Technology@lemmy.worldbybeep@piefed.world
20 hours

All Cars Sold in the EU Now Require a Camera Aimed at Your Face. It’s Still Not Clear Where That Data Goes

allaboutcookies.org English

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1247209/all-cars-sold-in-the-eu-now-require-a-camera-aimed-at-your-face-its-still-not-clear-wher

Starting July 7, 2026, every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera aimed at your face. Glance at your phone, your kids in the back seat, or the radio for too long, and the car will flash a warning light and sound an alert.

Automakers have known this was coming for years. What they, and EU regulators, have never spelled out is what happens to that footage after the alert goes off.

While the intention behind the new system is difficult to dispute, its implementation has raised several concerns. Early real-world testing suggests the distraction warnings can be overly sensitive and potentially distracting.

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    • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.ukEnglish
      27 minutes

      Unless it can prove that it is running entirely locally with no outside connection, it can fuck off.

    • Senal@programming.devEnglish
      15 minutes

      The mandate says nothing about cameras specifically.

      I thought it did as well but it only specifies this :

      Driver drowsiness and attention warning and advanced driver distraction warning systems shall be designed in such a way that those systems do not continuously record nor retain any data other than what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed within the closed-loop system. Furthermore, those data shall not be accessible or made available to third parties at any time and shall be immediately deleted after processing. Those systems shall also be designed to avoid overlap and shall not prompt the driver separately and concurrently or in a confusing manner where one action triggers both systems.

      Don’t get me wrong, manufacturers are going to have a fucking field day with all of the shit they’ll try and get in under this banner of “safety” and they will almost certainly work their monetisation shenanigans in around this.

      It might seem like that wording prohibits data collection, but it doesn’t cover all the bases a team of well paid lawyers would be able to come up with. Or they could just do what they normally do and just ignore the “no data collection” part and pay the cost of doing business tax fine and rake in multiples of that fine in profits.

      My point is , it doesn’t specify cameras, so theoretically a company could come up with a non-face-scanning way of doing this and use that instead.

      will they ?..fuck no…but they could if they wanted to.

      Which is arguably worse.

      edit : A note to say that I’m not arguing against the safety aspects of this , they might be fully valid, i’m arguing that it’ll be abused for profit in any way the companies think will give them a positive ROI.

    • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.netEnglish
      34 minutes

      For anyone thinking they can just cover it or something…

      Those cameras are for detecting distracted and tired drivers. They run special AI models that track eye movent and other queues. Covering them will obviously be detected by so will be putting a picture in front of it.

      When it detects it’s disabled a warning light will light on the dashboard. For now it’s not specifically forbidden to cover it but the warning light may mean issues when passing technical revisions. In case of an accident insurance may also treat it as a proof that you were at fault. For now it’s all just speculation as the rules are new but most likely it will go this way.

    • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4 hours

      My utv detects the seatbelt. If you don’t click in the seatbelt, it limits speed to like 10mph and limits the hp. Sometimes I’m tooling in the yard or getting it unstuck and I need full HP but also need to get in and out of the vehicle. Someone made a cute little bypass that took 5 minutes to install. Works like a charm. Now, when I’m driving on a road, I buckle up, but when I’m plowing the snowy driveway I don’t.

      How do I learn to be a FOSS developer so I can start working on firmware/software replacements for vehicles?

      • cass80@programming.devEnglish
        7 minutes

        Jumping straight to vehicles might be much. But you can definitely start hacking away at small iot devices or routers. They usually have poor/no security and are a great way to get your feet wet.

        There are whole youtube channels dedicated to reverse engineering small consumer devices.

      • betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish
        4 hours

        They can easily set it up to prevent operation if they don’t see your face.

        But they probably can’t prevent you from wearing sun glasses, a beard, a covid mask, and ear muffs.

        Yeah IKR.

    • Zink@programming.devEnglish
      5 hours

      I’m in the US where this is coming soon enough. My car is a 2012 which seems like kind of a sweet spot, but it’s not going to last forever especially with our winters and road salt and pot holes.

      I didn’t plan to buy a new car any time soon but have been thinking about my eventual next choice. All this BS has me wondering whether it’s better to get something soon without the next level of surveillance, or wait a few years and see how bad it is in practice and how it can be disabled.

      That 2012 I mentioned is fun to drive, has low mileage for its age, and is fuel efficient, plus I have renewed my love of working on my own vehicles after not doing so for a decade or two. I’m currently doing work on the brakes. Maybe I’ll just have to try to make it live forever, and not give any more money to the whole damn industry as long as possible. That’s the most economically and environmentally friendly option, after all.

      • FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5 hours

        Just a heads up: I have a 2026 GM. The infotainment doesn’t work right and the key fob often isn’t detected. Their solution is to blame my phone (even though it works with every other car and every other Bluetooth device; and a factory reset of my Pixel 9 only solved some of the infotainment problems and shouldn’t have had to happen at all anyway). My father-in-law also has a 2026 Chevy and there are infotainment problems for him. Different models.

        Tldr: avoid the 2026 GM vehicles.

        • Soup@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 hours

          Avoid all GM vehicles, they are directly responsible for the pathetic state of US public infrastructure and they have literally been caught valuing profits over their customers’ lives.

        • Zink@programming.devEnglish
          3 hours

          DONE, lol.

          I kinda want to get something with a manual transmission again, so it will very likely be a japanese brand.

      • Snapz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3 hours

        Yeah, can they see this guy’s girlfriend giving us blowjobs? And who is paying for the gas? I mean, it’s this guy’s car presumably, unless his partner is just VERY accommodating. Either way though, I’m the guest in this scenario and shouldn’t be expected to cover that.

          • Snapz@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1 hour

            You know what, this has gotten pretty hostile and weird, I think Julie and I would both feel better if you left the car.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7 hours

      Sounds like more ways for insurance companies to a) charge you more based on behaviors they arbitrarily determine are “bad”, and b) take your payments for years/decades then never pay out because they say something you did on video makes any accident your fault based on some term buried in the 500 page contract you obviously didn’t read all of.

      They already do “a” by taking vehicle blackbox info uploaded by dealers or via telemetry and increasing your rate via their risk analysis. Note, your rates never go down for good driving. Only up.

      • tristynalxander@mander.xyzEnglish
        4 hours

        I just want to rant about how dystopian car “insurance” is.

        Set aside all the justifications / propaganda you’ve heard about car insurance, and think about how it actually works. You’re legally obligated to pay a corporation for the right to use your vehicle on public roads. What do you get out of it? For the vast majority of people nothing. Even if you get in an accident they’ll do their absolute damnedest not to pay you or to pay you a pittance that you could’ve covered with a fraction of the cumulative fee. That’s basically the text-book definition of a scam. Even if you do have “good” insurance (doubt) they’ll have higher prices due to all the scammy insurance companies. It’s a legally obligate scam – insurance has effectively turned every public road into a toll road.

        Frankly, I feel this way about all forms of insurance, so I doubt anyone will take me seriously (It’s not hard to save and invest money, with that the entire notion of insurance kinda falls apart). Still legally obligatory insurance is a particularly disgusting form of oligarchical capture.

        • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          33 minutes

          Should read up on the history of medical insurance, e.g. blue cross blue shield. The idea was that expensive payouts can happen early on during someone’s coverage, before they have a chance to build up savings. No one wants that to happen to them, so if everybody is in the pool of people who will pay for coverage, that risk is mitigated by being spread over a large group who only need to pay in a little at any time.

          Rich people or institutions who can afford to self-insure don’t need insurance.

          This original insurance was non-profit. The capitalist insurances are the ones realizing they can choose to only cover people who aren’t likely to need payouts, and profit off of the difference between pay ins and pay outs. I also agree this is a morally dubious system.

    • grrgyle@slrpnk.netEnglish
      7 hours

      Score one more point for fucking bikes, Jesus…

      Now about all those CCTVs

      • doingthestuff@lemy.lolEnglish
        7 hours

        I get so tired of bikes being brought up every time a car is mentioned. They’re not at all an option for me or anyone who lives near me, and millions of others.

        • grrgyle@slrpnk.netEnglish
          4 hours

          I’m sorry to hear that and I don’t mean to rub it in, but your local infrastructure isn’t my problem. I do hope it improves, though.

          Just for balance there are plenty of things about my region I hate, like our shitty voting laws and piss poor democratic representation, but you wouldn’t catch me complaining to people who enjoy more direct democracy.

        • skaffi@infosec.pubEnglish
          6 hours

          Are you also tired of being told that you are the one person responsible for choosing to live in a location that necessitates driving a car, or do you reckon it might be good to be told that a bit more, then?

          I’m asking first, because I wouldn’t want to tire you any more, just because the world hastily on its way to hell in a hand basket, what with climate change, and all the disastrous knock-on effects that follow from it.

          I hope you have a pleasant commute.

          • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            5 hours

            I’m not who you replied to, but this is a stupid take.

            My area doesn’t have public transit to speak of, its semi-rural small town, and everything is in another town, so I’m forced to drive. Everywhere around here is like this. I explicitly do not have the option to move to a more urban area because I live in a very low cost of living area, which means very depressed wages, and I genuinely cant afford to move, much less live somewhere with walkable infrastructure or decent public transit, without better wages first. Because no, getting rid of everything and starting over isn’t an option, nor should it have to be.

            And I didn’t choose to be here in the first place, either. When you are born into a very low cost of living area, you often get stuck there or can only move somewhere even further behind, because wages are so depressed you can’t save enough to get into a better area. The only way you get out is if you can land a good job before moving, which is insanely difficult, since remote work usually scales to the local wages, and who can afford to travel for in-person interviews?

            Just move is easy to say when you can bring home more than you pay in bills, or have enough in savings to cover a few months until you find work or whatever, and its really easy to say when you already live in an expensive area. But its not actually a practical option for many of us.

            So idk about that other person, but yes, I’m fucking tired of being told to just move if I don’t like how things are. Condescending out-of-touch bullshit, is what it is.

            • TrippingBalls@lemmy.worldEnglish
              20 minutes

              Lots of people arrive to the US with the clothes on their backs, not even speaking the language and manage to not only survive but thrive

              If you want excuses you will always find them

              I have had 2 uber drivers in the US who were recent immigrants… Less than 2 years… Had plans to stay 3 more and return back to their countries to open businesses…

    • CADmonkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6 hours

      Same sort of thing coming to the US because of course.

      I just bought an EV that was made before 2020. I’m going to learn all about rebuilding EV batteries.

    • stretch2m@infosec.pubEnglish
      11 hours

      No way in hell I’m buying a car with that BS. I’ll ride a bike first.

    • bitjunkie@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5 hours

      Facerec-defeating tattoos are a thing, just throwing that out there

      • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        5 hours

        Does literally nothing for this though, they already know who you are.

    • M0oP0o@mander.xyzEnglish
      13 hours

      Every new car. So congrats on further destroying the new car market, good job.

    • Alfredolin@jlai.luEnglish
      11 hours

      It’s not wether it’s easily fooled or not. The thing is, I am not sure most of us agree with this regulation. So is this democratic after all?

      And if it is, then people are dumb, stupid.

      • tmyakal@infosec.pubEnglish
        7 hours

        Politicians are fine with this because the cameras will just point at their chauffeurs.