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Tesla said it didn't have key data in a fatal crash, then a hacker found it

(www.washingtonpost.com)
650 points clcaev | 1 comments | 29 Aug 25 11:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.342s | source
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metaphor ◴[29 Aug 25 12:25 UTC] No.45063162[source]▶
> Immediately after the wreck at 9:14 p.m. on April 25, 2019, the crucial data detailing how it unfolded was automatically uploaded to the company’s servers and stored in a vast central database, according to court documents. Tesla’s headquarters soon sent an automated message back to the car confirming that it had received the collision snapshot.

> Moments later, court records show, the data was just as automatically “unlinked” from the 2019 Tesla Model S at the scene, meaning the local copy was marked for deletion, a standard practice for Teslas in such incidents, according to court testimony.

Wow...just wow.

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A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 ◴[29 Aug 25 12:39 UTC] No.45063302[source]▶
I am trying to imagine a scenario under which that is defensible and does not raise various questions including compliance, legal, retention. Not to mention, who were the people who put that code into production knowing it would do that.

edit: My point is that it was not one lone actor, who would have made that change.

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jeffbee ◴[29 Aug 25 12:46 UTC] No.45063389[source]▶
The artifact in question was a temporary archive created for upload. I can't think of a scenario in which you would not unlink it.
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1. giancarlostoro ◴[29 Aug 25 13:40 UTC] No.45064000[source]▶
You were right in your first statement, but your follow up is a bad assumption, I think everyone here will agree that in the case of a crash this data should be more easily available and not deleted.

Assuming its not intentionally malicious this is a really dumb bug that I could have also written. You zip up a bunch of data, and then you realize that if you don't delete things you've uploaded you will fill up all available storage, so what do you do? You auto delete anything that successfully makes it to the back-end server, you mark the bug fixed, not realizing that you overlooked crash data as something you might want to keep.

I could 100% see this being what is happening.