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The data was key evidence in the death of a pedestrian in 2019:
At the beginning of the month, Tesla was found partly liable in a wrongful death lawsuit involving the death of a pedestrian in Florida in 2019. The automaker—which could have settled the case for far less—claimed that it did not have the fatal crash's data. That's until a hacker was able to recover it from the crashed car, according to a report in The Washington Post.
In the past, Tesla has been famously quick to offer up customer data stored on its servers to rebut claims made against the company. But in this case, the company said it had nothing. Specifically, the lawyers for the family wanted what's known as the "collision snapshot," data captured by the car's cameras and other sensors in the seconds leading up to and after the crash.
According to the trial, moments after the collision snapshot was uploaded to Tesla's servers, the local copy on the car was marked for deletion. Then, "someone at Tesla probably took 'affirmative action to delete' the copy of the data on the company's central database," according to the Post.
Tesla only acknowledged that it had received the data once the police took the Tesla's damaged infotainment system and autopilot control unit to a Tesla technician to diagnose, but at that time the local collision snapshot was considered unrecoverable.
That's where the hacker, only identified as @greentheonly, his username on X, came in. Greentheonly told The Washington Post that, "for any reasonable person, it was obvious the data was there."
During the trial, Tesla told the court that it hadn't hidden the data, but lost it. The company's lawyer told the Post that Tesla's data handling practices were "clumsy" and that another search turned up the data, after acknowledging that @greentheonly had retrieved the snapshot locally from the car.
"We didn't think we had it, and we found out we did... And, thankfully, we did because this is an amazingly helpful piece of information," said Tesla's lawyer, Joel Smith.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday September 01, @07:31PM (2 children)
WTF is the idea behind that? That's borderline, if not actual, destruction of evidenence in what could (as in this case) end up in court. Do they think the data is likely to be so incriminating for Tesla and it's a precaution in case they get sued because their self drive (LOL) system is shit, therefore very likely to cause accidents for which they could be found liable, and they know it? I read that "amazingly helpful piece of information" line as "Well, in this case it actually gets us off the hook for once, so we'll take it."
Also, I don't know about you, but Dunning Kruger aside, my driving record is pretty decent and I have had zero "at fault" insurance claims or other driving tickets in over 30 years, so I'd say it's highly likely if I get into an accident it will not be my fault and a ticket would be bogus. That being the case, if I'm having all my driving telemetry recorded by my car maker, I absolutely want to be able to call on that data to help support my case and I totally do NOT want the equivalent of "Oops! File not found!" Another reason (as if there were not enough already!) for me to avoid Tesla...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday September 02, @12:13AM
This sort of situation is why attorneys are allowed to get sanctions such as being able to draw inferences that it must have been bad for the other side when evidence goes missing. The fact that the system detected a likely crash should have led to the copy on the car being marked for preservation as well as the copy going to the servers. And there should have been something in place to prevent it from being deleted for whatever period of time the law requires. The reason being, that data not related to any real or suspected crashes is of little value beyond possible training use and can probably be deleted, but if there is a real or suspected crash related to the data, somebody may well subpoena that, and it's some of the most valuable data in terms of figuring out how to train the system.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday September 02, @03:09AM
Just not any Lidar, because the Glorious Leader has decreed it so. You know, the sort of thing that would help detect pedestrians.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday September 01, @08:19PM (7 children)
...he said through clenched teeth, hoping he still had a job at the end of the day...
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 4, Insightful) by corey on Tuesday September 02, @12:44AM (6 children)
I’m shocked and sad to hear about this news. But not surprised.
Big company does whatever it can - ethics and goodwill be damned - to reduce risk of costs in its pursuit of profits. What’s not surprising? Sixty years ago, companies kind of cared, led by statesmen. Not any more.
It’s why you need regulators, unions and govt consumer protection agencies with big sticks. Flails and maces, even. It still won’t fix it but it’ll help.
Another example of a big company doing its thing, here in Australia, Qantas illegally laid off 1800 unionised baggage workers to switch to outsourced copies. The union sued them and they were hit with a $90m fine. A month later they announced a $1.2b profit. Around the time of laying off the workers, they went from small losses to large profits.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-18/qantas-fined-in-federal-court-job-outsourcing-penalty/105659978 [abc.net.au]
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-28/airline-qantas-profit-up-28-per-cent-strong-travel-demand/105705262 [abc.net.au]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday September 02, @05:28AM (5 children)
Qantas going from small losses to large profits by swapping from union employees to free workers proves that the union was ripping off Qantas, even if the swap violated a corrupt law.
Unions make things worse. Union leaders draw a salary at the expense of workers. Unions inhibit business from acting efficiently. Unions do not protect their members (you could ask my sister about that, except that she's dead now in part because a union didn't protect her.) Unions fund corrupt politicians. Unions make it difficult to fire murderous cops and incompetent teachers. And on, and on.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Tuesday September 02, @05:31AM (2 children)
If unions are so bad, then why are all the "arm-pit" "s-hole" states the ones that have right to work laws on the books that kneecap unions? If unions were as bad as you claim, then it should be the other way around with the terrible states being the ones with high union penetration in the labor market.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02, @07:25AM (1 child)
Unions are very bad for the capitalists and bosses, especially when they first start. They enforce safety rules, negotiate for higher wages and better conditions. Like all organisations they eventually get some corrupt members. This isn't really a problem, any more than the occasional crooked cop, bought politician, or tax-cheating businessman. Society can handle that and roll right over it.
The real problems start when the bosses and capitalists side starts using corruption and force. The unions either fight back in kind or are crushed. Either results in a shit-hole state where corruption, bribery, and force are normalised.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday September 03, @12:25AM
That is true, but it's a lot harder for that sort of stuff to be an issue if there's more unions covering a wider range of jobs. There definitely are problem unions like the Teamsters, but from what I've seen the more common issue is just generally a lack of union power due to the various industries consolidating. It's hard for unions to have much bargaining power when a few companies own an industry and can just take the jobs to other states where there aren't any worker protections in place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02, @04:02PM
So, they're just like any other big business, selling human labor at prices the market will bear.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 07, @12:08AM
Only if the baggage handlers were being paid $600,000+ EACH.
Alternatively, they were cooking the books to cry poverty as an excuse to fire people, then making a "miraculous turnaround" to make the stockholders happy.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday September 02, @07:05AM
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity