| It's not just about you. With phones and fixed cameras, people have to make a deliberate choice to point them at something of interest. If your neighbor decided to mount a camera that always looked into your bedroom window or yard, you probably won't be very happy about it, but you also know they had to deliberately do it and likely know the area they're monitoring. Now with phone cameras, it's more likely than not that it's not looking at anything interesting most of the time, since it'd be lying flat on a surface or in a pocket/bag. Car cameras are specifically designed to be very good at detecting people, since their primary purpose tends to be pedestrian avoidance. They also tend to not be obfuscated and have great vantage points. That makes them very likely to see something interesting, with very strong signal for how interesting it is. And the intention of the vehicle owner doesn't have to be aligned with the manufacturer. Let's say you're a complete luddite with no power, phone, car, or internet of any kind. If I were, say Tesla and you were in a major metro areas, I could probably still construct a pretty through understanding of you or your home just from various Teslas driving or parked in your area. We can even go full facial or body recognition and figure out where you are from your appearances on their vehicles. How distinguishable are you from video+sonar+radar identification? How feasible is it to hide from sight from every car? It's like how Facebook or Google can create a profile and understanding of what you do, without you ever touching any of its services, because it's practically impossible to use the internet without touching a service that'll feed information to them, or stopping everyone who knows something about you from disclosing that information to them. |
And, really, if you want to know what someone's house is like on the interior, you can probably just look it up at the local planning office. Often for free. And this isn't even getting into the people that have vacuums that map out the place on a somewhat regular basis...
Look, I get it that this is yet another vector for information. I just can't bring myself to think it is a meaningfully worse one than any others. If you view it as "cars are another item on the nightmare that is modern privacy", I fully agree. Thinking they are somehow more capable of surveillance than basically every other one that has proliferated in recent years feels off.