On its website, Tesla Inc reassures its millions of electric car owners that it highly values their privacy and has carefully designed the cameras integrated into their vehicles to ensure it is privacy policy. However, nine former employees reveal that groups of Tesla employees Tesla employees shared sensitive images and videos recorded by customers’ car cameras through an internal messaging system between 2019 and 2022.
Some of the shared recordings captured embarrassing situations for Tesla customers, as mentioned by a former employee who described a video of a naked man approaching a vehicle. Another ex-employee reported that in 2021, a video of a Tesla driving at high speed in a residential area and hitting a child on a bike was widely circulated within a Tesla office in San Mateo, California through private chats.
According to several ex-employees, Tesla employees not only shared invasive recordings through internal messaging but also posted mundane images like dog pictures and amusing road signs in private group chats. They added humorous captions or commentary before sharing them. While some were shared between a few employees, others were visible to many.
Tesla’s statement on its website, which emphasized that camera recordings were anonymous and not linked to owners or their vehicles, seven former employees revealed that the computer program used at work could potentially disclose the location of the recordings and thus the Tesla owner’s address. One ex-employee noted that some recordings seemed to be made when cars were parked and turned off. Tesla used to receive video recordings from their vehicles with the owner’s permission even when the cars were off. However, the company has ceased doing so.
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