this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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Hello people, my family recently bought a Renault 5 e-tech. The car itself is great, but there are some aspects that creep me out, especially the driver-facing camera. We didn't actually know that such a camera existed before we bought the car, it was only mentioned as the car was given to us.

The cameras official purpose is to see, if you are tired and paying attention to the road, by some "AI magic", I suppose. You can also let it scan your face, so that you automatically get logged into your profile.

I personally think, that that is kinda creepy, especially as there is no visual indication if the camera is currently recording and no official way to disable the camera hardware-wise. When it is being coverd, the car immediately complains about it.

When talking to friends or family about it, I got one of two reactions: equal concern, or "nice feature actually", "what about the camera on your laptop?", "you are way too paranoid", "I have noting to hide; it is only me driving being recorded".

I have also seen such cameras in other cars, BYD for example.

What do you think, is this creepy or am I too paranoid? Does anyone know where the actual data is processed, on device or on some cloud server? Do you have any experience with such cameras? I couldn't really find any information about it on the internet.

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[–] NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago

The laws that make it a requirement for cars to surveil their occupants at all times and analyse their face, what they're looking at, what they're doing at all times?

The laws that are created by the state to make surveillance mandatory. THAT surveillance state.

I brought up techbros building data centers because where do you think all the information from these cameras is being stored and analysed?

I brought up the mass media circus because that's what's used to force a pubpic opinion on topics such as this by obfuscating any potential negative opinions as 'whackjob conspiracy theories' or in the form of calling anyone with doubts on LLMs and ML algos being called intelligent 'the new luddites'

(Or worse yet, the americans deciding that any anti AI or anti datacenter language is on par with domestic terrorism)

Keep enjoying your yam. Don't mind the sound of the jackboots against your neigbours door, you have nothing to hide and thus of course, nothing to fear.