One afternoon this past summer, a self-driving Waymo pulled into a parking lot in San Mateo County, California, and stayed there until the police arrived. Local cops had gotten a 911 call from Waymo staffers—humans, it should be said—who were viewing the car’s passengers through cameras installed inside the vehicle. It looked like two teens were shooting a black handgun out the window of the vehicle, playing with it and drinking between shots, a police report said.
The story has a happy(ish) ending: The gun was shooting water-filled Orbeez, not bullets. But the incident drew attention to Waymo’s surveillance system. The cars are equipped with automated tech that can flag the presence of a firearm inside, the company said.
The outsides of self-driving cars are studded with cameras, which help them “see” the world around them. (Most also use other sensors, including radar and lidar.) Less appreciated are the cameras inside the vehicles, which companies say are essential to keeping riders safe and enforcing their rules. Earlier this year, Waymo said it used its cabin cameras to do both after some California passengers, many in their twenties or older, reported that Waymo employees suddenly took over the vehicles’ intercoms mid-ride to make sure they were old enough to ride on their own. (One 35-year-old told WIRED he thought his backpack sent up red flags.)
Still, robotaxi privacy policies can be broad. They suggest that footage captured inside vehicles can be used for many innocuous and commonsense reasons—to check cleanliness between rides, to detect lost items—but also to improve their products or services. These catch-all terms could cover many uses. Experts say that in the US, few clear rules govern this sort of surveillance, especially because riders often must agree to lengthy “terms of service” printed in minute fonts before they use ride-hailing apps. That leaves riders to trust that the companies are handling their information responsibly.
“We are being essentially abandoned by our lawmakers when it comes to consumer privacy and what companies can do with information after they’ve collected it,” says Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where he works on surveillance and policing issues. His advice? “Just because you’re alone in the car doesn’t mean you’re alone in the car. You should behave as if there’s a jumpy person in the front seat.”
In general, robotaxi companies including Waymo, Zoox, and Tesla say that human staff view interior cameras only when needed. All say personal data, including recordings, may be sent to law enforcement or regulators. (A Waymo support page says that government agencies seeking data “are directed to follow valid legal processes in making such request.”)
But that doesn’t mean the interior cameras aren’t on and working. Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina says the company uses “automated technology to support our teams in identifying potential violations.” A 2025 patent held by Waymo describes a system in which vehicles’ interior camera systems conduct automated “predetermined ride checklists” before, during, and after rides. (Ilina did not say whether that system is in use.)
Zoox’s website says its interior cameras “record the entirety of your ride.” This sort of personal data can be used to help operate rides, but also to develop and improve Zoox’s product. The company—owned by Amazon—says it might record conversations between riders and its support employees, but that it doesn’t save recordings. Zoox spokesperson
Whitney Jencks said the company had nothing more specific to share about its privacy policies.
Online documents for Tesla’s Robotaxi service say a green indicator shows up on the vehicle’s central touchscreen when the camera is activated. Riders can opt in to sharing in-cabin video and audio with the company through a toggle menu in the “data and privacy” section of its app. The documents also say riders in the company’s “early access” program automatically opt in to data sharing. The company didn’t respond to questions for this story, including whether that early access program has technically concluded. The company opened its Robotaxi app to the public in a handful of Texas and Florida cities in early September.
Cameras inside robotaxis make plenty of sense. “You need some kind of check on what people do in a car with no driver,” says Justin Brookman, who directs technology policy at Consumer Reports. “People are going to have sex in Waymos if there are no cameras.” (Media reports suggest that the cameras don’t always stop them.)
But the law hasn’t yet fully contemplated what companies should be able to see, save, and use. “These vehicles are relatively new, so there are no expectations around what’s appropriate,” Brookman says. “There should be some check in place.”
Auto companies don’t have the best record on data privacy.
In 2023, Reuters reported that groups of Tesla employees had, over several years, shared sensitive videos and images captured by owners’ cars. Shared recordings reportedly included a video of a man approaching a car while naked, and a violent collision between a car and a child on a bike. Tesla boasts that its years-deep repository of data from personal vehicles gives it an edge in developing autonomous vehicle software, and its privacy policy says camera recordings are kept anonymous. But former employees told Reuters that the system easily revealed where the images were recorded, which could have allowed them to link recordings to specific owners’ garages or driveways.
Earlier this year, General Motors paid California motorists nearly $13 million in penalties after the company was found to have sold driving data to brokers and eventually insurers without their consent.
“My big concern is that automakers love to collect data,” Guariglia says. “With autonomous vehicles, there’s even more data to collect. And the more data they collect, the more they’re going to find reasons to sell it.”
In the meantime, his privacy-related advice? Behave.
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