Tesla driving telemetry and legal jurisdiction WRT local TeslaMate servers

[Cardo]

Interesting question, and certainly one that is likely to come up more and more as cars become more computerised and driving data is uploaded and stored.

In relation to TeslaMate data stored on an RPi at home, depending on the offence, police could seize the RPi and sift through the data if they believed there may be evidence of the offence on there. The RPi itself could be seized via a search warrant or a post-arrest search. Clearly not going to happen for a speeding offence, however it could come into play for something more serious. There’d be nothing to stop an investigating officer from looking at that data for something such as a burglary or robbery. Technically, even a low level theft would qualify. However, it comes down to resources, justification and the know how of the investigating officer/s to look for that data.

 

[debrooker]

Still need to prove who was driving the car. If there was an in car camera, oh wait ...

 

[NewbieT]

For low level crime, let’s be honest, the police don’t have enough skilled resources to interrogate a Pi.

If you’re investigating a serious crime why bother with the Pi, you’d just go to Tesla to get the data. They’ll probably standardise the request in future if they haven’t already.