Tesla employees widely shared videos captured by the cameras of several car owners between 2019 and 2022, according to a new report from Reuters. The new report describes videos like “a man approaching a vehicle completely naked,” car crash videos and road rage incidents—all widely shared on private chat networks by Tesla employees.
“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,” Reuters reports.
The cameras on Tesla cars exist to help drivers, but can capture anything that’s happened around the car, even when it’s not being driven. Reuters spoke with several former employees of Tesla and it’s not clear if the practice of privately sharing notable videos continues.
Tesla’s Customer Privacy Notice notes that camera recordings are anonymous, though obviously there are plenty of ways to identify someone by their surroundings.
“In order for camera recordings for fleet learning to be shared with Tesla, your consent for Data Sharing is required and can be controlled through the vehicle’s touchscreen at any time,” Tesla says on its website.
“Even if you choose to opt-in, unless we receive the data as a result of a safety event (a vehicle collision or airbag deployment) — camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle,” the explanation from Tesla continues.
Reuters reports it wasn’t just embarrassing videos that were shared widely by employees. Apparently “more mundane” images from the cameras of Tesla customers would also be shared, including pictures of dogs and “funny road signs.” There were even images captures in the garage of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and it’s not clear whether the boss was aware his employees were sharing private videos from his car in the office.
Tesla did not respond to an email Thursday morning. The company got rid of its PR department in 2021 so it’s unlikely the company will respond, but I’ll update this article if I hear back. Musk has a rather combative relationship with the press, which has led him to getting rid of press departments at his companies. Twitter, which Musk bought in 2022, also ditched its media department recently.
Reuters notes Tesla did not answer any questions about the videos shared by Tesla employees.