Would you do any of those things in a regular taxi or subway car?

Imagine the alternative headline saying the murderers used Waymo for their drive-by assassination. There is only one option for Waymo here, and the idiocy of the US police is not within their power to solve.

> What happens when cops are allowed real-time access to Waymo's in-car video footage? Maybe they even have it already. This is just more pervasive, always-on surveillance, and this will only get worse as autonomous vehicles become more popular in the taxi scene.

Yea, what's disturbing about this article isn't what happened in the article--it's what will happen in the future.

Today, a corporation transmits to the police "user in possession of what appears to be a gun." Tomorrow, what will that message contain?

>>> What if Waymo thought the guns were real, called the cops, and the cops screwed up and shot one of the kids? These sorts of escalations aren't imaginary; they happen, and they end in tragedy.

I take this seriously, but I think this a problem with the cops. Even regular people hesitate to report problems if they think the police might overreact.

> Most likely it was some sort of computer vision algorithm that flagged something.

Possible, but probably more likely they weren't wearing their seatbelts and then a Waymo remote support person saw the gun and immediately called police.

> The article is also a little cagey on how this "detection" happened. Was it a human spot checking cameras in vehicles? I doubt it. Most likely it was some sort of computer vision algorithm that flagged something. Perhaps a human was in the loop to verify and be the one to call the cops, but humans seem to be increasingly shutting off their brains and trusting the machine

I think there's a middle ground between those that's possible that you might not be considering.

A while back I was in a Waymo and someone I was with dropped one of their Airpods and it went under the seat. They took off their seatbelt to dig under the seat and the car started beeping since we were driving. After about a minute of that someone came over the speaker and asked what was going on and told him he needed to get up and put the seatbelt back on or Waymo would end the ride right there.

I'm sure these cars are full of other sensor based triggers like seat belts being taken off, doors being opened, people messing with the steering wheel, etc that alert a human to come take a look. I know that the cars have cameras and microphones and it wouldn't surprise me if they are or are planning to use that for monitoring the cars, but I also wouldn't be surprised if the people in the car just triggered some other unrelated sensor and then the human stepped in to review and noticed the gun.

The article says they violated the TOS relating to the firearm, but that doesn't mean that Waymo initially started looking at the car because of that. It's possible that they were looking at the vehicle for something much more inane initially, discovered the firearm by chance, and are now using that to ban them since it's the most obvious TOS violation.

That would taught those kids a lesson. There is a certain way to behave in a car regardless if it belongs to them or not. Getting drunk and trashing the inside of the car is not acceptable just because someone is a minor

> thought the guns were real, called the cops, and the cops screwed up and shot one of the kids?

you dont need a Waymo for that :(

> What if Waymo thought the guns were real, called the cops, and the cops screwed up and shot one of the kids?

Waymo is not the one to solve your policing problem. The root issue is that your police shoot to kill first, and investigate or make stuff up to get themselves off later.

the police's job is to analyze reports and actually figure out if theyre correct or not. If theyre failing at that, the rest really doesnt matter. Theyre gonna take some other stranger's report or false report and go shoot those kids for the love of the game anyways, regardless of if waymo is involved

It would be good to know more about the detection mechanism, if it wasn't computer vision it may well have been audio monitoring - a kid is perhaps more likely to brag / talk about what they're doing, which gets flagged to a live monitor who can intervene in real time.

> What if Waymo thought the guns were real, called the cops, and the cops screwed up and shot one of the kids?

See this is only an issue because that is a plausible situation. The actual problem is on the police/cultural side, not the waymo side. No one should even have to think about this when calling the cops. And I can't think of 1 other western society where they do

If we are going to privilege privately operated transportation providers like Waymo with special access to streets relative to individually operated vehicles, we need to rethink whether a private company's terms of service should govern the rights and privileges of users of such services or if users should have more substantial protections.

Waymo has chosen to monitor travelers in a way that drivers of their own cars would not be monitored, while the government has chosen to ban privately owned vehicles from some spaces (like Market Street in San Francisco). This coerces individuals into sacrificing privacy and other rights.

Imagine if your phone company listened to all your calls and reported you to the police if it didn't like something you say.

And what happens when a private company like Waymo partners with a municipality to integrate into its transportation network? Is that now privately operated vehicle or part of a public space system like a sidewalk or the road itself?

Waymo is not like mass transit or even a taxi: only one group of passengers are in the vehicle at a time. Subway and bus rules don't cleanly apply. It's closer to a rental car that drives itself.

We as a society are turning to rely on or even require private companies for much of our essential infrastructure and interpersonal fabric: communications, payments (decline of cash) transportation, surveillance (Flock), places of congregation (virtual town squares), etc. Meanwhile because they are private they are not bound to privacy and other protections like the state itself.

We should rethink this direction.

> What happens when cops are allowed real-time access to Waymo's in-car video footage?

Same thing that happens whenever cops get new surveillance powers. They’ll use it to stalk and harass women.

These types of stories will be used to justify the blanket surveillance of citizens. It’s worked quite well.

I mean if you're using toy guns you're in for trouble. Do you take toy guns on a flight?

Cops are allowed to shoot kids in the US, that's just how society works. No point rat-holing into every possible hypothetical about it.

I was going to say that this is the only surveillance that I would be OK with, considering the users are not on public property. However, I hadn't considered that calling the police on anyone in the US (especially for carrying a firearm) does not carry the same consequences as elsewhere...