Tesla: employees would have shared the content of the cameras of the vehicles
Smart and connected cars raise several ethical questions surrounding consumer privacy. Although all car manufacturers claim to collect information for the sole purpose of improving their vehicles, there are still several gray areas that allow us to doubt their practices. We now learn that Tesla employees have allegedly shared private content with each other within the four walls of the company.
It’s the media Reuters who claims to have surveyed anonymously more than 300 former employees of Tesla. Reuters conducted a study on autonomous vehicles and sought to gather as much information as possible on the practices of certain manufacturers currently very active in this race, such as Tesla. More than a dozen of these individuals reportedly agreed to answer questions.
However, what Reuters did not expect to hear, it was the testimonies concerning the sharing of content from the cameras installed on the vehicles of the manufacturer. Indeed, although Tesla employees must scrutinize the information captured by these cameras to improve the recognition and interpretation of the environment of vehicles – one of the pillars of artificial intelligence in the automobile – these testimonies reveal that some employees shared information with each other in internal chat groups.
According to the testimony of some ex-Tesla employees, the content of these cameras installed all around the vehicles and even in the passenger compartment was sometimes quite disturbing. One individual testified to having seen a child being hit by a car while riding a bicycle, while another claimed to have seen two naked adults having sex in front of the vehicle. Several recordings of collisions or acts of road rage were also shared between colleagues simply for “laughs”, said one of the ex-employees during the study.
“We saw very intimate, sometimes even disturbing things, things that, personally, I would not have wanted the manufacturer of my vehicle to see”, we read in a testimony published in the article of Reuters.
In addition, one of the individuals interviewed said that some employees even had fun retouching images captured by the cameras to then transform them and share them on internal communication platforms.
“It was common to see comedic images made up of content collected by owners’ cameras on our chat platforms,” testifies one of the ex-Tesla employees.
Radio silence by Tesla and Elon Musk
Obviously, Tesla and Elon Musk did not respond to questions posed by Reuters. On our side, it is downright impossible to speak to a public relations specialist from the manufacturer, because Tesla Canada has no Public Relations department and does not respond to any media.
Recall that, according to Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, data collection practices in the automotive industry should only be used to improve vehicle performance and safety. Content should only be retained if it serves these purposes, otherwise it should be destroyed.
To put things in perspective, a Tesla Model Y includes up to 6 surveillance elements, including a camera installed above the license plate, proximity sensors on the front and rear bumpers, a camera installed on each B-pillar of the vehicle, three cameras at the top of the windshield, a camera on each front fender and an integrated radar in the front bumper.
Finally, a camera is installed in the cabin, near the rearview mirror, to monitor the driver during autonomous driving. However, the content of this camera is only sent to the manufacturer if the owner agrees to do so through the multimedia system.
Tesla allows owners of its vehicles to demand a copy of the content it hoards, but the automaker reserves the right to retain certain content under its terms of use. That’s why it’s important to understand these before buying a connected vehicle!
