Your Tesla Is Watching You: Former Employees Reveal Open Access To Owners' Built-In Cameras

Tesla Inc TSLA vehicle owners may have cause for concern as a detailed Reuters report comes to light.

The special investigation reveals that footage from video cameras mounted on Teslas, normally understood to be used for the cars' navigation system, were easily accessible by Tesla employees who consistently shared the images in private corporate channels.

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While the footage came in anonymously, former Tesla employees said that a program could be used to access the exact location of the recordings, thus leading to identifying the owner of the cars and where they lived.

"We could see inside people’s garages and their private properties," said one employee, referring to a functionality now disabled that would also allow Tesla employees to gain access to the cameras even when the cars were turned off, if owners gave their consent.

That feature has been removed for several years, but footage from running cars is still accessible by the company.

The gathering of short video clips or images was stated in Tesla’s Customer Privacy Notice, to which users agree in order to use the cars.

Former Tesla workers said that they would often share pictures taken from the cars' video system with humorous captions that would go viral around their internal communications platforms.

One piece of footage revealed an accident in which a speeding driver hit a child riding a bike. Others showed the inside of people's garages, which could lead to identifying those owners if they owned distinctive objects.

Among those garages, Tesla employees were able to identify the inside of Elon Musk's own house, by sharing footage of a unique submersible version of a 1977 Lotus Esprit car used in the James Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me," which Musk bought as a collector's item in 2013 for $968,000.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment by Benzinga.

Tesla Price Action: Tesla’s stock wasn't noticeably affected by the report. Shares were flat at the time of writing on Thursday at $185.97.

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