Whenever I talk about this issue with friends and family I bring up how that report revealed Nissan was gathering info on sexual activity in their cars and can sell it to third parties. That usually gets people to start listening.
Was Nissan actually collecting this data? All I can find is that the privacy policy retained the right to it (some lawyer probably though about what happens if they accidentally record you getting frisky, and put it in there preemptively), but no evidence if it actually happened.
IMO if the privacy policy allows it, you should always assume it is happening.
The reason is with most of this stuff it’s impossible to verify. Even if you wanted to know what data is collected and how’s it’s used - you literally can’t.
Even opting out is based on trust. I mean, it’s all done in software. Nothing is physically removed and most of the time the data is still transmitted. You’re just hoping they don’t use it.
> IMO if the privacy policy allows it, you should always assume it is happening.
Judging by the responses I’ve been getting this is apparently a controversial stance and we should all just give this stuff away to Nissan then wait to find out what happens.
Does it matter? We can split hairs over whether or not they are actually doing the thing they give themselves the rights to do, but that feels unproductive and disingenuous.
Yes it matters. Or at least it matters whether the claims you make are true, and there is a difference between “had a right to” and “did”.
Have I told you about my neighbor who uses a leaf blower nonstop from 7am until 8pm? Well, he doesn’t actually, be he has a right to, and it’s splitting hairs whether he actually does or not.
On the other hand, do we have any means of finding out whether they did? It's one thing if you can say "No, they definitely don't, here's what's actually sent and here's how it's used and here's the contracts limiting what's gathered". Otherwise we're all just speculating.
But in the absence of solid proof, I think the history of the last several decades of surveillance shows that it's completely reasonable to assume the absolute worst. Snowden showed that the scope of government data collection was far beyond even the wildest assume-the-worst theories floated in tech media prior to the revelations, and Doubleclick (wearing its Google façade) makes the NSA look lazy.
The reason these assumptions are reasonable, is that there's incentive for them to be true. Someone's willing to pay for that data. Maybe not very much, but if it costs almost nothing to collect, then it works out.
The way some manager sees it, Nissan would be "leaving money on the table" if they didn't spy on their customers to the absolute maximum permitted by their EULA. This gets brought up in every internal meeting about telemetry features, I can assure you. (I've been in those meetings for a number of automakers, though not Nissan specifically, the whole industry is on board. It turns the stomach. My voice was not heard.)
Yeah at this point in my life I just immediately assume if I give a company a right to do something, they’re going to do it. It’s an assumption everyone should operate under.
> Have I told you about my neighbor who uses a leaf blower nonstop from 7am until 8pm? Well, he doesn’t actually, be he has a right to
While I think it’s reasonable to split hairs about whether or not they were actually collecting the data, I think this is a really problematic analogy for a number of reasons.
I think a better comparison would go something like this: “My neighbor told me he might record everything that happens in my back yard”.
Your neighbor having the right to run his leaf blower constantly isn’t analogous to your neighbor directly claiming they might do something that impacts your privacy. Even if they never actually record anything, coming out and saying they might is more newsworthy than an unstated “right to be annoying” that never occurs.
It’s still worth distinguishing between “my neighbor said he might” and “my neighbor is actually doing this”, but just the claim on its own is still worth paying attention to if you care about your privacy.
Ok, give me remote access to your computer. I’ll send a contract saying I can sell what I find, but I haven’t done it so it’s cool and it shouldn’t be cause for alarm.
In 2024 to assume a company is not exercising virtually all the rights you’ve given them when you agreed to their terms and services - especially when they stand to make a ton of money doing so - is wild to me.
These companies do not get the benefit of the doubt. I do not need proof to assume they are selling us to the highest bidder when they explicitly outline it in their terms and services and have done it time and time again. Experience has shown us that more often than not they will.
I also didn’t say Nissan stole or broke into anything. My example is appropriate.
Or are you again presenting an assumption as fact.
I think assuming a company is selling your data is a completely fair one. But it’s also completely fair to ask that people don’t use language that implies factual knowledge to represent those assumptions.
If only to make your argument better you might evaluate your comments and see how your language is weakening it.
At some point you’re just coming off as either way too trusting or playing the steel man. We clearly don’t see eye to eye here. My skepticism of the car manufacturers - especially the ones listed in this very damning report which includes Nissan - is warranted whether you agree or not. Feel free to sign on the dotted line. I won’t be convinced to agree to that nonsense.
It's different. The leaf blower thing is something everyone has a right to do, and if it actually bothered enough people the municipality would put some restrictions on it regardless, and they didn't have to intentionally seek it out in legal scripture, and anyone can verify that they are using the leaf blower.
With the cars, they went out of their way to get the right to do so, implying they want to do it, otherwise it would be a waste of money. Nobody can really verify whether they are or are not doing so, as that's confidential company information and it's not illegal (since they have to right to do so) so nobody can subpoena them to find out. So maybe they are doing it and just lying about not doing it.
The charitable read is that they are notifying you of the possibility that the car’s data collection may unintentionally include sexual activity. E.g. your car was recorded as having a rocking motion while parked.
The other read is that they are intentionally collecting sexual activity data for nefarious purposes.
The first is the lawyer drafting the release being overcautious. The second is a corporation being evil.
I’m not in love with either, but the claim was that Nissan was actively collecting data about sexual activity, when there is no proof of that. The only thing there is proof of is that they put a notice in their terms of service.
> The first is the lawyer drafting the release being overcautious. The second is a corporation being evil.
How was the hypothetical overcautious lawyer able to independently come up with such a specific scenario, which would require intimate technical knowledge?
I believe your are missing a third option, which is a synthesis of both. This is that the engineers reported that their sensor data could be used to collect sexual activity. However, in response to that, the corporation preferred to cover themselves legally rather than making any technical effort to address the risk on their customers' privacy.
The lawyer is not being overcautious, but simply displaying the corporation's priorities. The corporation is not being evil, it is just being psychopathic.
I’ve been in conversations many times where lawyers chose language about a product that the product couldn’t do and there would be no reasonable way to do it technically.
The language is usually in response to specific precedents or jurisdictions where surprises happened to someone else.
It’s not the job of the lawyer to trust what the technical people are saying, it’s to protect the company. The lawyer will want to protect/cover anything even remotely plausible and/or has been seen to be a problem in similar situations.
Over the past couple decades I’ve been giving companies and our government the benefit of the doubt. And I’ve been burned every time.
Not only am I wrong, always, I’m extremely wrong. In fact the conspiracy theorists are often wrong too - they’re too lenient.
After Snowden, we should all understand that whatever the worst case scenario is, it’s probably worse than that. If you can think it, it’s probably happening. If they allude to it happening, it’s definitely happening.
I don't trust a single one of them. It's not even just they haven't earned it, it's that we have every reason not to. The public trust in these companies should be completely and irreparably shattered at this point.
We can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time, and frankly I’m not going to wait to find out I got screwed. When it comes to privacy you have to be proactive, you can’t claw it back.
Is the bubble gum bought with the unlimited resources known as "other people's money"?
Political will is zero sum or close to it. It is wasteful to rile people up over hypotheticals when there is no shortage of non-hypotheticals that are just as odious which simply have not been publicized.
To handwave this away as a simple hypothetical when this whole discussion is spurred by a thorough analysis by the Mozilla foundation showing this exact issue is, frankly, dishonest. I don’t really know how else to respond. We are having this debate because of a report with credible evidence and accusations. The burden is on you and Nissan et al to convince me to trust them with my biometrics and other info/activity (mostly needlessly) tracked by the car.
This is a very strange hill to die on - in defense of car manufacturers against our privacy rights. Once I buy a car what I do with it is none of their damn business and they sure as hell shouldn’t be _selling_ that info.
BolexNOLA did a fine job trying to focus the conversation on published facts and the sensible position that the onus is on the automakers to prove their trustworthiness after they betrayed public trust. This was not something you or potato3732842 really engaged with beyond an uncritical dismissal. If you want discourse, you have to bring something to the table.
