Tesla faces a potential class action lawsuit over customer privacy concerns

A Tesla customer is taking the electric vehicle giant to court, in the first legal move since Tesla employees were revealed to be sharing private customer information(Opens in a new tab).

The potential class action lawsuit was filed on April 7 by Tesla Model Y owner Henry Yeh, who took to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to demand accountability from Tesla toward owners of its autopilot-equipped cars.

“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,” Yeh’s attorney, Jack Fitzgerald, said in a statement to Reuters. Yeh wrote that he felt violated by the employees’ actions to share sensitive data taken from his car for the goal of “tasteless and tortious entertainment” and “the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded.”

On April 7, Reuters reported(Opens in a new tab) on claims made by nine former Tesla employees that team members were sharing personal video footage and images taken from internal car cameras across employee channels. Messages shared included “intimate” scenes from customer homes and events on the road, which were disseminated by Tesla artificial intelligence trainers (known as “labelers”) as a form of company clout.

In the complaint, Yeh wrote that it is being filed “against Tesla on behalf of himself, similarly-situated class members, and the general public” in a possible class action from customers who leased or purchased a Tesla vehicle within the past four years.