Tesla (TSLA) was sued on Friday by a California customer in a potential class-action lawsuit alleging the electric carmaker has intruded on the privacy of its customers using the technology embedded in its vehicles, specifically its car-cameras.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California after a Reuters report revealed that groups of Tesla employees were using internal company messaging systems to share with each other highly invasive videos and images that had been recorded by car cameras on customer’s vehicles between 2019 and 2022.
The lawsuit was filed by San Francisco resident Henry Yeh, who owns a Tesla Model Y. It alleges that Tesla employees used the cameras on the vehicles to access intimate photos and videos for their “tasteless and tortious entertainment” and “the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded.”
In a statement to Reuters, Jack Fitzgerald, the attorney representing Yeh said, “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.”
Fitzgerald said, “Tesla needs to be held accountable for these invasions and for misrepresenting its lax privacy practices to him and other Tesla owners.”
Tesla has not publicly commented on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit called Tesla’s actions “particularly egregious” and “highly offensive.”
The lawsuit noted Yeh was filing the suit, “against Tesla on behalf of himself, similarly-situated class members, and the general public.” The lawsuit said any individuals who had owned or leased a Tesla in the previous four years would qualify as prospective class-members.
The Reuters report had noted that a former employee said Tesla employees could see customers “doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids.”
The lawsuit pointed out, “Indeed, parents’ interest in their children’s privacy is one of the most fundamental liberty interests society recognizes.”
The lawsuit seeks that the court “enjoin Tesla from engaging in its wrongful behavior, including violating the privacy of customers and others, and to recover actual and punitive damages.”