Basel: Tesla police are now allowed in the street

Basel police, Teslas, can now be on the streets – but under certain conditions

Although Basel's first police, Tesla, was proudly introduced several months ago, it has since remained in the garage – for reasons of confidentiality. The report of the Cantonal Data Protection Officer is now available. It shows: This can only be dangerous if the conditions are met.

Andreas Schwald / ch media

This vehicle is considered the pride of the Basel police fleet and is unique in Switzerland: the cantonal police of Basel buys a total of seven Tesla electric vehicles for the alarm label, the spearhead of the traffic police.

But the first of these Teslas, arrived in Basel in December, was not used in the garage. This is because confidentiality issues have arisen. After all, the high-tech vehicle is in an international network. Parliamentary financial control has also criticized the public market.

Driving yes, but …

But now the report of the cantonal data protection officer is available. The verdict: The Tesla is finally allowed in the street. "The data protection officer sent the cantonal police the final report of the preliminary examination and made eight recommendations". If these recommendations were accepted, "nothing would prevent the use of alarm-plate vehicles from the point of view of data protection".

The Basel City police will present a press release on Friday morning. According to spokesman Martin Schütz, the decision has still not been commented. One of the conditions, however, is that the cantonal police of Basel-Stadt should, for example in the framework of a provision of services, create the legal basis necessary to process the data that can be obtained from employees and guarantee, by organizational measures , that the data are treated only in a "consistent is relative" way.

Because the vehicle collects information about the condition of the vehicle, including its driving behavior and the occupants of the vehicle, which are directed to the manufacturer. It's one of the tricky points.

Change SIM card, ask Data Protector

However, the fact that geolocation by navigation devices makes it possible to draw conclusions about people should be excluded in terms of manufacturer and service provider, the report says. However, privacy advocates would be welcome if the SIM card provided for wireless data transmission was replaced by that of a Swiss provider.

In addition, care should be taken to ensure that changes to the hardware and software configuration are duly checked with regard to data protection and, where appropriate, to submit them to the Data Protection Officer for prior checking ".

In addition, the test showed that the image / video data, which is all stored outside the vehicles, is only temporarily saved to a volatile internal memory, according to data protection officers. The data sent to the manufacturer in case of security incident was only a few seconds before the event.

First encrypted and then deleted

This data would be transmitted encrypted and deleted in the vehicle memory. "The risk of personal injury seems so low," says Beat Rudin, Data Protector. "In order to completely eliminate the risk of identification, the cantonal police of Basel-City should check if it wishes to disable this automatic transmission," he continues.

In-dash cameras are also available, but are not controlled by the police. They are attached to the vehicle and take pictures of the situation on the road. If ordered, the project must be submitted to the Data Protection Officer for inspection. Among the voice recordings in the vehicle was the verdict: "A potential personal reference is not directly produced in the case of alarm detection vehicles, because outsiders do not know who is at a particular moment given in the vehicle. "