Tesla employees are watching and sharing private car videos of electric vehicle owners, including intimate recordings, a report claims.
While the Elon Musk-led tech firm assures its customers of protecting their privacy, the alleged confession of its former employees suggests otherwise.
Tesla Workers Watch, Share Private Car Videos
As per a "special report" by Reuters, some Tesla employees admitted to the news outfit that some private videos from the cameras of EV owners were shared on their internal messaging platform. The workers revealed that the invasive recording and photos were reportedly from 2019 to 2022.
At least nine ex-staffers of the giant carmaker spoke with Reuters regarding the circulation of private clips. The identities of these former employees were kept anonymous in the report.
Futurism points out that the EV maker hires roughly hundreds of data-labeling employees. These people are responsible for analyzing its customers' videos to help identify the objects in these clips. The whole process is part of the development of the driver assistance system of the EV maker. It should be used for its Full Self Driving software.
These employees have to go through video recording so that they may have access to some private and intimate clips, Futurism reports. One of the former employees told Reuters that they saw a video wherein a completely naked man entered the EV.
In some cases, employees shared private photos and videos of car owners as memes that they passed around. Another recording, passed around by the staffers, showed the garage of Musk, which included an iconic white Lotus Esprit. This vehicle popularly showed up in a 1977 James Bond movie.
Tesla Assures Privacy for Customers
The Musk-led automaker assures its customers that their privacy is protected even while the built-in camera of the EV is recording in real-time.
In fact, the Tesla website tells its visitors that the cameras, which supposedly help folks behind the wheel with driving, are "designed from the ground up to protect your privacy." If EV owners of the giant automaker took its word, their privacy would look well protected.
That's not all. The Tech giant's Customer Privacy Notice further assures its users' privacy. The notice says that "camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle."
The notice even tells its customers, "Your privacy is and will always be enormously important to us."
Meanwhile, Musk currently sits as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tesla, alongside leading his other giant firms like SpaceX and Twitter.
However, it has yet to be determined if the big boss of Tesla knew about the situation, wherein employees allegedly watched private videos of its customers. Musk has yet to comment on the story. Tesla, which no longer has a PR department, has kept mum about the situation as of writing.
Related Article : Tesla Lawsuit: E-Car Company Charged to Pay $3.2M to Black Ex-worker Who Suffered Racial Harassment
