The end of scuff-n-run parking lot door dings? Car prowling a thing of the past?

Elon Musk says Tesla is working on a “sentry mode” security feature that could let owners record damage and break-ins. The announcement came in response to a customer’s tweet complaining of a dent to his Model 3 and suggesting a “360 dash cam feature while parked.” 

Tesla introduced 360-degree surround camera views for cars with Hardware 2.5 as part of its October software update. The feature lets owners capture dash cam recordings from the car’s front-facing camera, which can be saved to a flash drive that plugs into the vehicle’s USB port. Pressing an icon saves a 10 minute clip, while holding it down pauses recording. The update also taps in to all eight cameras on every Model S, X and 3 to create a surround view of nearby cars

https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/23/elon-musk-tesla-sentry-mode/

It also raises the probability of unintented side effects. Cars, in our lifetime, will almost certainly become fully autonomous, always wirelessly connected to national networks, and have 360 cameras/sensor packages/etc.

This has really interesting implications for privacy, crime, and social contracts. It’s highly probable that when any kind of crime or incident occurs, there will now be a whole host of cars that will have recorded what happened from every angle. By using this footage, it would be possible to re-trace suspect paths back for possibly hours if not days/weeks.

For example, the Boston bombers could have easily been identified by watching feeds back until they planted the bomb in the trash bin. Then it might be trivial to follow them back, block by block, looking at the footage of every car they passed until they arrive at their home. You might even be able to follow them back for the weeks leading up to the crime – identifyng every store and person they met with. A complete, airtight case might be created – all without a detective leaving his office seat. Spousal cheaters would be turned in by their car. Lawyers might subpeona cloud services for video proof of a suspect/client’s whereabouts during events. Don’t even get me started about surveillance by fully autonomous cars that can follow you wherever you go and trade off every few blocks with other cars so you don’t even know they’re following you.

It also means everything you do next to a street will likely be recorded from many sources – including ones that pass you by and then are gone. All of which likely is immediately uploaded to the cloud and has only the security of those systems to prevent anyone from using that information for whatever purposes they choose. With data breaches becoming a regular occurrence, it’s something that should make us all give pause.