Tesla owners in California on Friday sued the electric car maker in an expected class action lawsuit alleging violations of consumer privacy.
The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California after Reuters reported on Thursday that between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees sent sometimes highly offensive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras via an internal messaging system.
The lawsuit, filed by Henry Yeh, a San Francisco resident who owns Tesla’s Model Y, alleges that Tesla employees were able to access images and videos of him for their “tasteless and violent entertainment” and “humiliation of those secretly recorded.”
“Like anyone, Mr. Yeh is outraged by the idea that Tesla’s cameras could be used to violate his family’s privacy, which is delicately protected by the California Constitution,” attorney Jack Fitzgerald, who represents Yeh, told Reuters in a statement.
“Tesla needs to be held accountable for these intrusions and misrepresent its lax privacy practices to him and other Tesla owners,” Fitzgerald said.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The lawsuit says Tesla’s behavior was “particularly egregious” and “grossly offensive.”
Yeh is filing the complaint “against Tesla on behalf of himself, similar class members and the public,” it said. The prospective class includes individuals who have owned or leased a Tesla within the past four years, the complaint said.
Some Tesla employees can see customers doing “laundry and really intimate things. We can see their kids,” Reuters reported, citing a former employee.
“Indeed, parents’ interest in their children’s privacy is one of the most fundamental liberty interests recognized by society,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit asks the court “to enjoin Tesla from engaging in its wrongful conduct, including violating the privacy of consumers and others, and to recover actual and punitive damages.”
Source: Reuters
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