Lawsuit filed after reports that Tesla employees had privately shared videos and images recorded by vehicle cameras.
A California-based Tesla vehicle owner has sued the electric car maker in a forthcoming class action lawsuit accusing him of violating customer privacy.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
It came after reports on Thursday that groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system between 2019 and 2022, sometimes highly invasive videos and images captured by customer car cameras.
Henry Yeh, a San Francisco resident who owns Tesla’s Model Y, alleged in the lawsuit that Tesla employees had access to the images and videos because of their “tasteless and abusive entertainment” and “the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded” .
“As anyone would be, Mr. Yeh was outraged by the idea that Tesla’s cameras could be used to violate his family’s privacy, which the California Constitution scrupulously protects,” Jack Fitzgerald, an attorney representing Yeh, said in a statement. .
“Tesla must be held accountable for these invasions and for misrepresenting its lax privacy practices to itself and other Tesla owners,” Fitzgerald said.
There was no immediate response from Tesla.
According to the lawsuit, Tesla’s behavior is “particularly egregious” and “deeply offensive.”
It said Yeh filed the complaint “against Tesla on behalf of himself, similar classmates and the general public”. The complaint said the prospective class would include individuals who owned or leased a Tesla within the past four years.
Some Tesla employees could see customers “doing laundry and doing really intimate things.” We could see their children,” Reuters news agency quoted an unnamed ex-employee as saying.
“Indeed, the interest of parents in their children’s privacy is one of the most fundamental freedom interests recognized by society,” the lawsuit said.
It asked the court to “prohibit Tesla from engaging in wrongful conduct, including violating the privacy of customers and others, and to seek effective and punitive damages.”