Tesla employees reportedly shared private photos of customers’ cars

The American car company Tesla again makes negative headlines because of the camera systems in its cars. Only recently have consumer advocates successfully taken to court against so-called “surveillance mode.”

The “Sentry Mode,” which uses cameras to monitor the area around stationary Tesla vehicles, is sensitive for data protection reasons, she explains.

Reuters news agency reported last week that there was also data misuse in connection with camera recordings from the interior of Tesla vehicles.

Citing interviews with nine former Tesla employees, the report said that between 2019 and 2022, several groups of Tesla employees privately shared photos and videos from the cameras inside Tesla customers’ cars. The camera systems are built into the vehicles to make driving easier.

Hundreds of former employees got in touch

For its report, the news agency said it had contacted more than 300 former Tesla employees who have worked at the company over the past nine years and were involved in the development of the self-driving system. More than a dozen of them agreed to answer questions anonymously.

According to people interviewed by Reuters, some of the footage showed Tesla customers in awkward situations. In one of the videos, the Tesla driver walked naked to his car.

According to former employees, Tesla’s internal messaging system also circulated videos of accidents and everyday street scenes, some of which were made into memes and provided with humorous commentary.

Tesla repeatedly affirms how important privacy is to its customers. In its online privacy policy, the company of tech billionaire Elon Musk writes that the camera images remained anonymous and would not be associated with the drivers or their vehicle.

The former Tesla employees interviewed by Reuters, on the other hand, claim otherwise: the computer program they use at work, they say, can reveal the location of the recordings – and therefore possibly the residence of a Tesla owner.

Tesla is silent

According to one of the former employees, some of the recordings would have been made when the cars were parked and switched off – although according to Tesla this function should no longer be possible. “We were able to look into people’s garages and their private property,” another former Reuters employee was quoted as saying. “Suppose a Tesla customer had something in their garage that stood out, people would post that sort of thing.”

Reuters points out that it is not clear whether the practice of sharing private recordings of drivers described by former employees continued over the past year.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment, the news agency said.

Sources

(t-online/dsc)