A Tesla owner from California has filed a class action lawsuit against the electric carmaker for infringing on customers’ privacy.
As reported by Reuters on Thursday, Tesla employees had been privately sharing “highly invasive videos and images” taken by the car cameras between 2019 and 2022.
The lawsuit was filed by a San Francisco resident, Henry Yeh, who owns a Tesla Model Y, and alleges that employees were able to access the footage for their “tasteless and tortious entertainment” as well as for “the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded.”
The lawsuit quoted a former employee who is said to have witnessed such behavior, “The employees would watch footage and “rank” it according to the attractiveness of women and the size of their body parts.”
In a statement, an attorney, Jack Fitzgerald 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.”
In Fitzgerald words, “Tesla needs to be held accountable for these invasions and for misrepresenting its lax privacy practices to him and other Tesla owners.”
According to the lawsuit, Tesla’s conduct is “particularly egregious” and “highly offensive.”
The suit revealed that Yeh was filing the complaint “against Tesla on behalf of himself, similarly-situated class members, and the general public.” Particularly individuals who owned or leased a Tesla within the past four years.
According to a former employee, Tesla employees could see customers “doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids.”
The suit further stated, “Indeed, parents’ interest in their children’s privacy is one of the most fundamental liberty interests society recognizes.”
The lawsuit urged the court “to enjoin Tesla from engaging in its wrongful behavior, including violating the privacy of customers and others, and to recover actual and punitive damages.”
