Tesla employees watching drivers through their cameras is a glimpse into our privacy-free connected car future.
Is Tesla spying on its customers? At least some of its employees were, according to a recent Reuters report. Several former Tesla employees said that between 2019 and 2022, they saw images from the series of cameras built into Tesla cars. Employees said they passed sensitive videos, from a car crashing into a child to a naked man approaching a vehicle to inside people’s garages, on an internal messaging system. The images were anonymous, but some had enough information to re-identify the car they came from or had location data associated with them.
While this news may seem shocking, it actually points to a difficult but ever-present reality. Newer cars are covered in cameras, and cars of the future will surely have even more. It is not always clear if and how this image is protected. And while the Reuters report is specifically about Tesla, it doesn’t mean only Tesla owners are at risk of these kinds of privacy invasions.
Before you assume your automaker is watching you and its employees are passing around videos of you singing along to your radio, consider a few caveats.
The Reuters report said the employees who watched and passed on the videos were part of a team that is supposed to review that footage to improve Tesla’s self-driving capabilities, for example by helping it identify certain objects or street signs. That’s not unusual: smart assistants like Amazon’s Alexa sometimes have human reviewers listen to users’ audio to improve their products, too. (You can usually turn this off or have to accept it, depending on the company.) According to the Reuters article, Tesla obtained consent from drivers to review these images for this purpose. Tesla did not return a request for comment to confirm or further explain the report.
But Tesla employees allegedly went above and beyond their review duties, pulling interesting and funny clips and passing them along for their own amusement. That’s not improving a product, and it’s certainly not what Tesla owners thought they were agreeing to.
But it’s an example of how we trade privacy for convenience when we trade in old cars for new ones. They are increasingly filled not only with cameras, but also with voice assistants, connected infotainment systems and telemetry that collect tons of data from hundreds, if not thousands, of data points. These can provide features that customers want, or the data they collect can be used to improve products. Either it can be sold to the highest bidder, or it can be passed around and laughed at. Sometimes you don’t know and you don’t have a choice. But sometimes you do.
It’s also becoming impossible to get a car that doesn’t have cameras. New cars sold in the US must have security cameras starting in 2018, according to a federal law. These cameras usually do not record images or send them anywhere. Other cameras do, including the dashboard cameras that have become increasingly popular or the internal cameras that bus drivers often use for their own safety. Cameras can be a highly desired feature that improves safety and enables some semi-autonomous and self-driving capabilities. Amazon’s Ring cameras even have a special car model, so you can have your Ring camera at your door, in your kid’s room, and now on your dashboard.
Our cars are increasingly connected and computerized, collecting up to 25 gigabytes per hour of data. They can send this data to data brokers and it can be difficult, if not impossible, to stop them. And there is always the possibility that this data can be obtained by hackers. As always, trust someone else to protect your data and respect your privacy.
But there are also advantages. Insurance companies often offer discounts to customers who drive safely, which is determined by apps or devices drivers install in their cars that monitor them. Connected car infotainment systems are getting better and better. And you might be glad you had a dash cam when the footage proves that an accident wasn’t your fault. This federal security camera mandate was intended to prevent accidents, such as running over a child that would otherwise go unnoticed.
If you’re not keen on the idea of Tesla employees broadcasting images of your car, there are a few things you can do. You might not buy a Tesla, but since so many other cars have these cameras, it probably won’t be enough. If you have the option, you can always opt out of having your data collected or your images submitted to human reviewers. And before you add a camera to your dash, consider whether the potential benefits of having one outweigh the potential cons. You may think so, but you should have the option to make an informed decision. And the company you trust with your car camera data should be a lot better at protecting your sensitive information than Tesla seems to be.
The possible good news here is that reports like this are the kind of thing that inspire regulators like the Federal Trade Commission to act if and when they can. Federal data privacy laws aren’t great, almost nonexistent, in fact, but the FTC has gone after companies it found violating consumer privacy when it can, like a company lying about its privacy policies. Tesla’s privacy policy, by the way, says that users are “in the driver’s seat, even when it comes to your data.”
