A day after Lukasz Krupski put out a fire at a Tesla car delivery location in Norway, seriously burning his hands and preventing a disaster, he got an email from Elon Musk.
“Congratulations for saving the day!” Musk, Tesla’s CEO, wrote in March 2019. But what started as a story about a heroic employee and a grateful employer has devolved into an epic battle between the carmaker and Krupski, a service technician. The fight has spawned lawsuits in Norway and the United States and caught the attention of regulators in several countries.
After initially being hailed as a savior, Krupski said in an interview with The New York Times, he was harassed, threatened and eventually fired after complaining about what he considered grave safety problems at his workplace near Oslo. Krupski, originally from Poland, was part of a crew that helped prepare Teslas for buyers but became so frustrated with the company that last year he handed over reams of data from the carmaker’s computer system to Handelsblatt, a German business newspaper.
The data contained lists of Tesla employees, including Musk, often with their Social Security numbers and other personal information. There were thousands of accident reports and other internal Tesla communications that Handelsblatt used as the basis for stories about flaws with the company’s Autopilot driver-assistance software.
The data also provided the basis for stories by Handelsblatt and Wired magazine about how much trouble Tesla was having manufacturing the Cybertruck pickup, which the company has said will be delivered to customers at the end of this month, almost three years behind schedule. (Some of the information came from a second, unidentified Tesla employee.)
Krupski said he had gotten access to sensitive data simply by entering search terms in an internal company website, raising questions about how Tesla protected the privacy of thousands of employees and its own secrets.
The Data Protection Authority in the Netherlands, where Tesla has its European headquarters, is investigating whether the breach violated privacy laws. A spokesperson for the authority confirmed that it was investigating but declined to comment further.
Tesla and three lawyers representing the company did not reply to requests for comment.
In the United States, Benson Pai, a former Tesla production worker, has sued the automaker in federal court in California, claiming that lax security by Tesla exposed employee information that could be sold to criminals. Lawyers for Pai are seeking approval from a judge to pursue the case as a class action on behalf of tens of thousands of Tesla employees.
Krupski shared the data with Aaron Greenspan, a prominent Tesla critic and short-seller, who urged him to provide information he had collected about Autopilot to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The safety agency has had a long-running investigation into the software, which can steer, accelerate and stop a car on its own but requires a driver to be ready to take control at any moment. The agency has interviewed Krupski several times, he said, an indication that his information was taken seriously.
Greenspan said he had begun closing out his short positions in Tesla shortly after hearing from Krupski.
The US safety agency has confirmed that it is investigating whether Autopilot played a role in hundreds of accidents, some fatal, but declined to comment on any interactions with Krupski. Tesla has maintained that Autopilot makes cars safer and recently prevailed against a lawsuit that had claimed the software was responsible for a fatal crash in California.
Krupski and Greenspan also wrote a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission raising questions about Tesla’s accounting practices, based in part on the data Krupski had collected. He said he did not know what the commission had done with the information.
The SEC did not respond to a request for comment. Krupski remained anonymous until he spoke on the record to Handelsblatt last week.
Tesla has obtained an injunction from a Norwegian court ordering Krupski not to distribute any more company information. The court also seized his laptop and turned it over to Tesla. The company notified employees of the data breach on Aug. 18, about three months after it learned that Handelsblatt had the information.
Information including work email addresses, compensation and Social Security numbers might have been leaked, Tesla told employees in an email, but said, “We have no evidence that any personal information was misused or will be used in a manner that could harm you.”
Krupski said that he had suffered from depression, anxiety and sleeplessness as a result of his battle with Tesla, but that he felt relieved to no longer be anonymous.
“I feel like just by going public I have a new rush of energy,” he said. “I have motivation that, OK, I can maybe start building my life again.”
— The New York Times
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