--- title: "Tesla Employees Have Secretly Been Sharing “Intimate” Car Camera Videos" description: "Passing Around Videos Employees at Tesla have secretly been watching and passing around \"intimate\" videos recorded by Tesla car cameras, Reuters reports, despite the company claiming that the cameras are \"designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.\" According to the report, employees privately shared videos on an internal messaging system, including highly invasive […]" date: "2023-04-06" modified: "2023-04-06" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-employees-secretly-sharing-private-car-camera-videos" categories: - "Advanced Transport" - "Tesla" tags: - "elon musk" - "privacy" - "tesla" - "the digest" --- # Tesla Employees Have Secretly Been Sharing “Intimate” Car Camera Videos ![Employees at Tesla have secretly been watching and passing around "intimate" videos recorded by Tesla car cameras, Reuters reports.]() *\Image: Tesla\* ## Passing Around Videos Employees at Tesla have secretly been watching and passing around "intimate" videos recorded by Tesla car cameras, [*Reuters* reports](), despite the company claiming that the cameras are "designed from the ground up to protect your privacy." According to the report, employees privately shared videos on an internal messaging system, including highly invasive videos and images recorded by the cars of Tesla owners. One former employee told *Reuters* that they had watched a video of a completely naked man approaching a vehicle. Another video, which reportedly spread "like wildfire" on the company's messaging boards, showed a car hitting a child on a bike, sending the child flying. In 2019, employees even passed around a video of Tesla CEO Elon Musk's white Lotus Esprit, a car that was featured in a 1977 James Bond film, parked in his garage. It's unclear if Musk knew about the video. Worse yet, these recordings could easily allow Tesla staff to trace back the exact locations where they were taken, even when the car was shut off, according to the report. ## Illusion of Privacy It's a highly troubling revelation that should give anybody, particularly Tesla drivers, pause. The EV maker has long promised that "camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle" in its [Customer Privacy Notice](). It sounds like a flagrant invasion of privacy, and it's still unclear if these videos were being collected for legitimate work purposes, as *Reuters* points out, such as training AI-powered self-driving systems like Tesla's Autopilot. The company currently employs hundreds of data-labeling workers, who are tasked to analyze video recordings and identify objects for the company's driver assistance software. Nonetheless, employees had access to some seriously intimate information, which ended up being sent around for no discernible reason. "We could see inside people's garages and their private properties," one former employee told *Reuters*. "Let's say that a Tesla customer had something in their garage that was distinctive, you know, people would post those kinds of things." Many former data-labeling employees told *Reuters* that they shared images and videos to "break the monotony" and have a laugh together, despite managers telling them off, claiming such a practice violated company policy. Tesla [disbanded]() its PR department back in 2020, so it's unlikely we'll hear from the company any time soon. **More on Tesla:** *[Hackers Say They Can Access Teslas and Make Them Honk Wildly]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()