Tesla employees shared customers’ private videos that were captured by the vehicles’ built-in cameras, including “scenes of intimacy,” “sexual wellness items” and a clip of a driver who approached his sedan while completely naked, according to a report.
Nine former Tesla employees at the electric car makers Bay Area offices told Reuters that the sensitive video clips, one of which was said to have been taken from the private vehicle of CEO Elon Musk, were shared in an internal messaging system between 2019 and 2022.
One former employee recalled seeing “embarrassing objects,” such as “certain pieces of laundry, certain sexual wellness items … and just private scenes of life that we really were privy to because the car was charging.”
The recordings also showed Tesla drivers in “embarrassing” situations, including road-rage incidents, crashes, and scenarios during which cars were parked and turned off.
“I sometimes wondered if these people know that we’re seeing that,” said one former employee.
“I saw some scandalous stuff sometimes, you know, like I did see scenes of intimacy but not nudity,” said another ex-worker. “And there was just definitely a lot of stuff that like, I wouldn’t want anybody to see about my life.”
“We could see inside people’s garages and their private properties,” a former Tesla employee told Reuters.
“Let’s say that a Tesla customer had something in their garage that was distinctive, you know, people would post those kinds of things.”
Tesla’s “Autopilot” technology relies on a system of cameras and sensitive radars that are designed to gather visual data on the car’s surroundings. One of the cameras, which is aimed toward the interior of the car’s cabin, is said to be able to pick up when a driver is inattentive.
Tesla requires car owners to grant permission on the cars’ touchscreens before Tesla collects their vehicles’ data. “Your Data Belongs to You,” states Tesla’s website.
Tesla drivers have the option of sharing the data that is collected by the cameras and sensors and then analyzed by company personnel.
According to several ex-employees, some labelers shared screenshots, sometimes marked up using Adobe Photoshop, in private group chats on Mattermost, Tesla’s internal messaging system.
There they would attract responses from other workers and managers.
Participants would also add their own marked-up images, jokes or emojis to keep the conversation going. Some of the emojis were custom-created to reference office inside jokes, several ex-employees said.
The Post has sought comment from Tesla.
One Tesla owner who was reportedly an unwitting victim of the company’s invasion of privacy was its CEO, Musk. According to Reuters, employees at Tesla shared a video showing a submersible vehicle that was parked inside a garage.
The submersible, which was nicknamed “Wet Nellie,” is a white Lotus Esprit sub that was featured in the 1977 James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me.” It turned out it was the same submersible that Musk purchased at auction for $968,000 in 2013, according to Reuters.
In its Customer Privacy Notice, Tesla explains that if a customer agrees to share data, “your vehicle may collect the data and make it available to Tesla for analysis. This analysis helps Tesla improve its products, features, and diagnose problems quicker.”
It also states that the data may include “short video clips or images,” but isn’t linked to a customer’s account or vehicle identification number, “and does not identify you personally.”
But seven former employees told Reuters the computer program they used at work could show the location of recordings — which potentially could reveal where a Tesla owner lived.
“It was a breach of privacy, to be honest. And I always joked that I would never buy a Tesla after seeing how they treated some of these people,” a former Tesla employee told Reuters.
Another Tesla worker told Reuters: “I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected … We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids.”
One ex-employee also said that some recordings appeared to have been made when cars were parked and turned off.
Several years ago, Tesla would receive video recordings from its vehicles even when they were off, if owners gave consent. It has since stopped doing so.
With Post wires
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
