Tesla faces lawsuit over footage recorded by its cars

Tesla is facing a lawsuit for using its cars to record images. Reuters revealed in a report that the company's employees shared videos of crashes and intimate situations that they obtained without the consent of the users of their vehicles.

Last week, Reuters published a report claiming that the company, owned by Elon Musk, had obtained audiovisual material from the cameras of vehicles already on the market.

It all took place between 2019 and 2022. During those years, nine former employees confirmed that a group of Tesla workers privately shared images and videos, sometimes with content that infringes users' privacy, that they had obtained from various Tesla cars.

Tesla breaches its privacy policy

This is in direct violation of claims made by Tesla Inc. about the respect they have for their customers' privacy. As can be seen on its website, the eight cameras that come installed in these electric cars are "designed from the ground up to protect your privacy."

It turns out that statement is not entirely true. Just look at some of the examples that the news agency revealed in its report. Several former employees revealed different situations in which the privacy policy is clearly violated:

It is also troubling that employees shared the images. The statement gives an example of an accident in which a Tesla hit a child riding a bicycle. That clip, said one worker, spread "like wildfire" throughout Tesla's San Mateo, California office.

Problems continued to pile up for the company. Not only did they show images recorded with their cars, but employees were able to find out the real details of the car owner. This is another breach of the "Customer Privacy Notice" available on their website which states that the "camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle."

The employees denied this claim and told Reuters that, thanks to a computer program, they were able to find out the location of the recordings. This piece of information made it easy to find out the actual address where the Tesla owner lived.

This didn't just affect normal, everyday people. Tesla employees went so far as to obtain images from the garage of its CEO, Elon Musk. They discovered that the businessman owned a car from a famous movie. It was none other than the Wet Nellie submarine, a white Lotus Esprit that appeared in the 1977 James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me. They did not hesitate to share it in a group chat. This was reported by a former worker:

The report angered Tesla users. Henry Yeh, a Californian Tesla Model Y owner, decided to go one step further and file a class action lawsuit alleging that the company violated its customers' privacy. Yeh's lawyer, Jack Fitzgerald, told Reuters that he believes this alone justifies a lawsuit: