Tesla Facing US Lawsuit Over Alleged Privacy Intrusion

A Tesla owner in California has sued the electric carmaker in a prospective class-action lawsuit that accuses the company of violating customers’ privacy.

The lawsuit was lodged at a US District Court in northern California last Friday after a Reuters report that groups of Tesla employees shared videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras between 2019 and 2022 via an internal messaging system.

The lawsuit, filed by Henry Yeh, a San Francisco resident who owns a Tesla Model Y, alleges that Tesla employees were able to access the images and videos – some described as “highly invasive” – for their “tasteless and tortious entertainment” and “the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded.”

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Privacy ‘violated’

“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,” Jack Fitzgerald, an attorney representing Yeh, said in a statement.

“Tesla needs to be held accountable for these invasions and for misrepresenting its lax privacy practices to him and other Tesla owners,” Fitzgerald said.

Tesla did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

The lawsuit condemned the Tesla employees’ alleged conduct as “particularly egregious” and “highly offensive.” It said Yeh was filing the complaint “against Tesla on behalf of himself, similarly-situated class members, and the general public.”

The complaint said the prospective class-action suit would include individuals who owned or leased a Tesla within the past four years.

The report alleged that some Tesla employees could see customers “doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids,” citing a former employee.

“Indeed, parents’ interest in their children’s privacy is one of the most fundamental liberty interests society recognizes,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit asks the court “to enjoin Tesla from engaging in its wrongful behaviour, including violating the privacy of customers and others, and to recover actual and punitive damages.”