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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: 0.001s | source
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fabian2k ◴[29 Aug 25 12:38 UTC] No.45063298[source]▶
Do I understand it correctly? Crash data gets automatically transmitted to Tesla, and after it was transmitted is immediately marked for deletion?

If that is actually designed like this, the only reason I could see for it would be so that Tesla has sole access to the data and can decide whether to use it or not. Which really should not work in court, but it seems it has so far.

And of course I'd expect an audit trail for the deletion of crash data on Tesla servers. But who knows whether there actually isn't one, or nobody looked into it at all.

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Someone ◴[29 Aug 25 13:00 UTC] No.45063548[source]▶
Another reason is if there’s other kinds of data that gets uploaded to Tesla, and the code for uploading crash data reuses that code.

For the first kind of data, deleting the data from the car the moment there’s confirmation that it now is stored at Tesla can make perfect sense as a mechanism to prevent the car to run out of storage space.

Of course, if the car crashed, deleting the data isn’t the optimal, but that it gets deleted may not be malice.

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cube00 ◴[29 Aug 25 13:19 UTC] No.45063757[source]▶
Data retention is legal's bread and butter. There's no chance such a decision is accidently made by reusing code.

Anytime data is recorded legal is immediately asking about retention so they don't end up empty handed in front of a judge.

Every byte that car records and how it is managed will be documented in excruciating detail by legal.

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1. sidewndr46 ◴[29 Aug 25 15:30 UTC] No.45065418[source]▶
Not sure where you've worked by the "data retention policy" at places I worked made it abundantly clear that we were not to be retaining any data unless personally ordered to by a court. If a line manager, C-Level executive or board member requested me to retain data, I could refuse it under the policy.

Like many things, the retention policy was actually a destruction policy