A Tesla customer filed a lawsuit against the electric car manufacturer last Friday for violating customer privacy following reports of employees sharing private car camera footage.
Henry Yeh, a San Francisco resident, filed the suit alleging that Tesla employees accessed these private photos and videos for their “tasteless and tortious entertainment” and “the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded.”
Anyone who owned or leased a Tesla in the last four years would be entitled to join the suit. However, a judge will have to first review and declare it a proper class action lawsuit. If declared so, Tesla could be forced to pay damages to every plaintiff for privacy breaches.
Tesla Abused Car Owners’ Privacy, Suit Alleges
Tesla vehicles have built-in cameras that assist with driverless operation. In a Reuters special report last week, former Tesla employees told journalists that between 2019 and 2022, groups of employees shared highly invasive recordings and photos from these cameras on an internal messaging system.
According to Reuters, such videos included anything from embarrassing moments of nudity to accidents and road rage incidents. A video that was shared among employees reportedly contained a child on a bike getting hit by a Tesla at high speeds.
On its website, Tesla claims that the camera only records if a user opts in, and furthermore, the recordings are stored on the vehicle and not on the company servers.
“No one gave Tesla’s employees permission to circulate and get entertainment out of their private images,” Jack Fitzgerald, one of the attorneys representing Henry Yeh, told Business Insider. “This is a shocking breach of trust by Tesla.”
“Like anyone would be, Mr Yeh was outraged at the idea that Tesla’s cameras can be used to violate his family’s privacy, which the California Constitution scrupulously protects,” Fitzgerald added. “Tesla needs to be held accountable for these invasions and for misrepresenting its lax privacy practices to him and other Tesla owners.”
At the time of writing, Tesla had not responded to media queries for comment.
FTC Could Intervene Soon, Says Expert
Speaking to Reuters, David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, termed Tesla’s actions as “morally reprehensible.”
Choffnes said Tesla could be in violation of its own privacy policy for circulating users’ sensitive and personal content. This could potentially open up the door for a Federal Trade Commission intervention in the United States.
Tesla’s use of in-car cameras has raised privacy concerns for a few years now, though the Reuters report seems to bring many fears to reality.
In recent years, the company has also faced multiple cybersecurity scares which could potentially allow hackers to access cars. This was demonstrated with a test of BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) device exploits.
If this article caught your attention, we recommend learning more about the privacy risks of your car.
