Who’s Watching You? FSD Data Privacy Concerns in 2025

Who’s Watching You? FSD Data Privacy Concerns

If you’ve used Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta in 2025, chances are, your car has already been watching you—inside and out. The rapid evolution of autonomous vehicles hasn’t just changed how we drive. It’s also quietly reshaped who sees what, and what gets stored where.

This year, regulators, cybersecurity experts, and even drivers themselves are raising urgent questions: How much does Tesla (and its peers) really know about us? Who owns your in-car behavior data? And just how secure is all that footage from the eight exterior cameras and one very aware cabin-facing lens?

Let’s unpack the uncomfortable truths behind FSD and data surveillance in 2025.

1. Tesla’s “Privacy Policy” vs. Reality

Tesla publicly states that cabin camera footage is used to improve driver monitoring, prevent misuse of FSD, and enhance safety. But here’s what many don’t know:

In Europe, regulators found in early 2025 that Tesla’s consent flow for cabin recordings did not comply with GDPR standards.
Leaked internal documents published by Wired revealed that Tesla engineers retained select cabin footage for internal research without anonymization.

The issue isn’t just Tesla, though—it’s the broader ecosystem of connected driving.

“If your car knows you looked down for 2 seconds, then who else knows that? And can that be used in court? In your insurance rate?” — Dr. Miriam Skye, Cyber Policy Analyst, MIT AI Lab

2. Real-Time Uploads: Where Is Your Data Going?

Tesla vehicles regularly upload driving behavior, video clips, and driver attentiveness metrics to the cloud. According to Electrek’s 2025 teardown report:

Up to 35 MB/minute of sensor and visual data is streamed live.
Footage may pass through Amazon AWS, Tesla’s private AI training servers, and third-party telematics providers for insurance scoring.

That’s a lot of touchpoints—and a lot of opportunities for data to leak, be sold, or be hacked.

In March 2025, a former Tesla contractor alleged that “anonymized” data could still be traced back to drivers based on GPS-linked patterns and cabin footage metadata.

3. Is Mercedes Any Better? And What About Ford?

Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot—the first Level 3 certified system in the U.S.—also uses cabin monitoring. But unlike Tesla, they offer:

Transparent opt-in choices
Local data storage options in EU markets
Data minimization policies enforced under German privacy law

Meanwhile, Ford’s BlueCruise 1.4 mostly relies on eye-tracking and facial orientation, without audio or cabin footage. However, their partnership with insurance affiliates like State Farm in the U.S. means that your “driving score” could still influence rates—without your explicit awareness.

4. Who Can Access Your Data Legally in 2025?

Here’s where it gets murky. Under the Driver Privacy Act (U.S.) and GDPR (EU), personal driving data is protected unless:

Law enforcement issues a subpoena
You’re involved in a crash where fault is disputed
You’ve opted into data sharing via terms you didn’t fully read

In 2025, Tesla clarified in a revised EULA that “aggregated and anonymized data may be shared with partners for training AI models.” What they didn’t clarify is that “aggregated” may still include time-stamped, location-linked behavior logs.

5. Can You Opt Out?

Not really.

Tesla does allow users to disable cabin camera footage sharing, but this disables some safety features and can flag your account.
Mercedes allows data opt-outs in European markets, not in the U.S.
Ford provides partial control via the FordPass app, but behavioral scoring remains active for connected features.

Bottom line: You can’t use FSD without being monitored. The question is how much you’re willing to give up for the convenience.

6. The Bigger Picture: Cars as Surveillance Tools

In a post-Snowden, AI-saturated era, the idea that your vehicle knows when you’re drowsy, distracted, or even angry raises deeper ethical concerns:

Could this data be subpoenaed in divorce or criminal cases?
Could insurers eventually use facial expressions to deny claims?
Could governments use in-car recordings for surveillance or predictive policing?

None of this is far-fetched anymore. In fact, some U.S. states have already begun debating bills that would limit in-cabin audio collection—Tesla isn’t alone here.

Conclusion: Transparency Must Catch Up to Technology

Autonomous driving is no longer science fiction. But privacy protections, ethical data use, and user control still lag miles behind. In 2025, we’re letting machines drive us, but maybe—just maybe—we’re handing over the wheel of something even more personal: our digital identity on the road.