Special Report: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

[groundloop]

Source: Reuters

Tesla Inc assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us.” The cameras it builds into vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.”

But between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees.

Some of the recordings caught Tesla customers in embarrassing situations. One ex-employee described a video of a man approaching a vehicle completely naked.

Also shared: crashes and road-rage incidents. One crash video in 2021 showed a Tesla driving at high speed in a residential area hitting a child riding a bike, according to another ex-employee. The child flew in one direction, the bike in another. The video spread around a Tesla office in San Mateo, California, via private one-on-one chats, “like wildfire,” the ex-employee said.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Technology-Roundup&utm_term=040623

[rogue emissary]

1. Funny how Musk couldn't stand anyone knowing his plane's flight schedule.

Yet, his company was spying on it's customers.

[Carlitos Brigante]

19. Exactly! Do people really want that creepy fuck to have the power

to be able to provide "assassination coordinates", as he put it, to anyone?

[intrepidity]

2. Such slippery slopes

“People who walked by these vehicles were filmed without knowing it. And the owners of the Teslas could go back and look at these images,” said DPA board member Katja Mur in a statement. “If a person parked one of these vehicles in front of someone’s window, they could spy inside and see everything the other person was doing. That is a serious violation of privacy.”

[NullTuples]

6. That part really is not, though. Anyone can leave a recording camera on their dash legally.

The difference, I think is between the owner of the camera having the recording for their own private use and a corporation having access to it?

But I have a feeling when one buys a Tesla you sign an agreement. Maybe even one where the new owner agrees that Tesla can update and change that agreement at any time, just like most other apps.

[intrepidity]

7. Ugh. Whatever happened to "reasonable expectation of privacy"?

I suppose "reasonable" is the operative word here, where it is increasingly unreasonable to expect privacy even within one's own home.

Is it *really* legal to film someone inside their home, these days? Probably.

"So, close your curtains," they say.

Ok, my curtains are closed, except for those high windows, 15 feet off the ground....

Here comes the neighbor's drone...

It's all just so exhausting.

[NullTuples]

13. I'm guessing at some point that becomes a "peeping tom" issue?

Where is the line though? Is it only for salacious purposes or is simply creeping on someone enough? In other words, is it necessary to prove intent to protect one's own privacy inside one's own home? What about yard - I'm pretty sure various rulings already exist for drones with cameras?

[C Moon]

15. Take a look while you're out driving: many, many cars have dash cams now.

And many of them are motion activated, so if someone walks by the parked vehicle, it begins recording.
I bought one, but took it off when I got sneers (and one scared lady) from a few pedestrians while waiting at lights (mine had a red light blinking while it was on). I may put it back up if I can figure out how to cover the light.

[marybourg]

18. Click & Clack, the Car Guys, always recommended

black electrical tape.

[C Moon]

20. Ok. Thanks. You mean they recommended it for Dash Cams or for everything?

I didn't know others thought about covering up the lights.

[marybourg]

21. They recommended it for covering all annoying

dashboard light and indicators. 😉

[elleng]

3. So glad all my 'instruments' are old and DUMB!!!

[intrepidity]

8. Yeah, but your neighbor's? nt

[elleng]

10. Too far to count, and they're only here 'occasionally.'

[intrepidity]

11. None of my neighbors could afford a Tesla

but a camera or phone, or worse, a drone?

[Me.]

4. This Guy & Anything He Touches Needs To Go

I suggest screwing steel pillboxes to his head with no pain reliever just as his company does to animals

and ps. who really thinks cameras are just for research?

[Earth-shine]

9. Let's keep Space-X.

[intrepidity]

12. I wonder how much of his wealth

came from value derived from government subsidy of SpaceX?

[Earth-shine]

14. It's a level of finances of which I will never understand the particulars of transactions.

[NullTuples]

5. "is and will always be enormously important to us" - a lovely nothing statement

[paleotn]

17. Welcome to Tesla.

The company built specifically for 12 year old's by a perpetual 12 year old.

[ck4829]

22. Kick