Norwegian Rental Cars Recorded Troops Typing Gate Codes

What the soldiers found in the rental cars

The recordings were made by standard dash cams that troops had left switched on, not by any hidden surveillance system.

During an exercise in Oslo, Norwegian military personnel discovered that rental cars they were using had been recording video and storing it inside the vehicles. The clips showed soldiers entering and exiting the cars, their movements, and the gate codes they typed while facing the camera.

According to TechRadar, the troops found the footage by chance while browsing the vehicle menus and deleted the recordings afterward. The cars were rented from First Rent A Car Norway AS, a Hertz-branded operator that supplies vehicles for daily errands, exercises and operational missions.

A shortage of alternative vehicles meant the military kept using the cars for the rest of the exercise even after the discovery. The cameras were ordinary dash cams left on, so recordings simply accumulated with nobody reviewing them.

Why the ownership chain matters

The rental firm is part of a corporate chain that ends with a Chinese company, which turned a simple settings mistake into a sensitive security question.

First Rent A Car Norway AS is owned by Volvo Cars, which in turn is about 79% controlled by Geely's Swedish holding arm. That arm is entirely controlled by China-based Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. Only two of the vehicles involved are confirmed as Chinese-made Deepals; the brands of the rest have not been named.

Ownership alone proves nothing about intent. But the question for security officials is whether Chinese services have the capacity and track record to exploit such access. Norway's Police Security Service, the counterintelligence body, says Chinese intelligence and security agencies now possess greater capacity to run operations inside the country.

That concern has a recent case behind it: police detained a Chinese citizen suspected of aiding espionage, possibly aimed at the Andøya spaceport. Other governments have acted on similar risks. Israel's military barred Chinese-made vehicles from its bases, and Germany's military restricted phones, tablets and smartwatches for staff handling classified material because of espionage threats from Russia and China.

The bigger issue: connected cars as data collectors

Modern vehicles are full of cameras, sensors and connectivity, and rental fleets are a particularly efficient way to gather data from many locations.

The Norwegian case is a reminder that a car is now a computer with windows. Dash cams, parking cameras and telematics systems can record and store far more than most drivers realize. In a rental fleet, that data can be generated across many users and many sensitive locations without anyone deliberately targeting a specific person.

The fact that the footage stayed inside the cars is the most important detail. No evidence has emerged that any recording left the vehicles, which makes a settings lapse by the soldiers the more defensible explanation than deliberate spying. But the incident shows how easily a routine rental can turn into a security review when the hardware is always on.

For military and government users, the lesson is straightforward: check what the vehicle records before you type a code in front of it. For rental companies, the episode raises uncomfortable questions about default settings and data retention that customers rarely ask about. It also sits alongside a wider expansion of surveillance infrastructure, from license plate readers mapped as tiny eyeballs to facial recognition in retail, where the hardware is visible but the data flow is not.

What it means for you

If you rent a car in the US, UK or EU, the same hardware is likely present. Rental fleets increasingly include dash cams and connected systems, and privacy laws vary by country. In the EU, the GDPR gives you the right to ask what data a rental car collects and how long it is kept, though enforcement is uneven.

There is no announced change to rental practices following the Norwegian incident. The practical advice is simple: assume any rental car with a camera may be recording, and avoid typing sensitive codes or holding private conversations in view of the lens.

The Norwegian military's rental car scare is a useful case study in how ordinary hardware can create extraordinary security questions. The facts point to human error, not sabotage, but the ownership chain and the sensitivity of the data mean the incident will not be forgotten quickly.