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...

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[–] 63 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

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.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    I doubt that’s the actual camera in question too. That’s likely just a stock photo.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 weeks ago

    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.

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    [–] 39 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)
  • [–] 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Easy fix:

    • Find its fuse
    • Disconnect
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  • [–] 13 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Given it's not her property, that sounds like a quick way to a lot of legal liability.

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  • [–] 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Pulling a fuse isn't destroying

    Covering a camera isn't either

    I will not let a company watch my every move, period

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    So pull the fuse, burn it out, re-insert it.

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  • [+] -7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Privacy invasion is invasion of human right. They violate my right so i violate their right. Eye for eye reasoning.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Or you could not borrow the car.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 child)

    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:

    1. The vehicle in question was a loaner vehicle from an Audi dealership, so not a "true" rental in that sense.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    There is a significant difference between "property destruction" and "not abiding by the terms of the contract". This situation falls under the latter.

    The suggestion we're replying to was to burn the fuse, not just pull it. How is that not maliciously damaging property?

    If you're that opposed to it, put your money where your mouth is and don't take the free loaner. She would have seen it the moment she stepped into it, there's nothing stopping her from returning the car.

    Objecting to surveillance in public is one thing, objecting to surveillance of private property that's on loan to you and that you can return at any time is just self entitlement.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    The suggestion we’re replying to was to burn the fuse, not just pull it. How is that not maliciously damaging property?

    Automotive fuses are specifically manufactured to be the first thing to fail. That's the entire reason fuses exist. Going from that to "maliciously damaging property" is an unreasonable leap.

    If you’re that opposed to it, put your money where your mouth is and don’t take the free loaner. She would have seen it the moment she stepped into it, there’s nothing stopping her from returning the car.

    Have you watched the video?

    Objecting to surveillance in public is one thing, objecting to surveillance of private property that’s on loan to you and that you can return at any time is just self entitlement.

    She is clearly not a car person. You would be absolutely shocked at how many people do not know the difference between an Audi Q7 (the loaner vehicle in question) and, say, a Toyota Highlander. Based on that, it's reasonable to assume that there is a spectrum of car knowledge, and she was clearly excited to drive "a brand new Q7" (again, straight from the video), which can very easily distract one from noticing such things.

    Many manufacturers place all sorts of bulky equipment such as sensors, cameras (Subaru's "Eyesight" system), and other such things up at the top of the windshield, so at a glance to a non-car person who isn't already familiar with how the vehicle should look, it could have looked just like something integrated into the car straight from the factory. But again, we don't have that info. All she said was she didn't notice it for a few days.

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  • Is a fuse not property? What is it, an idea?

    Have you watched the video?

    Yes.

    All she said was she didn't notice it for a few days.

    Yeah that part is hard to draw any conclusion on, given the utter lack of info about whether they informed her and she didn't realise, or wasn't informed, or anywhere in between.

    My comments are not really directed at her in particular, but mostly rather at the bunch of people in this thread proclaiming how they'd deal with the equipment. Assuming they made the choice with full awareness, I'm really really interested in how they twist their moral compass around to justify it. I'm fully certain if it was their property they would have a very different viewpoint.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Rentals aren't free. Just figured that clarification needed to be made.

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  • [–] 37 points 3 weeks ago

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 weeks ago

    "Unsafe driving detected. Please put down the beer and place both hands on the wheel."

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    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

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    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?

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  • [–] 12 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Probably buried in the 500 pages of indecipherable legalize written in all capital letters with no paragraph breaks.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago

    Would it work to put a bag over them?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    This is something that's now legally required for new cars in the EU.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    That should have been obvious and opt-in from day one.

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