those that control the capital use the capital to make more capital and avoid others to get to the capital (as capital ownership is a relative measure: if everybody had a million, nobody would be millionaire)

        • Okay. No more coffee for you this weekend.
        • FORCED RENTALS = dealer only service so that will not be very likely.

        • There are cars tooling around this very day that were manufactured well onto a century ago. More usable ones half a century and later, but still. Cars are extremely durable and easy to craft replacement parts for. The era of 'only subscription automobiles' is easily a full half century away.
          • I would say that "subscription autos" is closer than people think. M2M IoT is dirt cheap via 3G SIM cards. It is trivial to create a system where the vehicle sends a data stream and on occasion gets a signed certificate to continue operating. If that cert expires, the vehicle won't start, and perhaps the doors will not open from the inside until the user pays the subscription fee.

            This can be done by forcing people to purchase the car, but the license for the ECM/TCM firmware be something that has to be l

        • The autos will be cloud based in the future!

      • Market forces aren’t some conscious entity that makes decisions any more than the tide. It’s metely an observation of how economies tend to function. The unfortunate and ugly truth is that most consumers place a very low monetary value on their privacy and as a result we see them willingly trade privacy for lower prices.

        The market is merely delivering what consumers want. You and I may not like that, but that doesn’t mean that market forces aren’t working. I just hope there are en
    • Counterpoint: Consumers have no respect for themselves. Just because they make it doesn't mean you have to buy it. We brought this on ourselves because not enough of us say no as each new product takes more personal freedom and privacy away.
      • Consumers have no understanding of technology. Most of them won't realize how much data the automakers offload. They'll only think: "It will keep my cheeeeeeellllldddreeeen saaaaaafe." Cowardice 101.
        • by DewDude ( 537374 )
          Know a guy who does CANBUS hacking. He showed me a log from a rental car. It kept track of every time the car was started, how many miles, how hard the acceleration, how many times the doors were open, sometimes it had GPS stamps, how hard you stopped. It basically knew everything except your name, age, sex, email, and phone number....which it usually extracted when you connected your phone via bluetooth. So then it knows your name, your friends' names, their phone numbers, who you've called, who has called
          • Anyone who connects their cell phone to a rental car and allows it to access contacts is pretty dumb. Bonus points for the people who don't even erase Bluetooth settings and logs before returning the car.
            • The trouble is that 80% of smartphone users are not tech-savvy enough to even REALIZE what sort of data can be scraped from their phone, or through what mechanisms. Apple fanboys and girls, I'm looking at you...
        • The maxim "even it saves only one life" is being (ab)used to justify every kind of evil behavior.
        • Or they think "ooh, this app is free!", or "wow, I can use an expensive ride sharing service just by tapping a screen!", or "the food hear looks and smells good, but I have to look at Yelp first before I go inside", and so forth.

          I mentioned to a coworker that I use ad blockers. He thought it was stupid, and even said that he *wanted* to see ads because that way he knows what new products are out there. Which was pretty dumb, there are so many other ways to know what new products are out there without a ba

      • by DewDude ( 537374 )
        I have said that...for the most part, the average consumer is too stupid to know what they're buying most of the time.

        I've had people ask me why their Spotify or some online thing doesn't work "when the internet is down".

        The collective dumbing-down of consumers has been a boon for business though. People who actually think are the ones who are getting ignored and insulted by everyone else.
    • You sell us a car and spy on us to make money? Fuck you. I can't wait to see the industry that pops up having to protect us from THE SHIT WE OWN!

      (Circa today) There will still be no such industry. You have to have demand for privacy, and that is obviously evaporating quickly from society based on the products being shoved down our throats. The 0.01% of us who still give a shit about privacy don't stand a chance. Ownership is dying.

      (Circa 2035) Automated cars are now everywhere. Human-powered cars have been regulated off the roads due to safety concerns and liability of a human behind the wheel. All car maintenance is now strictly regulated and

      • (Circa 2035) -- Developing countries with less money for stupid tech, a generally lower respect for rule of law, and a lower value on human life still exist. I'd say that the idea of moving to parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, or Latin America would be awfully appealing for me right about then...
    • by twdorris ( 29395 )

      I can't wait to see the industry that pops up having to protect us from THE SHIT WE OWN!

      Electrical tape already exists.

    • You sell us a car and spy on us to make money?

      Fuck you. I can't wait to see the industry that pops up having to protect us from THE SHIT WE OWN!

      It’s particularly annoying because a camera which monitors a driver for alertness could be a useful addition to a car... if all the information it collected stayed in the car. But no, even after we’ve given them tens of thousands of dollars, they still want to treat us like chattel.

    • Does no one understand the function of dark nail polish?
    • I understand that these companies want to make more money, but at this point it's just creepy that they are so open about their desire to extract more money from customers. This would seem to be something that normally they'd be quiet about because could scare away customers and definitely be alarming. But I think so many people now just don't care anymore, and so many who actively want to share data with strangers, that these companies can get away with divulging their evil plans in public.

      Time for every

  • by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 ) on Saturday January 12, 2019 @11:45AM (#57949850)

    But where will it end? One company's product combines five 2D cameras with AI technology to provide "in-vehicle scene understanding" which includes each passenger's height, weight, gender and posture.

    How exactly will they "understand" the gender of the passenger? Check for pink hair and Tumblr stickers?

    • By analyzing a few simple ratios/indicators like shoulder width, neck width, head size, head-to-body proportions, jawline, nose length, forehead curvature and so forth. The fact that they want to do this is a dead giveaway that they are using 3D CAMERAS. You'll be surveilled not 1990s 2D CCTV style, but with an effective realtime 3D SCANNER that can also read things like your expression, mood, wakeness/tiredness and so on. Horrible shit to have inside your car, staring at you.
      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        What you should have said is 3-D processing, through multiple 2-D cameras. They're talking about more than two cameras, and fixed camera locations, but mobile passenger positions.

        P.S.: There *are* 3-D cameras that could be used. They used (last I read about them) internal mirrors and beam splitters to pick up the details of the wave forms received. They were too expensive for reasonable use. Multiple 2-D cameras are a lot cheaper.

        • There are Stereo 3D cameras that cost around 200 Dollars. And that's only because they are manufactured in quantities of a few ten thousands at a time. Most smartphones of the next generation will have 3D cameras and 3D processing built in. So 3D cameras will get a lot cheaper soon.
          • by HiThere ( 15173 )

            I think you're still talking about paired 2-D cameras. The ones I'm talking about only use one lens (or none) and don't focus an image. They select raw wave forms and compute the 3-D object that the waves originate from. You can think of it as a dynamically simulated surface or lenses, though it's more like a reverse hologram computation. At the time I encountered the description of the device I don't think you could have gotten one for $100,000.

            OTOH, eventually this should be a cheap way to capture ima

    • How exactly will they "understand" the gender of the passenger? Check for pink hair and Tumblr stickers?

      Well, with me, they will see me doing a line of coke off the dashboard, while drinking some gulps from a bottle of Jack to take the edge off the coke, while fingering my girlfriend next to me, while listening extremely loud to:

      My pappy said, "Son, you're gonna' drive me to drinkin' If you don't stop drivin' that Hot Rod Lincoln."

      So I guess I won't care, if they can "understand" my gender . . .

    • How exactly will they "understand" the gender of the passenger? Check for pink hair and Tumblr stickers?

      How do you do it? Or do you walk through the city taking DNA swabs of everyone to get a biological opinion?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Probably the same way you do - by looking at them and seeing how they present themselves. It's inexact but this is marketing, most of it is a wild stab in the dark.

  • "Everybody is making money from people's most intimate sensitive private data! Hey! Lets do it to them realtime-cloud connected in the cramped interior of a car, 1984 style!!!" Fuck you and your 1980s technology metal cans on inflated rubber wheels. Call me when you figure out how to make a high-speed crash survivable, solve the aquaplaning problem, replace the decades old steering wheel with something better, or figure out how to make an actually usable flying car before I turn 77 and get Alzheimers... Wha
    • I rather like 80s-tech cars -- the NA Miata (designed in 1988 or so) is basically the pinnacle of automotive engineering. Give me an electric version without Tesla-style connected spyware crap, and I'd drive it forever. Even with an old-school steering wheel, aquaplaning, poor crash safety, and lack of ability to fly.
    • by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Saturday January 12, 2019 @01:57PM (#57950472)

      Call me when you figure out how to make a high-speed crash survivable

      Current cars are vastly better at that than their counterparts from 1984. Airbags. Finite element analysis to inform a crash structure that uses 10 types of steel in the same monocoque, making sure a car crumples in just the right way to minimize deceleration for the occupants. ABS, ESP and dozens of other safety systems. 30 years of advances in tires.
      At a cost of a few hundred kg in extra weight, modern cars have made crashes survivable that were absolutely fatal in a 1984 vehicle.

      solve the aquaplaning problem

      ABS, ESP, vastly improved tire technology have done most of that. All that remains is a boxing glove that comes out of the dashboard to punch the driver in the face when he insists on keeping his foot down in torrential rain.

      • All that remains is a boxing glove that comes out of the dashboard to punch the driver in the face when he insists on keeping his foot down in torrential rain.

        If it can be triggered by a plurality of the other drivers in his immediate vicinity, all the better.

  • by dryriver ( 1010635 ) on Saturday January 12, 2019 @12:07PM (#57949948)
    Because there was a car park full of 3D CCTV camera-equipped ORWELL CARS recording its every move on this side.
  • Chevrolet president William S. Knudsen said Nazism was the miracle of the 20th century and Hitler had a portrait of Henry Ford hanging in his office while the Union Banking Corporation headed by Sen. Prescott Bush (father of presidents Bush senior and grandfather of George W.) made millions funding his rise. GM’s wholly-owned Adam-Opal Co. was producing Nazi tanks, trucks and bomber engines while IBM tabulating equipment was used to select who lived and who died in concentration camps. James D. Moon
  • dont make any moves that you could potentially regret, dont pull out in front of moving traffic if it means you impede their progress, it is safer to wait a minute for them to pass, and when you need to make a turn, dont rush ahead of anybody then pull in front of them only to slow down and make a turn, its better to slow down, get behind them and make your turn
  • by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) on Saturday January 12, 2019 @12:20PM (#57950000) Homepage

    G.D.P.R.

  • "You may cross this intersection after this ad..."
  • ... is one option.

    Still-framing is another.

    How about hacking?

    • How about just having a few kids and letting them have a food fight? FOOD! FIGHT! FOOD! FIGHT!
  • All you fuckstain 'startups' who are talking about this shit? FUCK YOU SIDEWAYS WITH A RUSTY AIDS-INFESTED CHAINSAW, YOU FUCKING FUCKS. It's bad enough that there are gods-be-damned cameras everywhere you look, and peoples' gods-be-damned cellphones are nothing but mobile surveillance platforms, and that gods-be-damned ISPs are sifting through every gods-be-damned data packet, and that shithead companies like Amazon and Google are selling people so-called 'voice assistants' that are also just gods-be-damn
    • Buuut... how will they sell your wife JUST THE RIGHT MAKEUP PRODUCT FOR HER if they can't see into you car in realtime? =)
      • I wonder what it's going to take before the Common Person has had enough of this bullshit and says a resounding "HELL, NO!!!" to it? Are we going to have to wait until they start putting 'reality TV' shows on the air starring people on surveillance cameras who never explicitly consented to being on TV? Minority Report-level 'law enforcement', arresting people for crimes they MIGHT commit? Guilty-by-association of crimes just for being surveilled in the same area as a crime was committed? WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOU
    • Grandpa, it's past your naptime. You know how cranky you get when you don't have a nap.
  • Brilliant idea. This will result in a significant increase in the sales of opaque sticky tape. Not unexpected from Cadillac, a brand that is synonymous with OLD.
  • enhanced safety in the short-term, and revenue opportunities in the future

    Only one of those is something manufacturers genuinely care about. The other one had to be imposed on them by governments.

  • I predict that there will a healthy aftermarket for ways to defeat/disable these cameras. For DIYers, there's a piece--or pieces--of duct tape.

    I'll probably be in the market for a new car in a few years and I will greatly enjoy explaining to the salescritter what a dumbass idea it is for the car I'm paying huge $$$ for to be spying on me so that they can sell data to third parties. And I'll be sure to point out that if they want to make this an optional feature--er, so sorry... they're not called "optional

    • What makes you think that these cameras CAN'T see through duct or black tape just fine? Unless the tape 100% blocks ALL photons going to the camera sensor, computer vision algorithms can still see through that tape and even de-distort the distortion caused by the tape. You might have better chances putting an inch-thick lead plate in front of those cameras in the car...
  • There are so many attacks on privacy that the public can't resist them all. Its easy to suggest that people not purchase products that spy on them, but when it becomes common for an entire industry (cell phones, TVs, etc), eventually the consumers just give up.

    I think we are heading toward 24/7 surveillance that is almost impossible to avoid. That date will then be sold to the highest bidder - or hacked. Companies will use machine learning to look for marketing opportunities. Governments will do the sa

  • >"But where will it end?"

    When consumers, like me, put black electric tape over the camera lenses. Of course, then expect that the car will "fail to start" or issue never-ending nag messages. Sometimes the future looks depressing.

  • You would have to be fucking insane to allow corporations to get away with monitoring you in your car. Or your house.

    Anybody who voluntarily allows this kind of invasion of privacy is an idiot. And they deserve a good, hard kick to the crotch, because their acceptance will make it easier to force those of us with some common sense and dignity into choosing between being monitored or not driving. Sometimes there really IS a slippery slope.

    • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      I agree, but no doubt they will sell this as some kind of safety feature so all the soccer moms will be all over it.

  • I'm hopeful (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529@yahoo. c o m> on Saturday January 12, 2019 @03:57PM (#57950886)

    Yes, you read correctly. I'm hopeful.

    See, there is a level where even the masses start to say "do not want". Placebo as it may be, look around and you'll see plenty of people putting tape over their laptop webcams. Amazon's "we can give delivery men the ability to open your door, which is totally safe because of the camera that goes along with it" initiative is one I have yet to meet literally anybody who said "I want that". I think "multiple cameras in my car, uploading video in realtime" might have a niche in Uber vehicles or driverless cars (keeps drivers safe and passengers accountable), but I think even the Alexa-owning masses will say "too far".

    More to the point, I don't see how this technology won't pit the advertisers against the insurance companies. The crux of the issue hinges on what is truly meant by "revenue opportunities". How will these systems generate revenue? Consumers won't pay for the video footage. Law enforcement agencies won't pay for access proactively, especially because it would simply ensure none of their actual-suspects use those cars. Image or video ads are a guaranteed way to distract the driver (insurance companies will never allow it). Audio ads won't be okay; if nothing else ClearChannel won't want the competition. City planners won't pay for it; they can get that sort of aggregate data from Google Maps or those statistical boxes.

    My point is that there is a point where even John Q. Public is going to care. Alexa provides entertainment and utility, smartphones the same, but a whole system dedicated to post-sale monetization while providing no utility to customers that Android Auto or the Apple equivalent can't also provide? Yeah, I think that even those people are going to have an uphill battle.

  • Either black tape or Vaseline on the lenses could stop the video, my radio pumping out 1000 watts solves the microphone issue, and a few bags of sand solves the weight issues. Fuck them and their spying on me in my own car. let them try. Better yet make a video and make a loop and feed that to the camera of my family driving so they get a live feed but its a feedback loop. So many ways around this. plug in a raspberry pi into the ODB/2 and feed it false data and screw with them. Could actually be kind of fu
  • by sabt-pestnu ( 967671 ) on Saturday January 12, 2019 @05:52PM (#57951236)

    ... because people like me will go from dealer to dealer, saying that in-car espionage is a deal breaker for my purchase of a new car.

    It happened with those motorized seat belts. It will happen with this.

  • Use those and your car will be private again. Fuck these guys. I donâ(TM)t text or drink and drive. I donâ(TM)t want them videoing me picking my nose or singing to the radio.

You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.

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