If you drive a Tesla, there may be a day when your car isn’t where you left it. Before you jump to conclusions, though, you should probably call the police. Not to report a possible crime, mind you, but because it may have been the police who took it.
Your Tesla may have witnessed a crime. A new report in the San Francisco Chronicle details the rise of this practice in California, pointing out that the rise of mass surveillance, including camera-equipped cars, has given police new tools when investigating crimes.
“We have all these mobile video devices floating around,” Sgt. Ben Therriault, the president of the Richmond Police Offices Association in California, told the outlet.
Therriault explained that he and other officers make it a point to seek out what the Chronicle refers to as "bystander Teslas" at the scene of a crime. In these cases, officers tend to be interested in seeing what the car’s “Sentry Mode” may have recorded.
Sentry Mode, explained. According to Tesla’s support page, Sentry Mode is a feature that allows owners to monitor activities around the car when it’s parked and locked.
“When suspicious motion is detected, your vehicle will react depending on the severity of the threat,” Tesla states. “If a threat is detected, the cameras on your vehicle will begin recording, and the alarm will activate. If the alarm is activated, you will receive an alert from the Tesla app notifying you that an incident has occurred.”
When activated, Sentry Mode will record with the car’s front-facing cameras. The feature will save the last minutes of footage of any event that it detected and recorded. When available, the footage is saved to the USB in the car’s glove box.
Towing away the evidence. In some cases, police ask Tesla drivers for permission to download the footage their car recorded and manage to get it without needing a warrant. But in others, authorities may not be able to locate drivers, which can lead to drastic actions—like literally towing the car away.
The Chronicle identified three cases where police decided to tow a bystander Tesla away over the summer in Oakland, including one where they claimed the Tesla was parked in just the right place to witness a possible murder. The outlet also found that some police officers are specifically listing sentry mode in their search warrants.
“I know that Tesla vehicles contain external surveillance cameras in order to protect their drivers from theft and/or liability in accidents,” Oakland police officer Kevin Godchaux wrote in one case, according to a warrant affidavit obtained by the outlet. “Based on this information, I respectfully request that a warrant is authorized to seize this vehicle…”
No guarantee that the Tesla saw anything. While Teslas may seem like great resources in these situations, there’s no guarantee that the cars recorded footage that could be useful to authorities. Parked Teslas will only record events they consider threats if Sentry Mode is activated, and activation is optional. Furthermore, Sentry Mode won’t activate if the battery is less than 20% charged.
A world where everything is watching. This isn’t the only case of police using technology owned by civilians to investigate crime. In the past, Amazon allowed police departments to request Ring doorbell camera footage from users through a dedicated tool on its Neighbors app. The use of Ring footage by police sparked concerns that neighborhoods could become places of constant surveillance and increase racial profiling.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced it would no longer allow police to request footage recorded from Ring users' cameras through the app.
Image | Chris Yarzab
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