Magnifying / Loading Tesla cars on July 17, 2022 in Nephi, Utah.
Getty Images | George Frey
Tesla is facing a class-action lawsuit after it was revealed that employees used an internal messaging system to share sensitive videos and pictures of customers captured by dash cams.
Plaintiff Henry Yeh, a California resident who owns a Model Y, sued Tesla Friday on behalf of himself and anyone else in the United States who had owned or leased a Tesla at any time in the past four years. The lawsuit is based on allegations in a Portal article based on interviews with nine former Tesla employees.
“Tesla captures footage of vulnerable individuals on their own property, in their own garages and even in their own homes, including at least one instance where Tesla cameras captured video of a naked man inside his home,” the statement said Legal action. “Tesla has also captured and distributed videos and images of customers’ pets and even their children — a group that society has long viewed as vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation. In fact, parents’ interest in their children’s privacy is one of society’s most fundamental freedom interests.”
As of 2019, Tesla employees have accessed the images “not for the stated purposes of communicating, performing services, and improving Tesla vehicle propulsion systems,” but “for the distasteful and illicit entertainment of Tesla employees and possibly those outside the company.” . and the humiliation of those secretly recorded,” Yeh’s attorneys wrote.
Tesla employees turned pictures of customers’ pets “into memes by embellishing them with captions or comments before posting them in group chats,” the lawsuit says. “While some posts were only shared by a few employees, others could be seen by ‘hordes’ of Tesla employees. And as is common in internet culture, many of those videos and images were very likely shared with people outside of the company.”
The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Yeh is represented by two law firms specializing in consumer protection class actions, Fitzgerald Joseph and Blood Hurst & O’Reardon.
Images contain “scenes of intimacy”
As Portal reported last week, a former employee reported seeing “scandalous things,” including “scenes of intimacy but no nudity,” as well as “certain lingerie items, certain sexual wellness items … and just private scenes of the life that we really were.” inaugurated because the car was being charged.”
An ex-employee told Portal: “It bothers me because the people who are buying the car don’t know that their privacy is not being respected… We could see them doing laundry and doing really intimate things. We got to see their kids.”
The lawsuit charges Tesla with “encroachment on privacy” for alleged invasion of privacy in customers’ homes and vehicles, negligence, breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, willful misrepresentation and unjust enrichment. It also alleges that Tesla violated California’s constitutional right to privacy, the state’s unfair competition law and the state’s consumer remedies law.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages in an amount to be determined in court, as well as injunctive relief “compelling Tesla to cease recording, viewing and sharing videos and images in violation of state law and destroying all personally identifiable information.” obtained in violation of state law.”
Complaint: Images were linked to locations
One of Yeh’s lawyers, Jack Fitzgerald, told Portal: “Mr. Yeh was outraged at the idea that Tesla’s cameras could be used to invade his family’s privacy, which the California Constitution scrupulously protects.”
“Tesla must be held accountable to itself and other Tesla owners for these invasions and for misrepresenting its lax privacy practices,” Fitzgerald said.
Although Tesla assures customers “that its camera recordings cannot be linked to people and their vehicles,” the Tesla system was actually able – and does – show the location of the recordings, meaning anyone looking at the videos and looking at pictures that could determine exactly where the Tesla owner lived, ie, who the Tesla owner was,” the lawsuit reads.
Arguing that “Tesla has a history of data breaches,” the complaint notes that Tesla agreed to change camera settings in Europe following consumer complaints and an investigation by the Dutch Data Protection Authority. As the Wall Street Journal reported in February, Tesla agreed to issue a software update so that “external security cameras will no longer continuously film around a vehicle but will be disabled by default until a user turns on recording,” the Dutch regulator said. The last 10 minutes of recorded footage will be saved under the new settings instead of the previously saved hour of footage.”
Tesla uses images from car cameras to train its artificial intelligence systems and reportedly has over 1,000 employees on the team tagging videos and images. We’ve contacted Tesla about Yeh’s lawsuit and will update this article when we receive a response.