One former Tesla employee mentioned that the videos were being recorded even when the vehicle was turned off.
According to media reports, Tesla employees passed around sensitive videos of owners, recorded by the car’s multiple cameras. The videos were reportedly shared by employees via the company’s internal messaging systems from 2019 through 2022.
Reports state that video recordings shared by the Tesla workers range from graphic car crashes to road rage incidents and even some sensitive clips. Some employees reportedly even created memes based on the car camera recordings and shared them in other private chat groups. One former Tesla employee mentioned that the videos were being recorded even when the vehicle was turned off. This means employees having access to the videos could see inside the owner’s garage and their private properties.
While Tesla was turning off the vehicle’s cameras by default by 2023, the company previously had a policy which allowed them to receive recordings from non-running vehicles if the customer signed off on it. An investigation by the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) found that Tesla vehicles “were filming everyone who came near the car”.
Tesla launched the ‘Sentry Mode’ in 2019, as a way to alert drivers of any suspicious activity when their vehicles are parked. The car would record and store the incident in its onboard memory. In 2021, the company updated the feature, allowing drivers to live stream their car’s surroundings from the Tesla App. Tesla clarified that the recordings from the Sentry Mode weren’t transmitted to them and are exclusive to the driver, via end-to-end encryption. However, after the investigation by DPA, the company tweaked the privacy settings with the camera now set to start recording only when someone touches the car. Tesla now also flashes its headlights to warn passersby that it is recording.
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