This particular situation, at face value at least, sounds like a good outcome. Kids had a gun, someone noticed, called police, situation handled without escalation or violence or something tragic happening.
But this doesn't generalize. Another incident described in the article was when some kids were drinking in the car and shooting toy guns. What if they hadn't been drinking? What if they were just holding toy guns, innocently going from one kid's house to another? 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.
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 recall a recent incident where someone was wrongfully arrested because one of the companies that run the license-plate reader machines flagged their car as stolen. The machine screwed up the image recognition, but the cops blindly trusted it and arrested the guy.)
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.
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.
That could be a funny-or-die kind of script. They find a Waymo car that is feeling outcast and looking for friendship so it joins a gang. The Waymo car is constantly looking out for rival gang members while on the job, then swings by to pick up its fellow gang members for the hit, but then must obey all of the traffic laws during the get away.
Or worse the waymo gets put in to 'gang mode' by someone bribed on the inside, the car rolls the window down for the drive by, delivers the duffle bags of drugs, auto darkens the windows for a drive by kidnapping, think of the UX possibilities!
We used to do this and more with nerf guns, laser tag, and then paintball guns. You're not going to believe this but we even used to be able to ride our bikes 30 miles away from home without our parents being arrested. We played with fire in the park too. One time we even found porn there dude
The 90s were lit
Nah you're right tho let's imagine the worst case scenario. What if that person in the waymo had a nuclear bomb in their suitcase? There's only one option
I grew up in the 90s too, and I’m fairly certain that shooting paintball guns out of a taxi would have been generally frowned upon even during that halcyon era.
I made the mistake of using my car as a paintball tank at an unofficial range. That stuff never came out of weather stripping on the windows and left streaks every time the windows rolled for years.
Considering how to deal with people brandishing weapons in a Waymo is not just imagining a scenario, since it has already actually happened.
I also grew up in the 90s and did things like throw eggs out of cars. We wouldn't have done it from a taxi or Uber. Your comment really makes no sense.
Yes. Well, not exactly wave guns around, but say and do stupid stuff? Not in a taxi around a human driver, no. And not in a subway car with people other than me and my friends, no. But your question had an “or” in it. If we had nerf guns and no one else was there to witness? It’s not unimaginable that someone might get a nerf dart to the ear when they didn’t expect it.
My wife and I like watching real-life police detective shows. Sometimes we discuss mistakes the killer made, and how we’d avoid them. “I wouldn’t kill anyone, but if I did, I wouldn’t cheap out and keep the clothes I wore to do it instead of tossing them into a river.” Of course we’re not going to do that, but it’s a puzzle to solve, so we try to solve it. We would not have those conversations around a taxi driver or a crowded subway, lest someone overhear and get the wrong idea. On an empty subway or Waymo? Yeah, sure. And if BART or my cab reported us for planning a murder, I’d be livid enough to plan how to murder the computer that made the decision to rat me out.
And the sign along the highway says my speed might be monitored by airplane, but I don’t want to live where that means a surveillance drone is flying along side me at all times. Consenting to let a taxi record me in case it comes up later that I did something bad and they want to have footage of it is one thing. But now we know Waymo is a little Flock tattletale, and people generally aren’t ok with their robocab proactively narcing on them.
Every uber driver I’ve been ive been in has an inside dashcam to protect themselves and their property. I would do the same thing if I were them.
Waymo has every right to monitor their property and if someone does something illegal in their car why would they not report? An Uber driver would do the same, as would I. Otherwise you are an accomplice.
This comparison to Flock is bunk. Flock cameras are in public places and paid for with public dollars. I don’t want that.
But in a surveillance state, every private citizen should be keeping their own footage. Nobody is going to share theirs with you.
So don't use it? You seem to want the benefits of the service but without having to comport your behavior accordingly.
Other countries already have highway cameras track speed and automatically issue citations. I am happy for Americans to petition their government against implementing that, but I won't pretend it's anything other than a desire to break the law for personal gratification.
I own airsoft (pellet) guns people have confused for real ones when I left them on a shelf in my house. If you don't know what to look for they look quite convincing these days. Take a look around https://www.evike.com/airsoft-guns/ - everyone deletes or spray paints the orange tips because they make you really visible on the airsoft field.
Really only airsofters know telltale signs of toy guns. Guys into real guns can't instantly tell them apart.
It's that way because real guns weren't available in Japan but real-ism wasn't defined, so Japanese toy gun brands just turned that volume up to 1100 without allowing toy guns take pressure bearing gun parts. And then those toy guns got exported and copied, leading to the present status.
Any gun shooting projectiles out of a moving vehicle is dangerous. Pellet guns and paintball guns are less dangerous than “regular” guns, but they’re not really toys.
It's not like you can allow kids to shoot pellet guns out of a car indefinitely in a metro without substantial risk of something going wrong.
We need to (be able to) trust the police to not escalate irresponsibly and to deal with situations with nuance. Declining to escalate to authorities because we're scared of what they may do is not great.
Absolutely not. A human driver has to watch the road and can’t scrutinize a gun.
And it’s also not easy to tell toys from real guns. Many cities illegalized toy guns on public transit because people were putting orange tips on real guns to make them look like toys. 3D-printed guns rarely look like they can actually fire, even though they can.
A human driver can't tell. I've had gun guys mistake my airsoft guns for real ones. Average person who isn't familiar with both real guns and airsoft has no chance.
So? In the real scenario, the underage passengers were drinking alcohol. Also, the 14-17 teen accounts are supposed to be monitored by parents, otherwise all riders need to be adults or their guests. That means they need to exercise judgment not brandishing what might look like weapons. The same way you need to exercise that judgment in a public park.
And I'm not even convinced that human drivers would be more discerning or rational about it. They could easily overstate the issue to police and create a more biased situation.
> and the idiocy of the US police is not within their power to solve.
Given how much money Google gives to electoral campaigns, I'd argue that it is in their power but that's the least of their problems when they interfere with the democratic process. They are too busy voting for less taxes and regulations on their business.
>>> 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.
Please do not encourage your children to carry and brandish replica guns. This is never a good idea. Unfortunately I see this more frequently than I like. Kids don't just carry, they aim and pretend to shoot. Even in an open carry state like Florida brandishing a gun is illegal.
I know, it's a different world. I'm 62. As a kid, my friends and I chased one another around the neighborhood with toy guns for hours, raising a racket. My kids are 24 and 26 now, but it would have been unthinkable to let them have toy guns.
> 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?
2. this is hardly a waymo/autonomous car/big tech thing. covid came with "vaccine passports" in some jurisdictions. there's no reason why it couldn't be enforced by human taxi drivers.
> 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
This is America though. The mere presense of a gun shouldn't involve calling the cops unless there is a bigger reason to expect something nefarious. US cops being thugs and aggressive is a known fact so I find it hard to say Waymo isn't part of the problem, they have the best view of the situation after all and are initiating the call/report of armed criminals.
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.
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
The size and scale of that problem absolutely pales in comparison to the number of people who will be screwed by a better ability to enforce unpopular or rarely enforced laws.
And the sick part is how many useful idiots will go to bat for all of it because "well they broke the law after all"
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...
Yeah, most (but perhaps not a super majority of) people in the US know calling the cops has a large chance of excalating a situation and making it deadly, especially if a gun is mentioned in any context.
> 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
As far as I can tell here the ghost portion is basically a non-sequiter. The waymo vehicle called the cops because it detected e passengers had a gun. The vehicle did not know or care about its status as a ghost gun or not. I'm sure that the Waymo terms of service prohibit carrying weapons into the vehicle. I'm pretty sure that if you were brandishing a realistic looking enough gun, an Uber driver would kick you out and call the cops as well.
There's a big difference between a human present who can make a decision based on a situation literally in front of their eyes, and a computer flagging a video feed for someone in what amounts to a call center to look at and decide on.
Not to mention the mass surveillance this sort of stuff continues to help enable.
I'm not a fan of expanding surveillance but the alternative of unmonitored transit seems worse.
Going to shoot up a place? Take your guns on a waymo. It won't complain. Guy wants to take an obviously distressed and co-erced girl to an abandoned lot? No complaints. Person with obvious head injury and slurring speech wants to go home instead of the hospital? Sure. Person has heart attack and passes out in back? We'll just drive your limp body 45 minutes in traffic to your destination.
These are just a few situations any human driver would obviously react to. And a modicum of detection and human review could solve in an autonomous vehicle.
Those are made up problems because 90% of the time people drive their own vehicle or are with a willing participant. We don't have cameras watching us in normal cars.
This is a problem that autonomous vehicles created. Why should we not complain that its solution is worse than non-autonomous travel, given it carries risk that doesn't exist today? Does Waymo benefit society enough to carry the tradeoffs?
And what surveillance or other risks does this introduce outside of the cabin, and why should society allow that? What is the definition of modicum of detection, and who is drawing that line?
Citation needed. Assaults and abuse against public transit and taxi drivers is a common workplace hazard. Why are we subjecting humans to that? Why are we ok expecting them to decide if a gun is fake or not and call the police?
>Does Waymo benefit society enough to carry the tradeoffs?
>>Does Waymo benefit society enough to carry the tradeoffs?
>Absolutely.
Citation needed.
Why stop at Waymo? The entirety of your digital activity happens on private property. You should have no expectation of privacy, and your attempts at privacy should mark you as a higher risk subject. We should algorithmically police your digital life in case you start showing signs of anti-social behavior. I don't want to wait until you get your gun into a Waymo to have the cops handle you. I want you to be caught much earlier. This will make the world much safer.
There are other ways to solve safety issues, but they are harder and more expensive - civic education and a government invested in incentivizing a productive life, better law enforcement training, freely available mental health services etc.
No? The Fourth Amendment only grants you protections that apply to government action. The police are allowed to accept evidence gathered voluntarily by private citizens or corporations.
Maybe we shouldn't put the whole burden of world justice on Waymo, this allowing it a complete invasion of the privacy of both the people who use it and those who don't? Guy takes a drugged up girl on the train, should we hold the train responsible for the outcome also?
Yes? I am pretty sure they don't do algorithmic policing. Fwiw, they probably don't do any policing, but that is a different subject.
I am not against monitoring for safety - I am against deploying a sophisticated network of automated monitoring that covers all digital and soon physical aspects of my life for my "safety" by for profit companies.
That's the key question: whose laws are Waymo enforcing? ICE and Flock's extra-constitutional policies? City ordinances? A future eco-radical government's laws?
How about things taking place outside the car?
Can Waymo mount a robotic machine gun next to the LIDAR and snipe suspected terrorists? Release tear gas? Self destruct, killing several nuns to protect s CEO?
Public trains are covered in camera surveillance and that footage is very often used in conjunction with tracking down and prosecuting criminals. You should have no expectation of privacy on a public train.
I think the risks are different on a train, which is far more public than the inside of a taxi. There are more likely to be other people and/or an operator to intervene.
Those are bad examples of things where a computer should make a judgement call.
> Going to shoot up a place? Take your guns on a waymo. It won't complain.
I take my kid to go skeet shooting. You’d call the police on us for having legal guns? What about my pocket knife?
> Guy wants to take an obviously distressed and co-erced girl to an abandoned lot? No complaints.
My wife is scared by someone on the sidewalk. We’re riding to where we parked our car for the evening. There’s a scared woman with me as we commute to our vehicle. BART wouldn’t call the cops on me.
> Person with obvious head injury and slurring speech wants to go home instead of the hospital? Sure.
What’s “obvious” here? I have drinks with friends and bump my head on a cabinet, and now I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. I’m not remotely about to die. Dammit, Waymo, I just want to go home and shower and let me wife laugh at me while she tapes me up.
> Person has heart attack and passes out in back? We'll just drive your limp body 45 minutes in traffic to your destination.
Person’s exhausted after work and wants to nap on the way home. They look identical to the dead guy. BART lets you nap.
If we had ubiquitous taxi and subway police, maybe they’d spent 5 seconds assessing each situation and move on. In no other real-life situation do we expect empty subways or taxi drivers to call the cops and investigate every possible bad scenario, nor should we.
But it's a reduction of privacy compared to private vehicles. If the goal is to convert all transportation infrastructure into surveilled transportation then that is a loss in privacy for the general public.
No, the argument should be raised before that happens. You want to prevent undesirable things from happening, not try to claw them back after they happened.
It looks quite foolish to me to never plan ahead and predict undesirable future events and then trying to prevent them ahead of time.
"Sorry, we can't fulfill your request for transportation to the protest for private ownership, but we can offer a free ride to the Colosseum" ;)
I don't think their primary intent is to create a surveillance state (though google might like having yet another data source...), I think companies are trying to make it happen to capture transportation market share, regulators will want to make it happen to drive down traffic fatalities and insurers will incentivize it because human drivers are more costly.
And once the difference in how they can be regulated is clear there'll be additional incentives to discourage private transportation.
I'm pretty sure a human started watching live video from the car as soon as the AI flagged a gun. I doubt that Waymo is willing to have their system automatically call cops.
Would you be upset if someone at the WalMart central data center called the local police because they saw someone with a gun in a Walmart at a remote location?
That's what happened here. A private company saw a gun inside their property and called the police.
A lot of taxis have models detecting weapons and aggressive behaviours. I work on some models like this. I think they are necessary. For driver's safety.
I dunno. This doesn’t bother me in the same way that flock cameras do. A Waymo car is a private space that you don’t have to use if you don’t want to. Seems pretty reasonable to me that Waymo doesn’t want their cars used for drive by shootings. If a drive by were to happen in a Waymo, this would be compelled by law anyway.
It starts to become a problem once you’ve replaced public infrastructure to a sufficient degree by private infrastructure like waymos that avoiding to use them starts to seriously inconvenience people.
What public infrastructure is replaced by Waymo? All the roads, traffic lights, signs, etc are all still there. Seems equivalent to any other vehicle that is not replacing public infrastructure.
Taxis are a part of transportation infrastructure. Like a system that allows public and private healthcare, a private option pulls the rich people off the public system causing them to neglect and vote against the public system.
So waymos means less busses/trains, which means a bunch of people stuck in the middle - they would prefer to take a bus or a train but the service is poorly maintained so they are forced to take a waymo.
Yes. And the use of cameras has traditionally been: if something happens, there is a record that can be consulted.
That has changed. Networked cameras and AI means that cameras can be constantly monitored: license plates logged and mapped in realtime, faces scanned and profiled, symbols and objects detected.
I have no problem with calling the cops on someone with a gun. But that same kind of tech can (and has already been) seamlessly be turned on protestors, journalists, political opponents, union organizers, and ex girlfriends.
Yeah I don’t get it. You’re getting into a privately owned vehicle. You agree to the terms of service when you sign up and ask for a ride. You should assume you have zero privacy in those cars.
Sure, but the Waymo is taking intrusive video of much more than the inside of the car. And unlike a mast-mounted camera, it can be sent almost anywhere at almost any time.
In California, it's surprisingly hard to be a legal, responsible gun owner if you don't own your own car. Rideshare bans weapons via TOS, public transit (even unloaded in a locked container) is illegal.
That's the point (like for all this stuff, going back a hundred years, not just in CA). Don't extend the right to anyone who doesn't have a bunch of wealth to lose that the state can threaten to get compliance.
Maybe we need very clear, standardized signals for entering a surveillance zone (where someone not obviously present, possibly a corporate stooge or AI or simpler-than-AI automated detection system, is judging behavior) so that people realize that private behavior (like casually showing off guns to each other, safely, which I've seen done myself and was not cause for alarm—guns were legal) is no longer private.
The steelman against* what waymo did is:*
Guns are generally legal, even in California. This is America, not the EU. Nobody was harmed, nobody was threatened. This is like calling the cops on someone open carrying because you don't like open carry.
That is what a lot of pro-2A libertarians would argue.
The steelman pro* what waymo did is:*
Private conveyance. Even though the occupants thought they were "alone", there was someone/something else present, which felt threatened (or thought the passengers represented a potential threat to others) and called police, as most cabbies or uber drivers probably would.
I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. This is a grey area, and I think it'll likely resolve in favor of waymo, and it won't really bother anyone except the staunch libertarians.
Flock is bad, but fleets of cars strapped to the teeth with cameras and sensors are suddenly ok even when they call the police on you? Why? Because of the makers of the technology that powers the cars say they are safer (via datasets that we have no way to validate)?
What do you mean? Google is legally required to share information, and does share information, when such information is requested through a whole variety of different means available to local governments. https://policies.google.com/terms/information-requests
That's the same as the police getting security footage from any random building.
The problem with Flock is that they let police hop on and look at whatever they want whenever they want. Completely different operating modes and intentions.
Also, Google and Waymo are different companies under the same parent. Google's policies are irrelevant.
Yeah good point on the policies. It makes Waymo's case worse though, because they have nothing defined publicly. They are also for-profit, and trying to deploy to more cities. The concerns are real - https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2025/jul/1/driverless...
"While companies like Waymo insist they require search warrants for footage, based on probable cause and judicial approval, the legal framework for accessing autonomous vehicle data remains unsettled. A 2022 analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) noted that few states have specific laws governing law enforcement access to such data, leaving gaps in oversight. In Arizona, where Waymo operates extensively, police must typically obtain a search warrant to access footage, as required by state law for electronic records and consistent with Fourth Amendment protections. "
Depends on how you feel about guns. I think people who are opposed to them would agree with this, people who are in favor of guns would be alarmed by this.
Google would probably be held 100% liable if it happened from their car.
.
What I don’t get is why Waymo allows unaccompanied juvenile riders at all? That seems like a huge risk for them.
Teen accounts are supposed to be governed by the parent account.
I understand the appeal. Parents I've spoken to feel safer putting their kid in a Waymo than and Uber. And I guess the time savings of not driving them around yourself are too compelling.
As of this writing, Waymo only permits unaccompanied minors in the Metro Phoenix area. The incident occurred in San Francisco, so it seems that they should not have riding without an adult.
In the US, the term is used to mean firearms that are legal to manufacture but not to sell, because they do not have serial numbers for tracing. The misdetection would be if the Waymo cameras did not have sufficient resolution to see the serial number on the firearm, or if the firearm serial number were concealed, for example by being locked inside of a carrying case, as is the standard practice for responsible firearm owners.
However, kobalsky is alluding to frequent past reports of Google misdetecting things that are not ghost guns, followed by banning people's accounts. For example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... #news from 02022 of Google flagging Mark [anonymous]’s Google account for child porn when he sent a photo of his toddler son’s infected penis to the doctor and reported him to the police. The police decided no abuse had happened but he never got his account back. #privacy #human-rights #USA #politics
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36443747 Very disturbing accounts of people getting banned from Google for searching for the board game "Ethnos", from credit cards for not using them, from Amazon for having a racist doorbell recording, etc.
Aminreza Khoshbahar: “I’m seeking assistance regarding a sudden restriction on my Google AI Ultra account that has persisted for three days. I received no prior warnings or notifications regarding a potential violation.
“The only recent change in my workflow was connecting Gemini models via OpenClaw OAuth. If third-party integrations are the issue, I would expect the platform to block the integration rather than restrict a paid account ($249/mo) without communication.”
It is incredibly weird to me that people are conflicted or even negative about this. An automated system prevented some troublemakers with a firearm from possibly causing serious injury or death, and we're throwing out things like "but what if?" "yeah but flock!". And then when there's a tragic shooting, "No Way to Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens".
I think this is awesome and I want more autonomous cars on the streets, replacing bad human drivers and calling the cops on kids with guns.
Why stop at autonomous cars? New cars monitor drivers for “drowsiness” and have internal/external cameras. Why not monitor for guns too? Maybe they should even refuse to drive if you’re holding a gun!
And why stop at cars? Maybe home cameras should call the cops if they see a weapon. Maybe your Apple Watch should detect if you’ve fired a gun. Brave new world!
Why not just immediately seize all guns then? I’m sure you’ll save a lot of lives that way! Better start now, no time to hesitate or consider the consequences!
Whatever LG has been doing in the consumer electronic sector has been perfected in Waymo’s vehicles. It starts with capturing everything that happens inside vehicle, claim it’s catching users violating ToS. Then it graduates to full blown Flock—like mobile surveillance tech.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the cars are already capturing and storing license plates, tracking pedestrian activity.
It’s all being prepared for the sale to governments and intelligence communities. Or maybe to serve the privatized shit hole known as 'network states' coined by the pathetic parasite, Peter Thiel.
Orwellian dystopia is here folks. It just took a detour/roundabout way (9/11, patriot act, greedy capitalists, social media …) to get us there.
I was at LOWES the other day with a used can of paint that I brought for color matching. obviously used. beat up and stained. at the checkout the computer halted the checkout process said "did you forget something in your cart?"
yeah fuck that. also fucks self-checkout. are we so poverty stricken as a society now that we can't afford to pay cashiers?
>also fucks self-checkout. are we so poverty stricken as a society now that we can't afford to pay cashiers?
Yeah, I'm appalled how poor as a society we've become, now that we can't afford door men (outside of luxury condos in Manhattan), elevator operators, and bank tellers.
As someone who cashiered in college, I vastly preferred monitoring self checkouts over being monetarily forced to interact with an endless line of the kind of people who don't use self checkouts.
As a shopper, I don't want to be one of those people either. Ideally, I want lower friction and to be able to pay on my phone instead of dealing with the kiosk.
I'm really torn on this.
This particular situation, at face value at least, sounds like a good outcome. Kids had a gun, someone noticed, called police, situation handled without escalation or violence or something tragic happening.
But this doesn't generalize. Another incident described in the article was when some kids were drinking in the car and shooting toy guns. What if they hadn't been drinking? What if they were just holding toy guns, innocently going from one kid's house to another? 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.
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 recall a recent incident where someone was wrongfully arrested because one of the companies that run the license-plate reader machines flagged their car as stolen. The machine screwed up the image recognition, but the cops blindly trusted it and arrested the guy.)
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.
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.
That could be a funny-or-die kind of script. They find a Waymo car that is feeling outcast and looking for friendship so it joins a gang. The Waymo car is constantly looking out for rival gang members while on the job, then swings by to pick up its fellow gang members for the hit, but then must obey all of the traffic laws during the get away.
Or worse the waymo gets put in to 'gang mode' by someone bribed on the inside, the car rolls the window down for the drive by, delivers the duffle bags of drugs, auto darkens the windows for a drive by kidnapping, think of the UX possibilities!
We used to do this and more with nerf guns, laser tag, and then paintball guns. You're not going to believe this but we even used to be able to ride our bikes 30 miles away from home without our parents being arrested. We played with fire in the park too. One time we even found porn there dude
The 90s were lit
Nah you're right tho let's imagine the worst case scenario. What if that person in the waymo had a nuclear bomb in their suitcase? There's only one option
I grew up in the 90s too, and I’m fairly certain that shooting paintball guns out of a taxi would have been generally frowned upon even during that halcyon era.
The kids I grew up with played paintball tag in their own cars, not taxis.
I made the mistake of using my car as a paintball tank at an unofficial range. That stuff never came out of weather stripping on the windows and left streaks every time the windows rolled for years.
Considering how to deal with people brandishing weapons in a Waymo is not just imagining a scenario, since it has already actually happened.
I also grew up in the 90s and did things like throw eggs out of cars. We wouldn't have done it from a taxi or Uber. Your comment really makes no sense.
Yes. Well, not exactly wave guns around, but say and do stupid stuff? Not in a taxi around a human driver, no. And not in a subway car with people other than me and my friends, no. But your question had an “or” in it. If we had nerf guns and no one else was there to witness? It’s not unimaginable that someone might get a nerf dart to the ear when they didn’t expect it.
My wife and I like watching real-life police detective shows. Sometimes we discuss mistakes the killer made, and how we’d avoid them. “I wouldn’t kill anyone, but if I did, I wouldn’t cheap out and keep the clothes I wore to do it instead of tossing them into a river.” Of course we’re not going to do that, but it’s a puzzle to solve, so we try to solve it. We would not have those conversations around a taxi driver or a crowded subway, lest someone overhear and get the wrong idea. On an empty subway or Waymo? Yeah, sure. And if BART or my cab reported us for planning a murder, I’d be livid enough to plan how to murder the computer that made the decision to rat me out.
Good thing Waymo yells you you're being monitored then.
And the sign along the highway says my speed might be monitored by airplane, but I don’t want to live where that means a surveillance drone is flying along side me at all times. Consenting to let a taxi record me in case it comes up later that I did something bad and they want to have footage of it is one thing. But now we know Waymo is a little Flock tattletale, and people generally aren’t ok with their robocab proactively narcing on them.
I’m anti surveillance but I don’t get this take.
Every uber driver I’ve been ive been in has an inside dashcam to protect themselves and their property. I would do the same thing if I were them.
Waymo has every right to monitor their property and if someone does something illegal in their car why would they not report? An Uber driver would do the same, as would I. Otherwise you are an accomplice.
This comparison to Flock is bunk. Flock cameras are in public places and paid for with public dollars. I don’t want that.
But in a surveillance state, every private citizen should be keeping their own footage. Nobody is going to share theirs with you.
So don't use it? You seem to want the benefits of the service but without having to comport your behavior accordingly.
Other countries already have highway cameras track speed and automatically issue citations. I am happy for Americans to petition their government against implementing that, but I won't pretend it's anything other than a desire to break the law for personal gratification.
A human driver would be more able to tell a toy gun from a real one.
I own airsoft (pellet) guns people have confused for real ones when I left them on a shelf in my house. If you don't know what to look for they look quite convincing these days. Take a look around https://www.evike.com/airsoft-guns/ - everyone deletes or spray paints the orange tips because they make you really visible on the airsoft field.
Really only airsofters know telltale signs of toy guns. Guys into real guns can't instantly tell them apart.
It's that way because real guns weren't available in Japan but real-ism wasn't defined, so Japanese toy gun brands just turned that volume up to 1100 without allowing toy guns take pressure bearing gun parts. And then those toy guns got exported and copied, leading to the present status.
I’m not sure the line is that clear.
Any gun shooting projectiles out of a moving vehicle is dangerous. Pellet guns and paintball guns are less dangerous than “regular” guns, but they’re not really toys.
It's not like you can allow kids to shoot pellet guns out of a car indefinitely in a metro without substantial risk of something going wrong.
We need to (be able to) trust the police to not escalate irresponsibly and to deal with situations with nuance. Declining to escalate to authorities because we're scared of what they may do is not great.
Absolutely not. A human driver has to watch the road and can’t scrutinize a gun.
And it’s also not easy to tell toys from real guns. Many cities illegalized toy guns on public transit because people were putting orange tips on real guns to make them look like toys. 3D-printed guns rarely look like they can actually fire, even though they can.
A human driver has a vested interest in determining if the person sitting behind them is holding a real gun or not.
A human driver can't tell. I've had gun guys mistake my airsoft guns for real ones. Average person who isn't familiar with both real guns and airsoft has no chance.
Probably
So? In the real scenario, the underage passengers were drinking alcohol. Also, the 14-17 teen accounts are supposed to be monitored by parents, otherwise all riders need to be adults or their guests. That means they need to exercise judgment not brandishing what might look like weapons. The same way you need to exercise that judgment in a public park.
And I'm not even convinced that human drivers would be more discerning or rational about it. They could easily overstate the issue to police and create a more biased situation.
> and the idiocy of the US police is not within their power to solve.
Given how much money Google gives to electoral campaigns, I'd argue that it is in their power but that's the least of their problems when they interfere with the democratic process. They are too busy voting for less taxes and regulations on their business.
>>> 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.
Please do not encourage your children to carry and brandish replica guns. This is never a good idea. Unfortunately I see this more frequently than I like. Kids don't just carry, they aim and pretend to shoot. Even in an open carry state like Florida brandishing a gun is illegal.
I know, it's a different world. I'm 62. As a kid, my friends and I chased one another around the neighborhood with toy guns for hours, raising a racket. My kids are 24 and 26 now, but it would have been unthinkable to let them have toy guns.
> 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?
During Covid they would have used it to deny movement to anyone not complying with mask mandates.
1. there's still personal cars.
2. this is hardly a waymo/autonomous car/big tech thing. covid came with "vaccine passports" in some jurisdictions. there's no reason why it couldn't be enforced by human taxi drivers.
I mean if you're using toy guns you're in for trouble. Do you take toy guns on a flight?
> 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
This is America though. The mere presense of a gun shouldn't involve calling the cops unless there is a bigger reason to expect something nefarious. US cops being thugs and aggressive is a known fact so I find it hard to say Waymo isn't part of the problem, they have the best view of the situation after all and are initiating the call/report of armed criminals.
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.
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 :(
The scenario has 3 problems. The surveillance by Wayno, the US police propensity for shooting people and kids having guns.
Wayno picked a difficult market.
These types of stories will be used to justify the blanket surveillance of citizens. It’s worked quite well.
> 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.
The size and scale of that problem absolutely pales in comparison to the number of people who will be screwed by a better ability to enforce unpopular or rarely enforced laws.
And the sick part is how many useful idiots will go to bat for all of it because "well they broke the law after all"
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...
Yeah, most (but perhaps not a super majority of) people in the US know calling the cops has a large chance of excalating a situation and making it deadly, especially if a gun is mentioned in any context.
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.
> 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
As far as I can tell here the ghost portion is basically a non-sequiter. The waymo vehicle called the cops because it detected e passengers had a gun. The vehicle did not know or care about its status as a ghost gun or not. I'm sure that the Waymo terms of service prohibit carrying weapons into the vehicle. I'm pretty sure that if you were brandishing a realistic looking enough gun, an Uber driver would kick you out and call the cops as well.
There's a big difference between a human present who can make a decision based on a situation literally in front of their eyes, and a computer flagging a video feed for someone in what amounts to a call center to look at and decide on.
Not to mention the mass surveillance this sort of stuff continues to help enable.
I'm not a fan of expanding surveillance but the alternative of unmonitored transit seems worse.
Going to shoot up a place? Take your guns on a waymo. It won't complain. Guy wants to take an obviously distressed and co-erced girl to an abandoned lot? No complaints. Person with obvious head injury and slurring speech wants to go home instead of the hospital? Sure. Person has heart attack and passes out in back? We'll just drive your limp body 45 minutes in traffic to your destination.
These are just a few situations any human driver would obviously react to. And a modicum of detection and human review could solve in an autonomous vehicle.
Those are made up problems because 90% of the time people drive their own vehicle or are with a willing participant. We don't have cameras watching us in normal cars.
This is a problem that autonomous vehicles created. Why should we not complain that its solution is worse than non-autonomous travel, given it carries risk that doesn't exist today? Does Waymo benefit society enough to carry the tradeoffs?
And what surveillance or other risks does this introduce outside of the cabin, and why should society allow that? What is the definition of modicum of detection, and who is drawing that line?
> Does Waymo benefit society enough to carry the tradeoffs?
It absolutely does 1000x. You can also just not use it.
>its solution is worse than non-autonomous travel
Citation needed. Assaults and abuse against public transit and taxi drivers is a common workplace hazard. Why are we subjecting humans to that? Why are we ok expecting them to decide if a gun is fake or not and call the police?
>Does Waymo benefit society enough to carry the tradeoffs?
Absolutely.
>>Does Waymo benefit society enough to carry the tradeoffs?
>Absolutely.
Citation needed.
Why stop at Waymo? The entirety of your digital activity happens on private property. You should have no expectation of privacy, and your attempts at privacy should mark you as a higher risk subject. We should algorithmically police your digital life in case you start showing signs of anti-social behavior. I don't want to wait until you get your gun into a Waymo to have the cops handle you. I want you to be caught much earlier. This will make the world much safer.
There are other ways to solve safety issues, but they are harder and more expensive - civic education and a government invested in incentivizing a productive life, better law enforcement training, freely available mental health services etc.
Fortunately the Fourth Amendment has mostly established the answer for us already.
No? The Fourth Amendment only grants you protections that apply to government action. The police are allowed to accept evidence gathered voluntarily by private citizens or corporations.
Maybe we shouldn't put the whole burden of world justice on Waymo, this allowing it a complete invasion of the privacy of both the people who use it and those who don't? Guy takes a drugged up girl on the train, should we hold the train responsible for the outcome also?
Are you aware of BART Police or MTA Police? All trains have conductors who monitor passenger behavior and enforce rules/laws.
I don’t think a train conductor would normally intervene if they saw someone escorting an intoxicated person.
Unfortunately taking someone somewhere to rob or assault them doesn’t look that different from taking a drunk friend to a safe place.
Yes? I am pretty sure they don't do algorithmic policing. Fwiw, they probably don't do any policing, but that is a different subject.
I am not against monitoring for safety - I am against deploying a sophisticated network of automated monitoring that covers all digital and soon physical aspects of my life for my "safety" by for profit companies.
That's the key question: whose laws are Waymo enforcing? ICE and Flock's extra-constitutional policies? City ordinances? A future eco-radical government's laws?
How about things taking place outside the car?
Can Waymo mount a robotic machine gun next to the LIDAR and snipe suspected terrorists? Release tear gas? Self destruct, killing several nuns to protect s CEO?
Btw ghost guns are not all instantly illegal.
Public trains are covered in camera surveillance and that footage is very often used in conjunction with tracking down and prosecuting criminals. You should have no expectation of privacy on a public train.
I think the risks are different on a train, which is far more public than the inside of a taxi. There are more likely to be other people and/or an operator to intervene.
Those are bad examples of things where a computer should make a judgement call.
> Going to shoot up a place? Take your guns on a waymo. It won't complain.
I take my kid to go skeet shooting. You’d call the police on us for having legal guns? What about my pocket knife?
> Guy wants to take an obviously distressed and co-erced girl to an abandoned lot? No complaints.
My wife is scared by someone on the sidewalk. We’re riding to where we parked our car for the evening. There’s a scared woman with me as we commute to our vehicle. BART wouldn’t call the cops on me.
> Person with obvious head injury and slurring speech wants to go home instead of the hospital? Sure.
What’s “obvious” here? I have drinks with friends and bump my head on a cabinet, and now I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. I’m not remotely about to die. Dammit, Waymo, I just want to go home and shower and let me wife laugh at me while she tapes me up.
> Person has heart attack and passes out in back? We'll just drive your limp body 45 minutes in traffic to your destination.
Person’s exhausted after work and wants to nap on the way home. They look identical to the dead guy. BART lets you nap.
If we had ubiquitous taxi and subway police, maybe they’d spent 5 seconds assessing each situation and move on. In no other real-life situation do we expect empty subways or taxi drivers to call the cops and investigate every possible bad scenario, nor should we.
But it's a reduction of privacy compared to private vehicles. If the goal is to convert all transportation infrastructure into surveilled transportation then that is a loss in privacy for the general public.
That is acceptable (and even desirable) for these people.
Only the few who can afford luxury deserve privacy.
You can raise that argument when they actually prevent you from owning your own vehicle.
No, the argument should be raised before that happens. You want to prevent undesirable things from happening, not try to claw them back after they happened.
It looks quite foolish to me to never plan ahead and predict undesirable future events and then trying to prevent them ahead of time.
"Sorry, we can't fulfill your request for transportation to the protest for private ownership, but we can offer a free ride to the Colosseum" ;)
I meant to imply that it's ridiculous because no one is trying to make that happen...
I don't think their primary intent is to create a surveillance state (though google might like having yet another data source...), I think companies are trying to make it happen to capture transportation market share, regulators will want to make it happen to drive down traffic fatalities and insurers will incentivize it because human drivers are more costly. And once the difference in how they can be regulated is clear there'll be additional incentives to discourage private transportation.
That's a good yardstick. Would a reasonable human driver call (or want to call) the cops? If yes, it's reasonable for Waymo to do the same
I'm pretty wary of mass public surveillance. I'm much less concerned about companies monitoring the inside of their private property
I'm pretty sure a human started watching live video from the car as soon as the AI flagged a gun. I doubt that Waymo is willing to have their system automatically call cops.
Would you be upset if someone at the WalMart central data center called the local police because they saw someone with a gun in a Walmart at a remote location?
That's what happened here. A private company saw a gun inside their property and called the police.
I would be unless there was a posted no guns sign. Remote areas are were it is most appropriate to have a gun for personal protection.
A lot of taxis have models detecting weapons and aggressive behaviours. I work on some models like this. I think they are necessary. For driver's safety.
The number of people expecting drivers to calmly & accurately distinguish between real threats and not is wild.
> The waymo vehicle called the cops
Waymo called the cops. It’s not clear if it was the vehicle, or a human in the company. I suspect the latter.
I dunno. This doesn’t bother me in the same way that flock cameras do. A Waymo car is a private space that you don’t have to use if you don’t want to. Seems pretty reasonable to me that Waymo doesn’t want their cars used for drive by shootings. If a drive by were to happen in a Waymo, this would be compelled by law anyway.
It starts to become a problem once you’ve replaced public infrastructure to a sufficient degree by private infrastructure like waymos that avoiding to use them starts to seriously inconvenience people.
What public infrastructure is replaced by Waymo? All the roads, traffic lights, signs, etc are all still there. Seems equivalent to any other vehicle that is not replacing public infrastructure.
Taxis are a part of transportation infrastructure. Like a system that allows public and private healthcare, a private option pulls the rich people off the public system causing them to neglect and vote against the public system.
So waymos means less busses/trains, which means a bunch of people stuck in the middle - they would prefer to take a bus or a train but the service is poorly maintained so they are forced to take a waymo.
Taxis, busses, and trains are all private spaces with cameras in them.
Public infrastructure has been run by private companies for a long time.
Yes. And the use of cameras has traditionally been: if something happens, there is a record that can be consulted.
That has changed. Networked cameras and AI means that cameras can be constantly monitored: license plates logged and mapped in realtime, faces scanned and profiled, symbols and objects detected.
I have no problem with calling the cops on someone with a gun. But that same kind of tech can (and has already been) seamlessly be turned on protestors, journalists, political opponents, union organizers, and ex girlfriends.
Yeah I don’t get it. You’re getting into a privately owned vehicle. You agree to the terms of service when you sign up and ask for a ride. You should assume you have zero privacy in those cars.
Sure, but the Waymo is taking intrusive video of much more than the inside of the car. And unlike a mast-mounted camera, it can be sent almost anywhere at almost any time.
>Sure, but the Waymo is taking intrusive video of much more than the inside of the car.
The alternative is having a driver in the car, which is equally intrusive.
> The alternative is having a driver in the car, which is equally intrusive.
Would you rather have one random stranger see you naked, or have a video of you naked passed around to every cop in your city?
Unless you feel the same about those two scenarios, it seems like a driver and a camera are not equally intrusive.
>Would you rather have one random stranger see you naked, or have a video of you naked passed around to every cop in your city?
Half the ubers I've been now has a "you're being recorded" notice. Public transit is far worse.
Wait, can I not carry in a Waymo?
Found their rules page: "Do not carry weapons of any kind in the car"
That seems... naive? Plenty of people carry pepper spray or a knife with them. Not even ever intending to use them as a weapon.
When I go to the range, I travel with a locked case that contains my pistol, which inside has a cable lock. I couldn't take that through a waymo?
What about some kid buying a goofy mall katana they are going to put on their wall?
Like, obviously brandishing a weapon should be disallowed, but merely having anything that's a weapon? Seems fraught.
In California, it's surprisingly hard to be a legal, responsible gun owner if you don't own your own car. Rideshare bans weapons via TOS, public transit (even unloaded in a locked container) is illegal.
That's the point (like for all this stuff, going back a hundred years, not just in CA). Don't extend the right to anyone who doesn't have a bunch of wealth to lose that the state can threaten to get compliance.
>Found their rules page: "Do not carry weapons of any kind in the car"
Corporate speak for "concealed means concealed"
Don’t brandish your weapon and no one will know you have it. Obviously the case here.
And make sure you don't brandish a mars bar too!
I understand Waymo having this position for now. I also think it is reasonable to push them to refine the rules for the situations you mention.
Maybe we need very clear, standardized signals for entering a surveillance zone (where someone not obviously present, possibly a corporate stooge or AI or simpler-than-AI automated detection system, is judging behavior) so that people realize that private behavior (like casually showing off guns to each other, safely, which I've seen done myself and was not cause for alarm—guns were legal) is no longer private.
The steelman against* what waymo did is:*
Guns are generally legal, even in California. This is America, not the EU. Nobody was harmed, nobody was threatened. This is like calling the cops on someone open carrying because you don't like open carry.
That is what a lot of pro-2A libertarians would argue.
The steelman pro* what waymo did is:*
Private conveyance. Even though the occupants thought they were "alone", there was someone/something else present, which felt threatened (or thought the passengers represented a potential threat to others) and called police, as most cabbies or uber drivers probably would.
I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. This is a grey area, and I think it'll likely resolve in favor of waymo, and it won't really bother anyone except the staunch libertarians.
Flock is bad, but fleets of cars strapped to the teeth with cameras and sensors are suddenly ok even when they call the police on you? Why? Because of the makers of the technology that powers the cars say they are safer (via datasets that we have no way to validate)?
I think there's a legitimate distinction between monitoring what's inside the car vs what's outside. Outside seems bad. Inside is probably necessary.
How are they supposed to drive themselves without monitoring whats going on outside the vehicle?
That’s possible to do without also sending all the captured data to police.
This is a good distinction. My main concern with Waymo is that we have no way of knowing if they stick/will stick to only monitoring the inside.
Because you sign up for the service, agree to the terms, and voluntarily get into the car.
Well for one, so far they've only called the police on people who chose to use the service.
When we have evidence that Waymo is contracting its external cameras out to local governments and allowing abuse, then we can criticize them for it.
What do you mean? Google is legally required to share information, and does share information, when such information is requested through a whole variety of different means available to local governments. https://policies.google.com/terms/information-requests
That's the same as the police getting security footage from any random building.
The problem with Flock is that they let police hop on and look at whatever they want whenever they want. Completely different operating modes and intentions.
Also, Google and Waymo are different companies under the same parent. Google's policies are irrelevant.
Yeah good point on the policies. It makes Waymo's case worse though, because they have nothing defined publicly. They are also for-profit, and trying to deploy to more cities. The concerns are real - https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2025/jul/1/driverless...
"While companies like Waymo insist they require search warrants for footage, based on probable cause and judicial approval, the legal framework for accessing autonomous vehicle data remains unsettled. A 2022 analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) noted that few states have specific laws governing law enforcement access to such data, leaving gaps in oversight. In Arizona, where Waymo operates extensively, police must typically obtain a search warrant to access footage, as required by state law for electronic records and consistent with Fourth Amendment protections. "
Only if they retain it, and I would bet they are purging it quickly as a matter of policy to avoid these kinds of situations.
Depends on how you feel about guns. I think people who are opposed to them would agree with this, people who are in favor of guns would be alarmed by this.
Shocking this isn't bigger news. It will be strange what they get you for. Maybe car ownership isn't doomed after all.
At least a human usually has some judgment and discretion situationally.
I guess the alternative "Juvenile Driveby Shooting takes place from Waymo" isn't a better headline though.
“Maybe car ownership isn't doomed after all.”
You think “owning” the vehicle will matter in the near future? That’s cute
Google would probably be held 100% liable if it happened from their car. . What I don’t get is why Waymo allows unaccompanied juvenile riders at all? That seems like a huge risk for them.
> What I don’t get is why Waymo allows unaccompanied juvenile riders at all?
Why not? They can already take an uber. It's questionable which is safer
Teen accounts are supposed to be governed by the parent account.
I understand the appeal. Parents I've spoken to feel safer putting their kid in a Waymo than and Uber. And I guess the time savings of not driving them around yourself are too compelling.
As of this writing, Waymo only permits unaccompanied minors in the Metro Phoenix area. The incident occurred in San Francisco, so it seems that they should not have riding without an adult.
https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/16389431?sjid=166657...
If i were a driver i would call the cops too. What do you mean? A ghost gun in a taxi is ok?
Teens will just learn not to use the tattle taxi. Or hide their toy guns before they do.
> The company pulled the car over after detecting a “violation of our terms of service involving a firearm,"
Well now my biggest fear of riding a Waymo is not how it drives but getting my Google account banned because it misdetected something.
Do you know what a ghost gun is? Where is the misdetection?
In the US, the term is used to mean firearms that are legal to manufacture but not to sell, because they do not have serial numbers for tracing. The misdetection would be if the Waymo cameras did not have sufficient resolution to see the serial number on the firearm, or if the firearm serial number were concealed, for example by being locked inside of a carrying case, as is the standard practice for responsible firearm owners.
However, kobalsky is alluding to frequent past reports of Google misdetecting things that are not ghost guns, followed by banning people's accounts. For example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... #news from 02022 of Google flagging Mark [anonymous]’s Google account for child porn when he sent a photo of his toddler son’s infected penis to the doctor and reported him to the police. The police decided no abuse had happened but he never got his account back. #privacy #human-rights #USA #politics
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36443747 Very disturbing accounts of people getting banned from Google for searching for the board game "Ethnos", from credit cards for not using them, from Amazon for having a racist doorbell recording, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47115805 seems like people are getting banned from their #Google accounts for using #OpenClaw for #AI with #Gemini
https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/account-restricted-without-w... more on people getting banned from their #Google accounts for using #OpenClaw for #AI with #Gemini:
Aminreza Khoshbahar: “I’m seeking assistance regarding a sudden restriction on my Google AI Ultra account that has persisted for three days. I received no prior warnings or notifications regarding a potential violation.
“The only recent change in my workflow was connecting Gemini models via OpenClaw OAuth. If third-party integrations are the issue, I would expect the platform to block the integration rather than restrict a paid account ($249/mo) without communication.”
It is incredibly weird to me that people are conflicted or even negative about this. An automated system prevented some troublemakers with a firearm from possibly causing serious injury or death, and we're throwing out things like "but what if?" "yeah but flock!". And then when there's a tragic shooting, "No Way to Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens".
I think this is awesome and I want more autonomous cars on the streets, replacing bad human drivers and calling the cops on kids with guns.
Why stop at autonomous cars? New cars monitor drivers for “drowsiness” and have internal/external cameras. Why not monitor for guns too? Maybe they should even refuse to drive if you’re holding a gun!
And why stop at cars? Maybe home cameras should call the cops if they see a weapon. Maybe your Apple Watch should detect if you’ve fired a gun. Brave new world!
I’m a gun owner, but I’d rather start saving lives now rather than doing nothing while theorizing about all the ridiculous things that could happen.
Why not just immediately seize all guns then? I’m sure you’ll save a lot of lives that way! Better start now, no time to hesitate or consider the consequences!
It's an absolutely beautiful story!
The only issue is a somewhat wasteful use of police time - Waymo should have taken them straight to juvenile hall.
Whatever LG has been doing in the consumer electronic sector has been perfected in Waymo’s vehicles. It starts with capturing everything that happens inside vehicle, claim it’s catching users violating ToS. Then it graduates to full blown Flock—like mobile surveillance tech.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the cars are already capturing and storing license plates, tracking pedestrian activity.
It’s all being prepared for the sale to governments and intelligence communities. Or maybe to serve the privatized shit hole known as 'network states' coined by the pathetic parasite, Peter Thiel.
Orwellian dystopia is here folks. It just took a detour/roundabout way (9/11, patriot act, greedy capitalists, social media …) to get us there.
I was at LOWES the other day with a used can of paint that I brought for color matching. obviously used. beat up and stained. at the checkout the computer halted the checkout process said "did you forget something in your cart?"
yeah fuck that. also fucks self-checkout. are we so poverty stricken as a society now that we can't afford to pay cashiers?
have you talked to cashiers? many prefer the new ones. who are you protecting?
>also fucks self-checkout. are we so poverty stricken as a society now that we can't afford to pay cashiers?
Yeah, I'm appalled how poor as a society we've become, now that we can't afford door men (outside of luxury condos in Manhattan), elevator operators, and bank tellers.
As someone who cashiered in college, I vastly preferred monitoring self checkouts over being monetarily forced to interact with an endless line of the kind of people who don't use self checkouts.
As a shopper, I don't want to be one of those people either. Ideally, I want lower friction and to be able to pay on my phone instead of dealing with the kiosk.