Class action lawsuit filed against Tesla after video privacy scandal
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Tesla, after news broke of employees sharing private videos internally.
The original report from Reuters came out on Thursday. Reuters talked to several Tesla employees who said that Tesla dashcam and sentry mode videos were shared within Tesla in private or group chats among employees.
These images and videos included pictures of dogs, funny road signs, and other innocuous content, but also included videos of the inside of garages, of owners’ children, and even a video of a man approaching a vehicle naked.
Tesla recently released a more detailed look at its data privacy approach, in which it asserted that most data is processed directly on vehicles and only certain data is shared with Tesla. Most of that data is anonymized unless associated with a “safety critical event.”
But the report suggests that even though Tesla says it anonymized data, personally identifiable information, including address data, may have been attached to these videos when shared within internal group chats.
Now, we’ve seen one law firm respond swiftly to these allegations by filing a class action lawsuit only one day after the revelations. The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court in Northern California by law firm Fitzgerald Joseph LLP on behalf of Henry Yeh, a Tesla owner in San Francisco.
The suit claims that the company violated California’s state Constitution, California privacy laws, and its own privacy policies. It also claims that Tesla misled customers about data privacy. It asks for Tesla to be enjoined from continuing this behavior, and seeks recovery of actual and punitive damages. The damages sought are not enumerated, except that the number is in excess of $5 million.
The lawsuit claims that there are significant potential costs to Tesla customers related to privacy. In order to disable the car’s cameras, an owner would need to pay a professional to disable them, thus reducing paid-for functionality of the car. One former Tesla employee quoted by Insider said that he put tape over his own car’s cameras for a time, after seeing how much access to information Tesla had.
But this is only the first step of a class action lawsuit. First of all, the law firm filing this doesn’t have access to the evidence in question yet, that will come later during discovery.
Since Reuters’ report only dropped yesterday, the lawsuit includes speculation – stating that these videos were “likely” shared externally, though this is not explicitly stated in the report. So filing the lawsuit so quickly does seem a little opportunistic, with the firm wanting to be the first to stake claim to this potential suit.
It also must be decided by a judge whether this is a legitimate class action and whether Fitzgerald Joseph LLP will be able to move forward representing the class.
Read the full lawsuit filing below:
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Paris’ bike-share system, Vélib has long been considered one of the shining success stories of urban micromobility. With a massive fleet of over 20,000 pedal and electric-assist bicycles around Paris, the service has helped millions of residents and tourists get around the City of Light without needing a car or scooter. But lately, a growing problem is threatening to knock the wheels off this urban mobility marvel: theft and joyriding.
According to city officials and the service operator, more than 600 Vélib bikes are now going missing every single week. That’s over 30 bikes a day simply vanishing from the system – some stolen outright, others taken on “joy rides” and never returned.
“At the moment we’re missing 3,000 bikes,” explained Sylvain Raifaud, head of the Agemob company that currently operates the Velib system. That’s nearly 15% of over 20,000 Vélib bikes across Paris.
The sticky-fingered culprits aren’t necessarily professional thieves or organized crime rings. Instead, they’re often regular users who treat the shared bikes like disposable toys.
The city estimates that many people have figured out how to pry the bikes out of the system’s parking docks, unlocking one for a casual cruise and then ditching it somewhere far from a docking station.
Once pried free, the bikes are technically usable for the next 24 hours until their automatic locking feature kicks in. At that point, the bikes are often simply abandoned. Some end up in alleyways. Others get tossed in rivers. A few just disappear completely.
And since the bikes are intended to be parked at their many docking stations around the city, they don’t have GPS chips, further complicating recovery of “liberated” bikes.
The issue started small but has grown into more than an inconvenience – it’s beginning to undermine the entire purpose of the service. With bikes going missing at such a high rate, many Vélib docking stations are left empty, especially during rush hours.
Riders looking for a quick commute or a convenient hop across town are increasingly finding themselves without available bikes, or having to walk long distances to find a functioning one.
That kind of unreliability chips away at user confidence and threatens to drive potential riders back into cars, cabs, or other less sustainable forms of transport at a time when Paris has already made great strides to dramatically reduce car usage in the city.
The losses are financially painful, too. Replacing stolen or vandalized bikes isn’t cheap, and the resources spent on tracking down missing equipment or reinforcing anti-theft measures are stretching thin. Vélib has faced theft and vandalism issues before, especially during its early years, but this latest surge has officials sounding the alarm with renewed urgency.
Officials acknowledge that there’s no easy fix. Paris, like many cities with bike-share systems, walks a fine line between accessibility and accountability. Part of what makes Vélib so successful is its ease of use and widespread availability. But those same features make it vulnerable to misuse – especially when enforcement is limited and the consequences for abuse are minimal.
The timing of the problem is especially unfortunate. In recent years, Paris has seen impressive results in reducing car traffic, expanding bike lanes, and promoting cycling as a key part of its sustainable transport strategy. Vélib is a cornerstone of that plan. But if the system becomes too unreliable, it risks losing the very people it was designed to serve.
Meanwhile, as Parisians increasingly find themselves staring at empty docks, the challenge for the city and Vélib will be to restore confidence in the system without making it harder to use. That means striking the right balance between freedom and responsibility, between open access and protection against abuse.
In a city where cycling is supposed to be the future of mobility, losing thousands of bikes to joyriders and sticky fingers isn’t just frustrating; it’s unsustainable.
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