Tesla hit with class action suit, accused of privacy violations

Just days after ex-Tesla employees confessed to regularly sharing sensitive and embarrassing videos of customers – downloaded from the customers' own cars – one outraged Tesla owner is hitting back.

The riled up Tesla owner filed a prospective class-action lawsuit in Northern California’s US District Court Friday, accusing the electric automaker of violating the privacy rights of its customers.

Last week, a damaging report by the Reuters news agency revealed that Tesla employees would not only view private and sometimes compromising footage of customers without their knowledge, but take screenshots, annotate, and create memes out of the clips as office entertainment.

The workers would circulate the sensitive materials among fellow workers using the company’s internal messaging system and via email, according to about a dozen ex-employees who were interviewed for the report.

The lawsuit, filed by San Francisco resident and Model Y owner Henry Yeh, claims Tesla’s conduct is "particularly egregious" and "highly offensive."

The lawsuit goes on to say that the Tesla workers used the highly invasive images and videos for their "tasteless and tortious [sic] entertainment" and "the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded."

The footage in question was recorded by the customers’ car cameras between 2019 and 2022, as part of a labeling initiative to help train the AI used for Tesla’s automated self-driving feature.

"Tesla needs to be held accountable for these invasions and for misrepresenting its lax privacy practices to him and other Tesla owners," said Yeh’s attorney Jack Fitzgerald.

"Like anyone would be, Mr Yeh was outraged at the idea that Tesla's cameras can be used to violate his family's privacy, which the California Constitution scrupulously protects," Fitzgerald told Reuters.

The nature of the suit is filed under "other personal property damage," which, according to California law, is primarily based on damage to personal property caused by harmful conduct such as negligence, misrepresentation, interference with business relationships, or unfair trade practices.

The case documents show Yeh is filing the complaint "against Tesla on behalf of himself, similarly-situated class members, and the general public."

If the class-action petition moves forward, plaintiffs would include include any individuals who owned or leased a Tesla within the past four years.

The affected Tesla vehicles were often parked in an owner’s garage, other times the parked car cameras would record people walking by, or even record through people’s windows.

Former employees said “there was just definitely a lot of stuff that like, I wouldn't want anybody to see about my life.“

Another said they viewed car owners "doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids."

The suit states, "Indeed, parents’ interest in their children’s privacy is one of the most fundamental liberty interests society recognizes."

All Tesla models are equipped with one camera inside and eight cameras strategically placed around the vehicle, their capture distance said to be the length of over two NFL football fields.

It's not the first controversy over Tesla’s high-tech car cameras and infringement of privacy rights.

Last summer German police outlawed all Tesla’s from the city of Berlin due to its “spy” cameras violating the rights of passers-by being filmed in public spaces without consent.

Teslas were also banned from a resort town in China for the same reason.

Privacy advocate groups in Germany and the Netherlands have since sued the automaker over the high-tech cameras.

As of April 4, German courts ruled Tesla will have to warn all customers in its advertising that the car's self-driving "sentry" mode may violate German data privacy laws.

Tesla’s consumer privacy notice warns customers the automaker may collect car data, such as “short video clips or images” to be used for analysis.

So far, Tesla has not released any statements about the lawsuit.

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