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from the smile-you-are-on-Candid-Camera dept.
Why install them if they don't plan to use them ? Doesn't pass the smell test.
Fusion site passes on the news that Hertz is putting cameras inside its rental cars as part of its "NeverLost" navigational system:
Hertz has offered the NeverLost navigational device for years, but it only added the built-in camera feature (which includes audio and video) to its latest version of the device -- NeverLost 6 -- in mid-2014. "Approximately a quarter of our vehicles across the country have a NeverLost unit and slightly more than half of those vehicles have the NeverLost 6 model installed,” Hertz spokesperson Evelin Imperatrice said by email. In other words, one in 8 Hertz cars has a camera inside -- but Imperatrice says that, for now, they are inactive. "We do not have adequate bandwidth capabilities to the car to support streaming video at this time," she said.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sudo rm -rf on Wednesday March 18 2015, @10:44AM
There's a follow-up article on the same site [fusion.net].
Random excerpts:
There are two privacy features protecting the user. The first, is the cool electronically blacked out glass. It turns clear when the camera is in use, so if you cannot see the camera it cannot see you. The second feature is the turret that the camera is mounted in. When you turn the knob on the top to the off position the camera is facing the side of the unit behind a shutter and cannot see out the window.
It appears that [Hertz] have shot themselves in the foot with the blacked out glass not allowing the user to see that there is a physical barrier preventing someone from watching you.
Even though Hertz wasn’t ready to activate the cameras, Broome said it was “economically efficient” to put the devices into NeverLost units in 2014 because they were upgrading the units fleet-wide. The thinking was, “Why not put a lens in now rather than a couple of years from now?”
Hertz is now in the difficult position of defending a feature it may never even use. “If people are renting a car with a camera and they are really concerned about privacy, we can put them in a different car,” said Broome. “We don’t want customers to feel watched when they’re in the car.”