Tesla employees internally shared private, sometimes embarrassing photos and videos captured by car cameras without customers’ consent, violating privacy rights afforded by California law, a class-action lawsuit filed Friday alleged.
The footage, taken between 2019 and 2022, included a naked man approaching a Tesla, people’s children, and videos of crashes and road rage, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The lawsuit alleges employees were not sharing these images for business use, “but for the tasteless and tortious entertainment of Tesla employees, and perhaps those outside the company, and the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded.”
The footage was also the subject of jokes in group chats, according to the complaint.
The suit was filed after the allegations were first reported by Reuters on Thursday. It drew many of its examples from that news report.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday afternoon.
Anyone who owned or leased a Tesla since 2019 is eligible to join the suit, which aims to force the company to compensate customers for the cost or partial cost of their vehicles. The exact amount would be determined at a trial.
The suit also asks the court to compel Tesla to stop “recording, viewing, and sharing” images captured by the car cameras and to destroy any personal data obtained in violation of state privacy laws. A judge must first conclude it is an appropriate class-action lawsuit.
The plaintiff in the suit is Henry Yeh, a resident of San Francisco who owns a 2022 Tesla Model Y. That model and many others have a driver-facing camera in addition to eight cameras to capture the area surrounding the vehicle. Those cameras could capture footage of the inside of customers’ homes or garages, the suit claimed.
“No one consented to Tesla’s employees using their images for amusement,” Jack Fitzgerald, one of Yeh’s attorneys, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Mr. Yeh was shocked to learn Tesla’s systems did not adequately protect his privacy and intends to hold Tesla accountable.”
Tesla employees shared photos of family pets as memes, and distributed some footage to “scores” of colleagues, according to the complaint.
“That such videos and images were made available to Tesla employees to view and share, at will, and for improper purposes, affects each and every person with a Tesla vehicle, their families, passengers, and even guests in their homes,” the complaint reads.
In its Customer Privacy Notice, Tesla writes that “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.” If users consent to data sharing, the privacy notice says, Tesla will use the information to communicate with customers, perform business services and improve its products.
The lawsuit alleges Tesla violated that policy and customers’ right to privacy afforded by California law by storing the recordings and then allowing employees to access and share them without customers’ consent. Some recordings may have been made when cars were turned off, the suit added.
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