this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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All Cars Sold in the EU Now Require a Camera Aimed at Your Face. It’s Still Not Clear Where That Data Goes (allaboutcookies.org)
submitted 1 day ago by beep@piefed.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
229 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] Senal@programming.dev 10 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

The mandate says nothing about cameras specifically.

I thought it did as well but it only specifies this :

Driver drowsiness and attention warning and advanced driver distraction warning systems shall be designed in such a way that those systems do not continuously record nor retain any data other than what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed within the closed-loop system. Furthermore, those data shall not be accessible or made available to third parties at any time and shall be immediately deleted after processing. Those systems shall also be designed to avoid overlap and shall not prompt the driver separately and concurrently or in a confusing manner where one action triggers both systems.

Don't get me wrong, manufacturers are going to have a fucking field day with all of the shit they'll try and get in under this banner of "safety" and they will almost certainly work their monetisation shenanigans in around this.

It might seem like that wording prohibits data collection, but it doesn't cover all the bases a team of well paid lawyers would be able to come up with. Or they could just do what they normally do and just ignore the "no data collection" part and pay the ~~cost of doing business tax~~ fine and rake in multiples of that fine in profits.

My point is , it doesn't specify cameras, so theoretically a company could come up with a non-face-scanning way of doing this and use that instead.

will they ?....fuck no...but they could if they wanted to.

Which is arguably worse.

edit : A note to say that I'm not arguing against the safety aspects of this , they might be fully valid, i'm arguing that it'll be abused for profit in any way the companies think will give them a positive ROI.