Tesla workers had access to private, sensitive images and videos from vehicle cameras and used them to make memes of car owners, according to a report released Thursday.
Employees could essentially use the cameras to spy on owners if they wanted to, Reuters reported.
“I saw some scandalous stuff sometimes, I did see scenes of intimacy but not nudity,” one employee told the outlet. “There was just definitely a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t want anybody to see about my life.”
One man was captured approaching his car completely nude, a different employee told Reuters.
Another Tesla owner was caught driving at high speed in a residential area and slamming into a child on a bike, sources told Reuters. Video of that crash spread through Tesla offices “like wildfire.”
“It was a breach of privacy, to be honest,” an employee said. “And I always joked that I would never buy a Tesla after seeing how they treated some of these people.”
Tesla tells car buyers that privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us” and the car’s cameras are “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.” The cameras are used to build Tesla’s automated driving system.
Earlier this year, Tesla had to change camera settings in Europe due to tougher privacy laws across the pond. However, those cases focused on passers-by being secretly recorded, not Tesla owners.
The Tesla employees interviewed by Reuters admitted workers would often make memes from private scenes recorded by car cameras.
“If you saw something cool that would get a reaction, you post it,” one ex-employee told Reuters. “People who got promoted to lead positions shared a lot of these funny items and gained notoriety for being funny.”
Tesla’s privacy notice warns buyers “your vehicle may collect the data and make it available to Tesla for analysis.” However, David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University, told Reuters, “Any normal human being would be appalled by this.”