Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customers’ cars

[BabyBlade]

SAN FRANCISCO - Tesla has assured its millions of electric car owners that their privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us”.

The cameras it builds into vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy”.

But between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared, via an internal messaging system, sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees.

Some of the recordings caught Tesla customers in embarrassing situations. One former employee described a video of a man approaching a vehicle completely naked.

Also shared were crashes and road-rage incidents. One crash video in 2021 showed a Tesla being driven at high speed in a residential area and hitting a child riding a bike, according to another former employee.

Other images were more mundane, such as pictures of dogs and funny road signs that employees made into memes by embellishing them with amusing captions or commentary, before posting them in private group chats. While some postings were shared between only two employees, others could be seen by scores of them, according to several former employees.

Tesla states in its online “Customer Privacy Notice” that its “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle”. But seven former employees told Reuters the computer programme they used at work could show the location of recordings – which potentially could reveal where a Tesla owner lived.

One former employee also said that some recordings appeared to have been made when cars were parked and turned off. Several years ago, Tesla would receive video recordings from its vehicles even when they were turned off, if owners gave consent. It has since stopped doing so.

“We could see inside people’s garages and their private properties,” said another former employee. “Let’s say that a Tesla customer had something in their garage that was distinctive, you know, people would post those kinds of things.”

Tesla did not respond to detailed questions sent to the company for this report.

To report this story, Reuters contacted more than 300 former Tesla employees who had worked at the company over the past nine years and were involved in developing its self-driving system.

More than a dozen agreed to answer questions, all speaking on condition of anonymity.

Reuters was not able to obtain any of the shared videos or images, which former employees said they had not kept. The news agency also was not able to determine if the practice of sharing recordings, which occurred within some parts of Tesla as recently as 2022, continues today or how widespread it was.

Some former employees contacted said the only sharing they observed was for legitimate work purposes, such as seeking assistance from colleagues or supervisors.

The sharing of sensitive videos illustrates one of the less-noted features of artificial intelligence systems: They often require armies of human beings to help train machines to learn automated tasks such as driving.

Since about 2016, Tesla has employed hundreds of people in Africa and later the United States to label images to help its cars learn how to recognise pedestrians, street signs, construction vehicles, garage doors and other objects encountered on the road or at customers’ houses. To accomplish that, data labellers were given access to thousands of videos or images recorded by car cameras that they would view to identify objects.

Two former employees said they were not bothered by the sharing of images, saying that customers had given their consent or that people long ago had given up any reasonable expectation of keeping personal data private. Three others, however, said they were troubled by it.

One said: “I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected... We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids.”

One former employee saw nothing wrong with sharing images, but described a function that allowed data labellers to view the location of recordings on Google Maps as a “massive invasion of privacy”.

Associate Professor David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, called the sharing of sensitive videos and images by Tesla employees “morally reprehensible”.

He noted that circulating sensitive and personal content could be construed as a violation of Tesla’s own privacy policy – potentially resulting in intervention by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which enforces federal laws relating to consumers’ privacy.

An FTC spokesman said it does not comment on individual companies or their conduct.

To develop self-driving car technology, Tesla collects a vast trove of data from its global fleet of several million vehicles. The company requires car owners to grant permission on the cars’ touchscreens before Tesla collects their vehicles’ data. “Your data belongs to you,” states Tesla’s website.

In its customer privacy notice, Tesla explains that if a customer agrees to share data, “your vehicle may collect the data and make it available to Tesla for analysis. This analysis helps Tesla improve its products, features, and diagnose problems quicker.”

It also states that the data may include “short video clips or images”, but is not linked to a customer’s account or vehicle identification number, “and does not identify you personally. 

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars?utm_campaign=stfb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

[Tianmo]

 

The boat can be carried by the water, but water can also overturn it. So don't expect to enjoy the convenience without taking on some form of negative effect, paid or free makes no different. 

And as long as you have a social media account, you already have no privacy. 

 

Edited April 9, 2023 by Tianmo

[Abracadabra]

On 4/9/2023 at 9:37 AM, Tianmo said:

 

The boat can be carried by the water, but water can also overturn it. So don't expect to enjoy the convenience without taking on some form of negative effect, paid or free makes no different. 

And as long as you have a social media account, you already have no privacy. 

 

 

 

[Inlinefour]

wow those suspension testers gonna beware 

[Thaiyotakamli]

Does it have access to wifi?

[Vid]

Jialat... my nose picking pic is going viral

[Jellandross]

Tesla must be banned and held accountable! Oh wait.. that's only for China.

 

[Jamesc]

NPNT

[Jamesc]

Like this?

Why is it always women caught on Tesla cam?

NSFW its all X rated stuff!

 

 

Edited April 9, 2023 by Jamesc

[Jamesc]

Or this?

Why Honda drivers all hate Tesla?

 

 

[Watwheels]

Down here in sg drivers upload their own videos on YT. No need any car dealership employees to do it.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Watwheels

[Arogab]

Haha, I have never take a second look at Tesla

[Tohto]

On 4/10/2023 at 12:49 PM, Arogab said:

Haha, I have never take a second look at Tesla

Damn ugly..   eeeee😂😂😁😁

[Tkseah]

The car cameras filming outside only or also filming inside?

[Tkseah]

Luckily me still using old car camera with no wifi feature.. so can be rest assured it does not access wifi..

[Arogab]

On 4/11/2023 at 12:26 PM, Tohto said:

Damn ugly..   eeeee😂😂😁😁

So, it is not just me alone. My CEO has a model X, I have never say I want to look at it on the interior or try to sit on it. The outlook for me just puts me off. 😂😂😂

[Tohto]

On 4/11/2023 at 3:08 PM, Arogab said:

So, it is not just me alone. My CEO has a model X, I have never say I want to look at it on the interior or try to sit on it. The outlook for me just puts me off. 😂😂😂

Model 9 look worst... the kar chng see already faint..

[Arogab]

On 4/11/2023 at 3:01 PM, Tohto said:

Model 9 look worst... the kar chng see already faint..

Yes, if buy car, must look all round. Haha. Cos you look at it all the time you walking towards the car every angle