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.
My 2021 car has this. it has no cellular data connection or significant internal storage and the camera just has what I assume is a very basic neural net that looks for signs of distraction. like the eye tracker modules some phones and laptops have. These are low-res greyscale IR cameras usually.
I’m OK with it, and it’s helped me out a few times, though I know some cars are more aggressive and beep at you just for looking at your own mirrors.
Some cars however have full time cabin recording that you dont have much control over, and some do have full time data connections that could theoretically send some kind of snapshots on events, but they arent going to do full time video streaming or uploading large video files.
I dont like being constantly monitored. I dont want to normalize the lack of privacy.
my phones are pin or pattern only
Iphone SE’s didnt have face unlock but still use the IR camera to scan your face every second.
Just because you don’t use it doesn’t mean it’s not being used on you (apologies for breaking it to you)
Apologies for not using Apple products
Oh nah no need to apologise, their products haven’t been good for decades. Merely making a point about how tech can be entirely hidden from the user
I just learned about internetless TVs that build mesh networks until one TV is found that can access the internet… that sounds like infiltrating a WiFi network and should be illegal.
Edit: it’s not true, I learned today after being downvoted into oblivion 😭