With cars, networked computers are encroaching on privacy from two sides: the computers inside the car sharing sensor data and the computers outside the car sharing camera data from known points on the road.
Older cars may not have cellular data, and some new cars (e.g. the Slate electric car) may be specifically designed without cellular connections or with easily removable chips, but so much can still be inferred from omnipresent roadside surveillance.
It's not enough even to have private cars. The solution must be legislation that limits all of: data collected by cars and cameras, data shared among third parties, and placement of cameras without informed, specific, continuing public consent.
And every time flock-style cameras "could have" done some good, the surveillance state's cheerleaders will beat their drums and bleat their demands.
> The solution must be legislation that limits all of: data collected
Let's finish the sentence there. Being spied by corporations 24/7 while we game, watch entertainment, drive, talk with friends, work... it's fucked up.
We live in a hell of our own creation and only new legislation and regulations can get us out of here.
It's also akin to Roko's basilisk's - the people who don't realise how pervasive and invasive it has become seem the happiest while the ones like us who've often been around computers since the 80's and just watched our society sleep walk into it feel the worst.
That many of us then end up working for the companies doing it makes for a bad feeling across the industry.
You’re sort of describing the central problem of my existence: the skills I have to offer in the marketplace of work are only skills utilized by people whose goals I abhor.
I got into this because I loved solving problems. Now my problem is that the problems at hand are mostly dehumanizing and further the goals of people intent on dehumanizing everyone but them.
I leaned my ladder against the wrong wall and started climbing. It took a lifetime to realize it was the wrong wall.
Except unlike Roko's basilisk, this is not absurd pseudo-game-theory extrapolation based on the hypothetical existence of a supreme superintelligence that is simultaneously infinitely vengeful, infinitely omniscient, and infintely omnimpotent; instead it's just the same authoritarian corporate-backed police-state privacy encroachment that has been tightening around our throats for years.
>only new legislation and regulations can get us out of here.
From the same goverments that want more state surveillance and even buy the private profile data from data brokers?
Only a new ...revolution would get us out of here...
Most of the governments you are talking about are voted on by the people. And when the people care, the governments change. When the people don't care, yes, the government does want lots of data. However, people do often care about such things and that limits the government.
> And when the people care, the governments change.
When half of American lives paycheck to paycheck they care about putting food in table instead of petty politics or data collections.
The vast majority of Americans are not working 100 hours a week just trying to get enough for the basics (goodwill clothing, food, and a shelter...). They might be living paycheck to paycheck, but it is with 40-60 hour per week job, and the are living paycheck to paycheck because they spend money when they make it (this is a sensible thing to do with most of your money - though having some emergency and retirement savings is a good idea, for most people the risk of death before they get old is too high to make saving much more sensible.).
Which is to say the vast majority have plenty of time to think about politics. They don't but that is because they choose to do other things, not because they lack time. (even those who do take the time often only think about it superficially)
Not sure how your comment relates to the one it is replying to except to appear to reject its argument in favor of another train of thought. Politics is playdoh. Tax the bots for UBI.
There are many Americans who care about politics. They vote despite not needing to. They often discuss it.
Voted on by the people, and yet in 2026 we have no way to actually confirm our votes are counted or factored into who gets elected. Every single US president is related, sans Van Buren, but there's no way our elections are rigged! Not sure how many corrupt politicians have to take office before people will start questioning the legitimacy of elections.
I suspect the next one will do it.
> From the same goverments
As alluded to, it doesn't have to :) The French are currently on their fifth iteration of "the government", and we're bound to get a new iteration hopefully soon! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic
Unemployed revolutionaries are a lot cheaper than responsible senators, and as history shows, selling claims to territories that belong to others is exactly what makes state violence so profitable. The descendants of someone in Africa are glad their photographs and souls weren’t taken a century ago.
Let's finish that thought too.
You're asking for new legislation written by governments that a/ want that data to spy on you too and b/ are lobbied by corporations to write the legislation corps want.
It's a closed loop of crap, that goes in one direction only.
What did you expect with such asymmetry of power?
No worries, next generation won't even understand what we are blabbing about. Look at that cute cat video! Privacy what? Oh that puppy is rolling on his back!
Next generations (plural) already doesn't.
The last generation that cared about this in any big way were the Xers (and close to X-er boomers) circa 1990s.
And even them, not enough, and not as a majority. But at least many techies back then did.
Once your intergenerational wealth is offshore you can pick any of your nepo offspring and make them a hollywood star or unicorn startup CEO with a clean wikipedia page. Their wealth is also tied to national security jobs, because those make you immune in front of the law plus you have the benefit of constructing identities (and death certificates) out of thin air.
For example very rich people in the US receive vanity SSNs. Ghislaine Maxwell has one that spells out "Leet Babe". It's like number plates to show off.
“Leet Babe” is not even the right number of letters. Doesn’t seem like “leet” would even be in her generation’s vocabulary. Are you trolling? Very rich get vanity numbers? Where is there evidence of that?
Bothered to check it? It's not literally the letters "leet babe", it's in "leetspeak" as the parent said:
"Ghislaine Maxwell's Social Security Number (133-78-4883) is recorded in U.S. law enforcement documents, such as historical NYPD files, as part of her official identification and background records".
1337 84883 --> LEET BABBE in leetspeak.
It's a stretch, but to be fair, apparently they already had no problem getting visas and other documents with 3-4 variations of their names (to make database lookup more difficult)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet
That's exactly it. There was a time before widespread fingerprint checks and facial recognition where they'd all been swapping their first/middle/lastnames around like crazy between passports, and for GM we have the actual immigration documents she filled out with the clear intention to fool the government - for each government entity she sent the form to, she used a different name. She was working in NY without a visa, and after Bush was voted out there was a sudden scrambling to get her an H1B and it was done via one of Epstein's companies.
The vanity SSN thing looks even weirder because someone who I assume was Epstein's great-grandfather was head of US social security administration in the 1920s, a crazy coincidence [Trump family was more department of agriculture]. The 133784883 SSN is clearly a five-eyes meme and one day FOIAs will show what other interesting VIPs have a 1337-range SSN.
Even Donald Trump's officially-curated Wikipedia lists some of his fake identities, and he has some Epstein-related pseudonyms which are not widely known yet which are miraculously also associated with the Kashoggi family name.
> We live in a hell of our own creation
Well not "our" creation since only a few oligarchs control most of the companies that engage in this.
> and only new legislation and regulations can get us out of here.
The same oligarchs control nearly all the legislators, so no way out.
Yup. This has been my experience when campaigning for change too.
>Well not "our" creation since only a few oligarchs control most of the companies that engage in this.
They're just looking after their interests and kinks. It's the suckers that accept it, which are hundreds of millions, that allow this hell to be created, and continue to not do anything about it, when they're not even supporting and voting for them.
What would you suggest people do about it?
>Well not "our" creation since only a few oligarchs control most of the companies that engage in this
Do not excuse the millions upon millions of useful idiots who lent credence to the "rulers" stupid projects at every step of the way. A lot of this problem is in the mirror. Those oligarchs would have infinity less power if a whole bunch of people din't agree with them.
I mean hell, go look at HN comments from before Flock was helping ICE and every idiot in the comments cooing about how to optimize the ALPR dragnet to fine speeders, flag drug dealers and apply jackboot to every other class of petty deviant they thought they could tease out and everyone pushing back was being shat on for not being "pro social" enough or whatever.
A meaningful amount of the problem is viewable in the goddamn mirror.
I constantly learn the hard way in politics that unintended consequences dominate long term. Often they are things that seem obvious in hindsight but nobody reasonable thought of in advance (the people that did are unreasonable in other ways and generally right to ignore even though they were right this time)
Now that we know how positive reinforcement works, and why negative doesn’t, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled… nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That’s the source of the tremendous power of positive reinforcement—there’s no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises.
- B.F. Skinner
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I wish people would stop saying we created this hell, as if everyone had a choice as to whether or not they grew up in this increasingly dystopian reality. Blame the people that are actually to blame, not everyone else. It's a tired tactic to shift blame from those who are actually accountable for these systems and technologies.
Those few decades where the normal person thought that they are not a servant to a feudalistic lord are over, the aristocrats don't need to hide any more. The old money is out in the open, because the populace has lost all their leverage.
They still lie to us about the true source of their wealth, but if you dig in the few archives that we can actually access it is clear that the same family names pop up over and over again.
If your family wealth came from feudalism/colonialism and was already safely stored in offshore accounts 100 years ago, you can send your nepo child to silicon valley or Hollywood, have your connections invest into them and tell the whole world what amazing self-made person they are. Some years down the line they go meet the King to get their hereditary Lordship title back for the whole world to know.
All of this is in the national security interest, so your kids are above the law even though they might only be a Hollywood talent scout, CEO of some startup or a real estate mogul focused on black neighborhoods.
For several hundred years being aristocrat was really unpopular, but ultimately they got a grip on it by owning all means of mass propaganda plus building a file on everyone.
Unfortunately the legislation that exists requires surveillance tech be installed on new vehicles.
https://www.gadgetreview.com/federal-surveillance-tech-becom...
I think the only problem may be how it's phrased. I don't mind technology checking if I'm alive and awake while operating a two tonne ballistic bullet in publicml.
I do mind, however, if the data is not immediately discarded, once it does its real-time safety purpose.
Yep, which is why I'll never buy another car without an ashtray.
That is the only solution unless something radically changes.
For me, I will never own a car with any kind of screen on the dash.
You can do that just be aware that you will eventually be spending more than just buying a new car just to keep the current one in good repair. Car collectors get around this because they use have a different car as the daily driver, and their collected car is repaired and only used in parades and such.
You are also turning away a lot of the advances in electric vehicles. Paying for gas in your old car, could be more than payments on a brand new electric car. (that would require a lot of driving.)
You are also increasing your risk of death or serious injury. New cars are far safer in a collision than cars made 15-20 years ago.
Are they though? Have there been any major breakthroughs in the engineering that make a 2026 car more structurally secure than one from 2011? I thought the main improvements were made in software, like lane assist and whatever else. But my assumption is that you need to go back considerably more than 15 years ago to see vehicles that are meaningfully less structurally safe.
Parts availability can be a problem, but especially if you drive a once popular model and are willing to do work yourself, the mileage you can get out of junkyard parts is significant.
That’s weird wording, it’s not live-streaming the DMS camera feed… is it?
There's no actual rule yet, they're still working on it. [1]
tldr; Impairment detection methods are currently too inaccurate to use (both false positive and false negative).
And then if anything is ever accurate enough they'll have to create testable standards that car manufacturers can easily implement.
And NHTSA is concerned with security and privacy issues as well. They'll keep updating congress on progress once a year.
My take is it's very possible the rule may never get made.
[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2026-03/Report-t...
Just because it's a camera based system doesn't mean it will be surveillance.
Except in mid to high end luxury cars, automakers will probably design the sensor to be completely self-contained and merely provide a "driver present, attentive" or "driver distracted" or "no driver." In high end cars they'll use it to switch driver profiles, like what Lucid already does.
Both you and that author need to go look at the massive amount of data that has been getting collected in cars, including location data, for close to two decades in any vehicle that even had the option for telematics and GPS navigation.
Also the issue is not so much the camera system, but the "OS" the car is running. A ton of vehicles now have Google's Android OS running on them and that is also a privacy dumpster fire in and of itsel.
Also, a nationwide network of license plate reading cameras is far more of a privacy threat, too.
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> The solution must be legislation that limits all of: data collected by cars and cameras, data shared among third parties, and placement of cameras without informed, specific, continuing public consent.
Americans will give away any and all material and immaterial rights to validate their illusion of comfort and security. This will not happen barring a complete audit/revamp of the state
Yet even those who aim to remake the state change their tune when they become the state.
Becoming the state means getting power. Very few people are strong enough to not be corrupted by this power, and to argue against themselves, or their function, or the powerful people around them having so much of this power or more of it.
Normal people give it up because they are permanently under assault by misinformation, misdirection, lack of education, artificial threats, all meant to guide them towards a conclusion that was already predetermined for them.
There was a very nice presentation at CCC in 2024. "We know where your car is parked."
https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-wir-wissen-wo-dein-auto-steht-vo...
Positional data about 800.000 E-cars from Volkswagen.
It is scary to think how cheap this tech is getting, so semi-expensive things like fridges and TVs will start to come with built-in mobile connections and be always online even if you don't connect them.
With mesh networks it is even scarier, I wouldn't be surprised that at some point even if you don't connect a device like a smart lamp, it might still be sending data about its usage using your neighbors hub.
I think there are THREE sets of data collection:
- data your car collects about you
- roadside data collection by flock/etc
- data collection by other vehicles. other vehicles act like roving flock cameras. I think fedex vehicles collect data for example.
I also wonder about data your car collects that is not about you. Might not show up in the privacy policy.
There is a lot of legislation missing in the world. Partially to blame is corruption (so called lobbying), greed and so.
> It's not enough even to have private cars. The solution must be legislation
Regarding the importance of legislation versus "just don't buy those", I think this piece [0] seems relevant. To summarize the argument:
1. Consumer choices are never enough to really change things. It's a false promise, one the people making the decisions are happy to let you believe.
2. If you do believe that "voting with your wallet" works, then when things inevitably fail to change it leads you to blame others for "not doing their part" and being insufficiently picky or not denying their own desires.
3. Ultimately this means: (A) No policy change; (B) You spend a lot of time denying yourself nice things; (C) It creates division between people who have the same goals; (D) Your experience is frustrating bickering and purity-tests.
4. Instead you should pursue real politics. While you can't do it alone with a computer, it offers: (A) Real results; (B) No self-sabotage when you truly need a product; (C) You gain allies; (D) You experience comradery and excitement.
[0] https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/21/purity-culture/#stop-fuck...
The best argument against "voting with your wallet" I heard was following: billionaires have much bigger wallets. They will outvote the rest of us every single time voting with wallet is used as political strategy.
Well, billionaires do have bigger wallets. The common person as a collection has bigger wallets than the billionaires. Remember, too, that the billionaires are not a 100% alignment on everything.
> The common person as a collection has bigger wallets than the billionaires.
They don't. And remember, the billionaire has 100% alignment on everything with himself and that gives him huge power when voting with a valet. A collection of "common people" is a true collection of people with very different priorities and needs.
To add to the argument:
5. Voting with your wallet hasn't worked so far. Why limit yourself to a tactic that is proven ineffective? Corporations don't limit themselves this way - they lobby and obfuscate and sometimes outright lie [1].
6. Regulation is how citizens organize. Corporations don't rely on employees just voluntarily doing what benefits the corporation - they fire them if they don't. "Vote with your wallet" means to throw away your rights and duties as a citizen, and retain only the meager powers of a consumer.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3dr91z0g4zo
> With cars, networked computers are encroaching on privacy from two sides: the computers inside the car sharing sensor data and the computers outside the car sharing camera data from known points on the road.
There are cameras inside the car as well.
A recent episode of the MindScape podcast seems very relevant here:
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson on How Your Data Will Be Used Against You https://open.spotify.com/episode/4FOwAWkB0Bu00EpxmE97qB?si=V...
Slate is just some renderings though, right? Is there anything actually real about it more than just marketing?
Happen to be on their email list. They are taking orders soon and announcing pricing on 6/24. Initial delivery expected toward the end of the year.
There was a HN user recently on a related post explaining to everyone that they don't need privacy because they personally aren't harmed and a murderer was caught by one of these cameras.
It turns out protesters don't need privacy, either, because of various reasons. Same for women seeking adequate healthcare, I'm sure. Or LGBT people attempting to exist.
Sorry, I am strawmanning a little. Actually, we'll simply have regulations on use. Regulation which will certainly be followed this time by a government with complete disregard for Constitutional rights. Certainly they will never be misused by the police currently stalking their ex-partners with existing surveillance systems despite existing stalking legislation.
I wish the legislation you talked about existed already. I am dismayed by the overwhelming number of people that love being surveilled. Without them, we would have it already.
Sadly, often once some new degree of connection becomes possible, its absence is very quickly seen as unconscionable. But that instinct is corrosive to human flourishing and freedom in the long term.
Once it's possible to monitor your children via networked phone or wristwatch and know at all times where they are, for example, if you do not spy on your own children then other parents who do will look at you askance, seeing you as neglectful. Some will call the authories to complain. Those same complainers will also wonder why so many children are no longer becoming effective, independent adults, with no introspection.
The same philisophical problem emerges independent of surveillance with most, if not all, new technology. Once everyone is genetically engineering children, bringing children into the world naturally will set them up for failure and serfdom (a la Gattaca).
An Apple airtag in your kid's shoes is common enough.
In response to someone in another thread who argued against personal privacy, who said "Why do people feel they can behave in a way that can be blackmailed", I responded with the following:
---
Yeah, how dare someone do or say anything that some random crazy asshole could use to threaten that person's personal or professional life or even put them in danger of physical harm. To hell with gay kids growing up in very traditional religious areas in much of the world.
That person who made a racist joke on Discord when they were 13 years old? That should be able to ruin them when they're 30!
Someone confiding to a friend over social media DMs that they're in an abusive relationship with someone violent? Well - she shouldn't be surprised when her partner beats her within an inch of her life when he finds out. If only she did what she was told, right?
And let's not forget the cringiest or most sexual thing you've ever said online - make sure that your every utterance in private would pass scrutiny by your employer's HR department!
Seriously...I don't understand people like you. What a small, listless, and unusually safe world you must live in.
You may as well have asked why can't everyone think and act like you as well as live in your particular region of the world with the same friends, family, romantic, and professional opportunities that you've been provided throughout your life.
---
"That person who made a racist joke on Discord when they were 13 years old? That should be able to ruin them when they're 30!"
Or society could move on and accept that people progress. Also I am not aware of any instances where 30 year olds were punished for a racist joke they made with 13.
The only instance I remotely know, is of a german politician, who made a deeply racist and neonazi pamphlet when he was 17 - and the result was some public outcry but nothing else.
Still privacy is important, simply because those who do surveillance are not trustworthy either.
In the 2010's, there was an instance of a late-teens/early-20's girl targeted by a group of too-online people for a racist chat log made when she was around 12 or 13 years old. The people went after her dad's business too because of his association with her.
Aside from getting her fired from her job, they also tried to destroy her dad's business.
I get that less-than-10 years isn't a ton of time, but it also represented nearly half her life. People tend to grow up a lot in their teens even if it's still common for there to be some immaturity leftover in their early 20's
I would like to read more, if possible.
Lynch mobs usually ain't fair or just or busy with factfinding, but I know there are also a lot of people hiding behind a mask and do not like to get exposed by confronting them with something out of a time when they were not so careful yet.
Personally I just avoid racists (or argue with them) and don't attack their stuff or even family and don't think this is the way, to get to a world without or even less racism.
The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved. You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras.
But like you say, many things which have been crimes were based on unethical laws. It's easy to two sides this issue, less crime would on a whole be a good thing but some level of committing crime and getting away with it is required for society to progress.
> You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras.
In the US it is actually even worse than that.
The government and large corporations (basically the same people owning it all) will spy on you 24x7 for anything that they dislike you doing.
But if your bike (car, etc) is stolen right in front of many cameras providing video evidence, police will not do anything about it.
I know first hand people who have crystal clear video evidence of theft, gave it to the police, and they just don't care to do anything about it.
> The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved.
That’s also true for many states that don’t have the same coverage of CCTV and total lack of privacy.
These are NOT two sides of the same coin.
Where is petty street crime solved without massive government intrusion?
Japan for starters, Taiwan for seconds.
> The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved.
Petty crime in China was also "essentially solved" before there were cameras anywhere.
> You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras.
Leaving my bike unlocked in Shanghai 10+ years ago, it was stolen about once every one or two months. That's better than the US, but it's not exactly economical.
The modern solution is that you don't own a bike. You use the rental bikes instead. They're not as good as the bike you'd own, but if they get stolen it's not your problem. (And they have trackers installed, so it's not much of a problem for the rental company either.)
Using a very lightweight lock for the frame and ideally having a saddle and wheels that can't come off without tools would change things economically, especially if the bike is cheap but good enough.
The issue is having to rely on luck and the fact that humans are risk and loss aversive even when the risk is worth it.
"Leaving my bike unlocked in Shanghai 10+ years ago, it was stolen about once every one or two months." Seriously? How many times until you started locking it up?
> The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved.
PRC netizens, and who knows what percentage of them are real but presumably more than 0, will defend this when I talk with them about it. How the surveillance makes them feel safe, how they wouldn't feel safe without it.
Hm, maybe, I'd prefer the person looking over me while I slept to be someone I know, but I guess everyone knows brother Xi. Regardless, the implication seems to be that we need the requisite police state to go with it, when Taiwan and Japan both have basically total CCTV coverage as well, yet are liberal democracies. Both countries are also comparably safe to the PRC. So there certainly seems to be some middle ground. I don't know about Japan, but I've not heard of issues of private companies exploiting the CCTV for profiteering purposes, or like, cops using it to stalk people, or the government using it to engage in civic oppression (post constitutional reforms).
I think we just need sensible levels of surveillance with proper safe guards. I'm quite happy with a network of CCTV that can track down the driver who just bulldosed and killed a kid on the their bike. I'm not ok with Amazon building their own network of spying doorbell cameras to sell adverts.
> Japan both have basically total CCTV coverage as well,
Japan is nowhere near "total CCTV coverage"
China is an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, with their ethnic minorities being about as different from the Han majority as the Czechs are different from the Slovaks. if China was to experience Western levels of diversity, inclusion, and cultural enrichment, then no amount of surveillance could possibly help prevent crimes, petty and otherwise. just look at the UK.
"then no amount of surveillance could possibly help prevent crimes, petty and otherwise. just look at the UK."
I don't understand your argument. Are you suggesting surveillance cameras are somehow less effective in diverse societies? Are you claiming UK has as effective a surveillance network as China?
>Are you claiming UK has as effective a surveillance network as China?
a more effective one.
>Are you suggesting surveillance cameras are somehow less effective in diverse societies?
I'm suggesting that certain cultures are less risk and conflict averse, to put it in the most politically correct way possible, and are less disincentivized from committing crimes by the possibility of brief imprisonment.
They're racist. The argument is racism.
If it happened in the Land of Freedom, of course its going to happen everywhere. Legislation WILL be exploited, its just a question of when.
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