Norwegian Army in the rental car filmed the door-bar code: What was the discovery of Deepal's car-borne image?

After the exercise, Norwegian Land Guard soldiers found something in the rental car that they should not have left: the camera system kept images of military personnel boarding, carrying, travelling orbital tracks, and even when the door codes of military installations were blocked. The incident was first revealed in the Norwegian Daily Business Journal in September 2026, the Oslo region's “Capital Exercise”.

The participant, Lieutenant Frederick Blanc, described his team as not looking for Chinese spy software, but rather as keeping the video in the usual use of vehicles. The most dangerous for military security is not necessarily the particular dramatization of the content of a video: when someone comes out of a building, through which door, who's with the car, which lenses are in the right direction when entering a door-barrel password, and these fragments are linked to re-engineer the operational pattern.

and the vehicles include the Deepal brand under the Chinese Chang An flag, and the leaser is involved in Hertz's Norwegian system. The framework contract for the procurement of vehicles used by defence agencies dates back to 2024 and has a ceiling of NOK 350 million. The problem arises in a supply process that appears to be well-processed: procurement, rental and vehicle deliveries can be legally completed, while information security may not be realized until it is used.

Photos of the Norwegian Defence Forces public exercise provide the background of the scene: Photos of exercises in the capital of Oslo issued by the Norwegian Defence Forces show the members of the Homeland Guard crossing urban blocks. The photographs reflect the public exercise environment that the vehicle serves, and are not internal videos taken by the vehicle, or the media exercises that are used on the cover.

Business relationships behind vehicles are not the same. Deepal belongs to the Chinese Changan, while Hertz ' s Norwegian operating system involves another Chinese automobile group Gigi ' s investment and equity network. They cannot be combined with one organization because both families have Chinese backgrounds, nor can they directly prove that the video was uploaded to Chinese intelligence agencies by means of a car. It has been established that the content of military activities is retained in the vehicle-mounted system and that the military has failed to adequately prevent or clear these records before they are used.

Blank's team then deleted the video from the car. The incident made the additional data risk specific for smart cars: drivers could see the inside of the vehicle, but did not necessarily know whether there was cloud synchronisation, remote diagnosis, back-up of accounts and whether the leasing company could read the data. but the camera camera recorded the door-bar code itself, which has proved that the data boundary was broken once.

China ' s National Intelligence Law allows the State intelligence services to seek assistance from relevant organizations in accordance with the law, and this legal system raises real doubts about Chinese enterprises ' involvement in the procurement of sensitive facilities. However, security risks cannot be interpreted as a nationality issue alone: a domestic-produced car that implicitly uploads video in a car creates a similar loophole when entering a military camp. Instead of imposing a blanket ban on a particular production site, the Norwegian military responded publicly, pushing the debate to more specific indicators — sensor closures, video access, offline mode and who could check the retention data.

The Government of Xi considers the connection of electric vehicles and automobile software to be an important growth direction for industrial exports. As these vehicles enter national civil and government procurement systems, outside communities no longer buy only wheels, batteries and body parts, but also a mobile data terminal that is difficult to see its internal privileges. The video found by Norwegian soldiers did not prove a spy operation from Beijing, but that military installations could be recorded in a chartered car without hacking.