Tesla sued after report that workers shared invasive images from car cameras

Lawsuit: Images were shared "for the tasteless entertainment of Tesla employees."

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[Mordics]

The word "benefits" is doing some heavy lifting there. I've been part of a few class action suits, and my benefit in all cases has never totaled more than $3; it's mostly under a buck. Now, multiply that by millions of plaintiffs and you're talking real money - for the firm handling the case - but the individual plaintiffs usually wind up with very little.

Class action lawsuits are a thing because the legal system in the US is expensive. There really isn't another feasible method for private parties to hold a company accountable for doing a small amount of damage to a large number of people. Without class action suits there's no incentive for a company not to defraud 10 million people out of 10 dollars each. You can make tons of money, and it will never be worth any individual's time to sue.

This case is a good example. For any individual the actual damages for the invasion of privacy will likely never amount to much. Certainly never enough for them to recoup the cost bringing the issue to trail even if you get maximum punitive damages.

Yes, most of the award will be eaten up by the law firm bringing the lawsuit if they win. But there's a benefit to the class and public at large in providing a method for these types of cases to be brought. There's a reason why companies always try to prohibit you from joining a class action in the fine print. It allows them to violate the law with impunity in small value issues.

Speaking of the fine print I would expect Tesla has something in some agreement or another that they will use to try to force any claims into individual arbitration. I'd personally be surprised if this case gets to discovery.

 

[Fotek]

I feel like there's a weird process by which the personality of the founder comes to permeate the entire organization. Like, Apple took on Jobs' fastidiousness, obsession with detail, and idiosyncrasy, Amazon took on Bezos' obsessive optimization and suffocating ambition, Zuck's creepy, predatory blandness suffused Facebook.....and Elon's personality, which is basically that of a particularly odious, 4Chan-obsessed, socially maladroit eleven year old with no parental controls enabled on his internet browser, became that of Tesla.

This is so true I had to screenshot it for future reference.

 

[ranthog]

The word "benefits" is doing some heavy lifting there. I've been part of a few class action suits, and my benefit in all cases has never totaled more than $3; it's mostly under a buck. Now, multiply that by millions of plaintiffs and you're talking real money - for the firm handling the case - but the individual plaintiffs usually wind up with very little.

Not sure what lawsuits you've been involved with but I have been in a few with more substantial payouts, including one automotive lawsuit for economic losses.

I expect that there is going to be a decent payout in a lawsuit related to the battery issues with my Bolt, and the fact that my car hasn't had the range I paid for for the last 20 months. Nor the fact that my vehicle right now if I needed to sell it is probably worth less money.

The fact is even without the lawyers fees most of the low value cases still probably wouldn't be more than $10. What those lawsuits do for me is attempt to punish and have a cost to wrong doing by the company in question. Something that I could not do individually.

What the lawyers get paid is not unreasonable, and is part of the reason why we need class action lawsuits. When harms are small but spread out across a large class there is no other options.

 

[gsgrego]

Good thing Tesla has a CEO focused on the company that can guide it and it's an employees through dealing with this and not a CEO busy with another company getting in childish spats with other companies and shadowbanning people after he has a tantrum.

 

[ranthog]

Class action lawsuits are a thing because the legal system in the US is expensive. There really isn't another feasible method for private parties to hold a company accountable for doing a small amount of damage to a large number of people. Without class action suits there's no incentive for a company not to defraud 10 million people out of 10 dollars each. You can make tons of money, and it will never be worth any individual's time to sue.

This case is a good example. For any individual the actual damages for the invasion of privacy will likely never amount to much. Certainly never enough for them to recoup the cost bringing the issue to trail even if you get maximum punitive damages.

Yes, most of the award will be eaten up by the law firm bringing the lawsuit if they win. But there's a benefit to the class and public at large in providing a method for these types of cases to be brought. There's a reason why companies always try to prohibit you from joining a class action in the fine print. It allows them to violate the law with impunity in small value issues.

Speaking of the fine print I would expect Tesla has something in some agreement or another that they will use to try to force any claims into individual arbitration. I'd personally be surprised if this case gets to discovery.

Even if the US system was cheap, there is no reasonable way to hold companies accountable if they did $100 in harm to 20 million customers. Beyond that, it is also useful for companies because unless someone chooses to exclude themselves from the class, it settles the issue for the company for good.

The only people who want class actions to be limited or go away are people who don't want large corporations to be held legally accountable.

 

[ranthog]

Good thing Tesla has a CEO focused on the company that can guide it and it's an employees through dealing with this and not a CEO busy with another company getting in childish spats with other companies and shadowbanning people after he has a tantrum.

Actually the CEO being abscent probably makes corrective action more likely at Tesla.

 

[graylshaped]

Good. I've had a Tesla during that period. I wonder who'll be able to sign onto the class action suit. I can't think of any situations where I would have had compromising images taken by the car, but such behavior is unacceptable, and they should be held accountable.

I was pleasantly surprised when I received a check from a class action lawsuit against AT&T that had double digits. It was a pizza instead of a cup of coffee the abused customers normally get.

 

[nanocube]

These are the same 'bro' engineers that are now showing Twitter how real coders operate....

What could possibly go wrong.

 

[gsgrego]

Actually the CEO being abscent probably makes corrective action more likely at Tesla.

Sad but true.

 

[EdelweissPirate]

IANAL, but…

Class action lawsuit won’t be approved by a judge unless it actually benefits the class. That’s all part of the settlement. The reason class action lawsuits don’t convey that much to the members of the class is in the name itself. By definition, a class may and often does represent a lot of people, and the compensation to the class has to be divided among the members of the class.

Whatever the attorneys make is generally divided among a relatively small number of attorneys. But, they also put in the work to win the case, and typically they only do it because there is the potential for a big payoff. Otherwise, the lawsuit would never happen.

But surely you see the perverse incentive here:

The payout disparity between the attorneys and the class members means that the attorneys can settle quickly for an amount that’s substantial for them and insultingly trivial for the class members.

I’m not saying that happens every time, but neither should we pretend that class actions are a shining example of legal symbiosis.

 

[jhodge]

No user agreed to what Tesla was doing with their data.

No kidding. But there's a big difference between scenarios:

A) Tesla surreptitiously recorded people in what they expected to be a private place and
B) Tesla recorded people with their consent, but those recordings were misused

In (B), it will matter a lot if/how/how promptly Tesla disciplined the offending employees. If the answer is "not at all", that's one path. OTOH, if they were disciplined promptly once management was made aware, then they may not be in much trouble at all.

In (A) of course, they shouldn't have the recordings in the first place, and so need to punished severely.

I'm not a lawyer, everything I've written may be 100% legally wrong. I'm interested in the opt-in question because that's what I'm see wherever I look, but I'm not a Tesla owner so I don't know for sure.

 

[jtwrenn]

Driving data is one thing, parked data seems to be a very different thing. I could see driving data especially when an incident occurs or when self drive is on. I can't see parked data. I also highly doubt this is fully opt in. So many companies abuse the opt in nature of things but tucking an auto opt in into the setup procedure that I bet many people will say they did not opt into this.

It's a powder keg and just too much data for a company to have. On the hopeful side it could just be embarrassing data, on the dangerous side it could be damaging especially if there is any audio included. It's just something we have allowed for too long without guiderails all over the tech industry. Too much data collection without a set of guidelines that someone other than the company who makes more money off of more data decides. We need to stop chasing tech with regulation and get ahead of it for once.

 

[Longmile149]

These are the same 'bro' engineers that are now showing Twitter how real coders operate....

What could possibly go wrong.

There’s no world in which Elon Musk, the owner of “Titter,” isn’t already actively invading the privacy of Twitter users that catch his attention. I absolutely guarantee that he lacks the self-control to not open up his critics’ DMs and look for alts and generally fish for ways to lash out at them.

 

[kaisersoser]

Seems like a direct violation of European Data Privacy laws and a justification of Data Privacy laws as a universal right.

In any case, thank god I never bought a Tesla.

 

[Chuckstar]

There is only one possible case for it, and it's one my rearview camera/dashcam combo is designed for. If the car gets a shock heavy enough to trigger the display or camera's motion sensors while it is in park, it starts recording front and back for a few minutes (including audio, but that's going to be muffled by the exterior of the car since the microphone's on the inside). This helps in the event my car was struck for a hit and run.

So, while I can see a situation where something like that can come in handy, it certainly has no business doing so without the user's knowledge or at any point involving Tesla's servers. Suppose someone willingly signed up for sending in testing data however. In that case, it still has no business sending parked recordings to Tesla as you say.

Even if Tesla saves security footage like that to its servers (as a convenient backup for the consumer, for instance), there’s no reason for anyone at Tesla to ever look at such footage. They could easily tag security footage separately from driving footage, and only have driving footage available to the guys developing the driving AI.

 

[Mordics]

But surely you see the perverse incentive here:

The payout disparity between the attorneys and the class members means that the attorneys can settle quickly for an amount that’s substantial for them and insultingly trivial for the class members.

I’m not saying that happens every time, but neither should we pretend that class actions are a shining example of legal symbiosis.

I do see the incentives you're talking about. I've often heard that sort of complaint about class action lawsuits and it has merit. What I haven't heard is an alternative that's better than class action lawsuits, or changes to the class action process to help alleviate that issue.

Do you have any suggestions?

I'm certainly not claiming that class actions are great and wonderful and flawless. But I don't really see a better alternative for the types of cases they are designed for.

 

[theOGpetergregory]

Any pictures of Europeans in there? Time to enforce those fines of up to 4% of global turnover under GDPR article 83 section 5...

By the law of large numbers it would seem likely that at least one Tesla owner in the US would have had a European visitor that was filmed...

Which highlights another point: not all people filmed agreed to Tesla's terms and services.

 

[Longmile149]

No kidding. But there's a big difference between scenarios:

A) Tesla surreptitiously recorded people in what they expected to be a private place and
B) Tesla recorded people with their consent, but those recordings were misused

In (B), it will matter a lot if/how/how promptly Tesla disciplined the offending employees. If the answer is "not at all", that's one path. OTOH, if they were disciplined promptly once management was made aware, then they may not be in much trouble at all.

In (A) of course, they shouldn't have the recordings in the first place, and so need to punished severely.

I'm not a lawyer, everything I've written may be 100% legally wrong. I'm interested in the opt-in question because that's what I'm see wherever I look, but I'm not a Tesla owner so I don't know for sure.

As has been pointed out many times wrt FSD, Tesla’s business practices are affecting a lot more people who didn’t consent than who did.

 

[marmelade]

I don’t understand how Tesla employees have access to data like this and are able to share it. The whole company is acting like immature ten year olds. Why doesn’t the CEO set an example?

The CEO is who? Oh… That explains a lot.

But seriously. If you can't sneer at and make fun of your customers, what's the point of working for an evil drug-addled billionaire megalomanic, anyway?

 

[cyberpenguin]

I think another interesting question is: Why is this data being collected at all? It sounds like most/all of it was recorded while the car was parked and quite possibly off - in people's garages and driveways. The idea that it was somehow being collected for "training" purposes sounds like a flat-out lie. If the car's parked, there's not a whole lot you can train it to do - other than spy, I guess.

It seems these were three uses of collected image data while the car was parked:

https://www.krqe.com/news/albuquerque-metro/teen-caught-on-camera-keying-albuquerque-mans-tesla/
https://www.kob.com/archive/tesla-camera-catches-break-in-at-albuquerque-parking-lot/
https://www.kob.com/archive/vandals-tag-albuquerque-mans-car-with-profanities/

 

[sidran32]

What kind of training is the car going to glean while sitting in the garage or driveway?

I expect in that case, it's using images from the dashcam recorded while driving. Or videos from instances where a sentry mode alert was triggered (which can happen if someone even walks too close to your car).

 

[theOGpetergregory]

Even if Tesla saves security footage like that to its servers (as a convenient backup for the consumer, for instance), there’s no reason for anyone at Tesla to ever look at such footage. They could easily tag security footage separately from driving footage, and only have driving footage available to the guys developing the driving AI.

This is something I'm curious to see more information about. I can imagine scenarios where they would look at that to develop features (to identify if a person is walking up to a car vs. something motion detection would flag, like a pigeon or something) but it doesn't seem like there's a current use for parked video and it'd be interesting to know WHY Tesla employees were looking at those videos.

Because of the way agreements are written I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla owners agreed to share the parked data (possibly without knowing/realizing what they were agreeing to). It still doesn't make it ok though.

 

[graylshaped]

Actually the CEO being abscent probably makes corrective action more likely at Tesla.

I admit I read that as "the CEO being an abscess."

 

[pug fugly]

They should be punished, but they won't be.

 

[gsgrego]

Ambulance Chase!

There is money to be made, WHO CARES if any laws were broken.

So you have no problems with employees sharing photos and video of your personal life?

 

[graylshaped]

I expect in that case, it's using images from the dashcam recorded while driving. Or videos from instances where a sentry mode alert was triggered (which can happen if someone even walks too close to your car).

Location, location, location.... the idea that Tesla employees--or those of any company--might be sharing videos from a car securely parked in my garage because my wife might walk past it in her underwear to grab a soda from the refrigerator is an egregious violation of human decency and trust. We don't have a Tesla, and now never want one.

And for the record, I have accessed the garage refrigerator, absent the underwear.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Even if Tesla saves security footage like that to its servers (as a convenient backup for the consumer, for instance), there’s no reason for anyone at Tesla to ever look at such footage. They could easily tag security footage separately from driving footage, and only have driving footage available to the guys developing the driving AI.

Oh keep in mind I'm not suggesting that security footage should ever leave the car itself, just that there's a reason at least to record it purely locally. I am unconvinced there's even a case to be made for remotely accessing your own car-cam through a phone (I feel like domestic abusers would... abuse that in frightening ways), much less a reason for some corporation to see it.

 

[msawzall]

Location, location, location.... the idea that Tesla employees--or those of any company--might be sharing videos from a car securely parked in my garage because my wife might walk past it in her underwear to grab a soda from the refrigerator is an egregious violation of human decency and trust. We don't have a Tesla, and now never want one.

And for the record, I have accessed the garage refrigerator, absent the underwear.

TMI

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Because its used to train ml systems.
Its called fleet learning, and its one of the key tech advantages tesla has. Theres a lot of articles about it.

I just think people were not expecting it to also be used in the car…

If the only way to get self driving cars is mass privacy invasion, count me out. We should focus on pedestrian-friendly roads and switching our nation back to public transport as the norm again. Cars aren't just a pollution factor, they're making cities ugly places to be and killing off our socialization and interaction with our neighbors.

 

[Adapheon]

But surely you see the perverse incentive here:

The payout disparity between the attorneys and the class members means that the attorneys can settle quickly for an amount that’s substantial for them and insultingly trivial for the class members.

I’m not saying that happens every time, but neither should we pretend that class actions are a shining example of legal symbiosis.

Generally every member of a class action gets very little anyways, it's not like a $10 cheque to all members could have been $500 if the lawyers really stuck to it.

Generally from my limited perspective, it's more that the lawyers will pursue the damage amount that is most likely to succeed, and ideally, to curb future violations. The per-member payout can't really be an actual consideration, especially since the full number of members is typically not even known before the case is over (other than looking for minimum damages, so if you know at least 50000 people were defrauded of $10, then $500000+fees is somewhere to start at least).

 

[Coppercloud]

"I've got nothing to hide."
"It won't happen to me."
"It's not really that bad is it?"

Ok, I feel terrible saying this, but maybe we need a lot more leaking of this information. I'm not saying that leaking it is good, but I'm saying that seeing the horrors of unchecked surveillance and privacy intrusions is the only way people are going to care about it. If someone were to somehow create live streams out of this or get public access to the internal data collection and these images were available on-demand, including more intimate and sensitive ones, maybe, just maybe, people would start to care and want to be proactive about this shit. Kind of a "rip the bandaid off" moment.

Either that or maybe we need some racy photos of a lot of senators in teslas, and then maybe we'd see some privacy regulation, though I'm sure it'd be very targeted.

 

[SixDegrees]

The recordings are useful for when people "key" or otherwise damage the car.

edit: I've seen recordings of kids kicking and attempting to unplug the charger of a charging tesla in a parking garage. Some people let their anger at Elon, or at electric cars maybe getting good parking spaces, or even jealousy, get them in trouble.

If you have such problems in your own driveway or garage, you have problems no car camera is going to solve.

And, again: what sort of "training" is being done that justifies uploading these videos to Tesla servers? The incidents you're citing are incidents of vandalism; Tesla learns nothing from these, even if they serve some purpose for the individual owner.

 

[Dietche]

I admit I read that as "the CEO being an abscess."

... andddd... you're not wrong.

 

[SixDegrees]

Data is not collected from parked cars. You are confusing the FSD beta clips of incidents with people viewing sentry cloud videos that once existed. You put the car on sentry mode and it tells if you if anyone is doing something to your car, thats called a "sentry event". You can then view a livestream on the app or when you get back to the car you can access a clip from the cars touch screen when youre parked off the usb stick. I do sentry stuff all the time.

They record locally, you can get them off the usb to view on your computer but thats it. Its actually kind of a pain to do so, i wish they allowed it to go to the cloud more easily. I repeat: They do not record to the cloud and they have never used them for training data. I guess they used to record to the cloud, but i cant confirm that and i dont know what that looked like.

In the quoted stories the owner took the files off their usb and shared the file with the inquiring reporter.

what happened was employees with admin rights went into the cloud backups of sentry events (that existed at some point) and viewed it without permission. Its the same as fb employees reading DMs of their ex and getting fired. The employee who told reuters about viewing sentry events is likely shitting their pants and probably getting their own lawyer, because they snitched on themselves doing something they werent supposed to.

So how did Tesla employees get hold of videos from the cars taken in people's garages and driveways?

This doesn't sound like "sentry events" (nice buzzword, by the way); it sounds like flat-out spying.

 

[Dzov]

If you have such problems in your own driveway or garage, you have problems no car camera is going to solve.

And, again: what sort of "training" is being done that justifies uploading these videos to Tesla servers? The incidents you're citing are incidents of vandalism; Tesla learns nothing from these, even if they serve some purpose for the individual owner.

Do you only park your car in your own driveway or garage? You never drive somewhere and exit the vehicle?!

I suppose they could include a geofenced deactivation feature. I imagine sentry mode to be a toggle that you set once and forget.

 

[electric_mayhem]

WHY is this data even going onto Tesla's servers in the first place?! Shouldn't anything recorded on the car's cameras be stored entirely locally? That's how my dashcam/rearview cam works!

As a current software engineer and having spent over a decade of flightline/backshop aircraft avionics repair, this was my first thought as well. There should be no real operational reason to collect and store this data. Whatever reason they have for building this feature to collect this data is likely for some other sort of non-customer use. At a minimum they should have to explicitly request consent for this up-front. Honestly, I don't really want any sort of internet connectivity built into my car.

EDIT: I did not think specifically for anti-theft purposes. I hope that for driving purposes image processing is not being routed to the cloud and back. If you want real-time anti-theft notification for you car then there has to be online data connectivity.