104 comments

  • JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

    "'I just had to be sure because I’m not a regular cop, I’m part of the FBI, and when I scanned your plate I could see you had suspicious travel patterns,' I think is how he worded it" [1].

    This isn't traffic cops, it's federal police. And it isn't suspicious driving patterns, e.g. weaving, it's full-on movement tracking.

    [1] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/ai-driven-polic...

    • tbyehl 2 days ago

      More likely they are regular cops participating in some joint task force. There are more state, county, and local police agencies in this country than there are FBI Special Agents.

    • wildzzz 2 days ago

      I see a lot of police bodycam videos on YouTube of cops stopping drug traffickers for bullshit reasons (5 over speed limit on highway, crossing the line, following too closely) and it's usually a state or county cop that's on a federal task force or they'll have a "civilian ride along" in the car that gets way more involved than any civilian would ever be. They aren't actually an employee of the FBI but they have credentials from the FBI due to their task force job, it gives them access to FBI databases and bulletins while they still maintain their normal police job.

      It's really bizarre to watch those videos because they are very routine. They stop the person for marginal lawbreaking, ask them to step out and sit in the front of their cruiser, then the traffic violations turn into warnings, cop makes basic small talk while writing warning and pretty much ignores everything suspect says, cop asks about any contraband in the car and asks to search, suspect usually (stupidly) agrees to search, cops pretty much instantly find the drugs. And if the suspect says no to the search, the K9 unit is already pulling up behind them because they were called before the cop ever turned on their lights and siren.

      It's incredibly obvious these are pretextual stops. There is definitely a national program tracking license plates because there's no reasonable explanation for cops getting this lucky on pulling over random people that are driving completely unremarkable.

      I'm pretty sure that's how they caught that megachurch pastor smuggling drugs for the cartel, they look for travel patterns for license plates and especially look at rental car registrations. You can't pull over every car but you can definitely look for cars making repeated trips, especially those that are made to known trafficking cities.

      I had a friend from highschool that got pretty involved with his mom with drug trafficking. They caught him at some Indian reservation that overlaps upstate NY and Canada. The arrest affidavit states the cops saw a car parked for a couple hours at a casino and then followed the car to the border of the Indian reservation. Then they waited for the car to leave and then pulled him over for crossing a line. Of course they found significant ketamine in the car. The cops already knew who they were looking for because a car parked at a casino for a couple hours is not suspicious and definitely not suspicious enough to follow.

    • jon128 2 days ago

      If that ever happens to you then document on a Blockchain that you have first-hand knowledge that someone has committed a crime against you, specifically 18 U.S. Code § 242. By not reporting a crime like that you could leave your fellow Americans exposed to a criminal by leaving that criminal undocumented. But, be very careful as in doing so you are liable for your spoken or written utterances.

        18 U.S. Code § 242 - Deprivation of rights under color of law 
      
        Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both [..]
      
        https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242
  • techteach00 2 days ago

    It's a completely lost cause. For example, when you agree to Mazdas TOS for the connected services app, you give them permission to sell your driving data to 3rd parties including law enforcement and insurance companies.

    I said no so I'm not allowed to have remote start. I'm a bad cog. Punish me.

    • mryijum 2 days ago

      Seems like (at some point, or maybe already) this decision will itself be the sort of thing that contributes to someone being flagged as suspicious

    • encom 2 days ago

      Yup. If I enable "privacy mode" in my Nissan Leaf I can't turn on the heater remotely.

      I requested a copy of the data they harvest. They log EVERYTHING. GPS of course, but also when I turn on the wipers, turn signal... basically the total state of the car at all times.

      And all I want is remote heating. Checking the battery is nice for monitoring charge progress, but I could do without it.

      So what I do now is drive in privacy mode, and when I park I have to remember to disable privacy mode if I think I might need heating tomorrow morning.

      The future is fucking retarded.

    • chung8123 2 days ago

      Soon we will be able to use AI to hack all these things to gain access to our own equipment.

    • sershe 2 days ago

      I just disconnected the antenna on my Chevy bolt and terminated it. Much more reliable :)

      Although for me the concern is insurance getting data... My rate is so low based on whatever they have now, that I definitely don't see it going any lower :) perhaps I'd give them data if it was high.

    • MisterTea 2 days ago

      > For example, when you agree to Mazdas TOS for the connected services app,

      Is there a database of car models that foist this bullshit on you so I can activly avoid ever buying them?

    • Melatonic 2 days ago

      Probably doesn't stop law enforcement accessing the cell chip

    • jon128 2 days ago

      [flagged]

  • andix 2 days ago

    Can AI also fully legalize racial profiling?

    Some criminal behaviors are somewhat correlated with skin color, age or gender. It would be extremely hard to train an AI to ignore those correlations. But would it even matter? Nobody knows why the AI flagged suspicious behavior, it usually can't tell even if you are able to ask follow up questions. So nobody could prove racial profiling.

    • throwaway-medic 2 days ago

      I work on software that Dr and Nurses use. The company I work for trains its own models to provide automated insight on patient history, etc. I've been pretty concerned about these kinds of problems you describe. I sat down with one of the data scientists and talked about biases a while ago. She walked me through the (high level) process they go through to try and detect common biases in the model before publishing.

      For example, it is a common belief within the medical community that Black people have higher pain tolerance, and thus don't need as much or as strong of pain killers. People in pain sitting in beds in the ER will be delayed or refused pain killers because of this. This belief has been proven false, but it shows up in papers, notes, etc. and nurses and doctors still will treat their patients as if it's true.

      This is just one example of many many things they test for. When training the model the data-science team actually tries to see if they can produce output that exhibit those identified biases/problems and block it from ever been used in production if they do.

      I've had people internally tell me how frustrated they are that I or other people aren't letting them get their new-fangled AI-powered feature in front of customers fast enough... Without a lot of discipline and guardrails people would be using ChatGPT or Claude APIs instead.

      My point is: I highly doubt that kind of care is being taken in many industries/companies. It's very concerning to me.

    • steveBK123 2 days ago

      You don't even need there to be any kernel of reality statistically.

      If a model is trained on data that shows some bias due to prior human decisions, it would continue to follow those biases while being a lot harder to prove/sue. There were examples of this with AI assisted resume screening & criminal sentencing for example.

    • preg_match 2 days ago

      Yes, AI like organizations are very good for laundering accountability. Even before AI you could just hire Organization X or Consultancy Y and they can be as racist as they want, and boom you're just laundered all your accountability. Now go have fun, do whatever, who cares.

      It's the same reason why Flock is so popular. It's just cameras, who cares right? Well Flock is popular for the organization, it's an accountability sink. The government can't just stand up a bunch of cameras, people will complain. Ahh, but Flock can. The entire economic value of Flock is purely the accountability laundering, the technology is just a footnote.

      Really, many organizations in the US boil down to this. Producing value is hard, producing fake value is easy.

    • derwiki 2 days ago

      In regulated industries like money lending, ML outputs have to be explainable (and explained for an ECOA case). I’m not an ML expert by any stretch, but IIUC this is why we end up using decision tree models.

    • smallmancontrov 2 days ago

      On the contrary, you can feed the model counterfactuals and see what it does. Edit the person to be white then feed the image back into the model and see if its opinion changes.

    • the_doctah 2 days ago

      >Some criminal behaviors are somewhat correlated with skin color, age or gender.

      Well, yes, because so is crime.

    • nonethewiser 2 days ago

      Have you ever seen those AI videos where countries are competing in a farcical olympic event? Say, longest cold shower or something. And the Indian will just quit and fall to the ground and yell "I NEED CURRY!!!!!!!!"

  • pRusya 2 days ago

    I've noticed this myself. Not being pulled over, but being followed.

    When I just came to the US, I got my car and started exploring Utah a lot. Just picking a random spot on a map and going there. Beautiful countryside.

    There were several occasions when a police vehicle showed up right after I parked, made a circle around me and disappeared.

    One time their cruiser parked 30 feet away and they were watching me. I had a slice of pizza with me, so I rolled down a window and let them watch me eating. They drove away after a few minutes.

    Also, driving 60 miles one way to a lake for a swim once or twice a week is suspicious, apparently. And I was doing it even when the water was in 40s. One time K9 parked right next to me. Idk if they searched my car or not, but their drone followed me on a trail back and forth for over 5 minutes. And when I came back, they were packing up and leaving.

    Never saw them during moonless nights when I was stargazing in the middle of nowhere or sleeping in my car on the side of a road. Fun times.

    • csdreamer7 2 days ago

      Slightly related to your post. I forget the name of this book but it went over common tactics of American police. In it describes a tactic by police 'to flush out a hare'. When police have a slow day they will look for and get behind cars models that are in the top 10 most likely to be stolen. They will turn on their sirens and see if the car will speed up to get away or pull off to the side. If they sped up, they got a hare to catch as in they just found a criminal in their stolen vehicle.

      I traveled with friends on a road trip and they drove such a car in the top 10. When I told them that they told me that explained why cops were always turning on and off their sirens behind them.

      These top 10 cars were likely to be cheaper sedans.

  • pton_xd 2 days ago

    Eventually your car will autonomously pull over to the side of the road, lock the doors, and instruct you to wait patiently for the arriving officer. Please return your hands to the steering wheel.

    • morkalork 2 days ago

      Sir, can you put your hands in the yellow circles, please?

    • nilamo 2 days ago

      It'll just redirect you directly to a holding cell intake. Dangerous drivers shouldn't be left on the road.

    • gnabgib 2 days ago

      Waymo already does this.. well it doesn't stop and wait, it's proactive.

      Waymo reports teen riders for bad behavior and delivers them to the police (60 points, 1 month ago, 31 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48824010

    • cucumber3732842 2 days ago

      The sad part is I can already imagine the useful idiots hand wringing in the comments about how it's such a travesty that we allow old cars that don't do that on the road and we need to "incentivize" those people to behave right with punitive tax policy.

    • esalman 2 days ago

      And Tesla will be the pioneer.

  • user00005 2 days ago

    If you watch any amount of police bodycam footage on YT having to do with trafficking you will see ALPRs are now another tool they use.

    The given reason for being pulled over is something petty like following too close or not signaling at the right time. The real reason is the vehicle was flagged from some pattern determined by the ALPR networks.

    I've had my car searched (I finally gave consent to search after over an hour of being detained waiting on a drug dog) because of a popular 'reasonably suspicious' pattern cops use. The loser let me off with a warning for speeding after finding nothing.

    • bmitch3020 2 days ago

      Extending the length of the stop to wait for a drug dog isn't legal. The key phrases include "am I being detained", "am I free to go", "what is your reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime", and "what is your name and badge number". Record everything.

      Of course they'll be more than happy to break the law themselves. They'll investigate themselves and find no wrongdoing. And I'm sure the officer will claim they smelled something giving them reasonable suspicion.

    • dghlsakjg 2 days ago

      FYI: it is no longer legal to make you wait for the drug dog in the United States.

      They must conclude the stop in a reasonable amount of time, without delay, and if the drug dog hasn’t arrived in the time that it takes them to write you a ticket, you can not be detained any longer.

  • comrade1234 2 days ago

    "...she was pulled over by an officer who claimed she had spent too much time driving in the left lane."

    Throw the book at her!

    • Dusseldorf 2 days ago

      I got a ticket for that once! It was 2am and there was no one else on the road, and the cop was so mad that I passed the field sobriety test and was stone sober. Had to come up with something, I guess.

  • bryanrasmussen 2 days ago

    why was this FBI guy so forthcoming with this lady about his agency's arguably civil rights abuses? I mean I guess it's good he was but on the other hand it seems a bit weird, given my experience with feds.

    • jimt1234 2 days ago

      They're not confessing. They're bragging.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c14vfq3jqpo

    • fedpost 2 days ago

      I cannot articulate how much they fucking love this stuff. If you want to actually help your community you become a paramedic or a teacher...

      ...but if you want to have absolute power over your community, you become a cop or a mayor.

      The cops are obsessed with all the shiney toys that let them surveil and kill people. They will buy literally any wildly unnecessary thing they can get their hands on if it tickles their sense of cool. That's why they're driving around in GWOT surplus MRAPs with GPS synchronized emergency lights (Google it) and complaining about not being able to buy the latest drones from China so loudly.

    • catigula 2 days ago

      "We have you dead to rights. Check here in my fancy computer."

      Just intimidation, pretty common.

  • causal 2 days ago

    I'm used to AI agents doing what I tell them to do. Gonna be rough the first time I realize one has direct authority over me...

  • whycome 2 days ago

    Using transit or roads outside of normal commuting hours?? How suspicious. Driving somewhere without a destination? Suspicious.

    • dgently7 2 days ago

      suspicion isn't enough to actually detain tho (pull some one over in this case)

      the aclu post points out that the pretextual stop is the actual problem here. all that suspiciousness wouldnt matter to this woman if she hadnt been detained. the fbi dude could have been suspicious as hell. could have decided to follow her around or like done some other actual investigation to get actual evidence that would amount to probable cause and enable a detainment.

      cops dont have a right to stop you so they can go fishing.

      the article doesn't seem to mention what actual authority an fbi agent would have to enforce a local traffic law about "staying in the left lane".

      it does seem like this was a pretty clear rights violation and i hope the aclu fights on her behalf.

    • Toslink 2 days ago

      [dead]

  • Dig1t 2 days ago

    "Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on"

    -Larry Ellison

    • tantalor 2 days ago

      That sentiment seems to fail the test with reality, because you have people following the rules and behaving perfectly normally (like the subject in this story) who end up getting scrutinized anyway. That's a recipe for increasing anti-social behavior. After all, why bother following the rules if it doesn't keep me out of trouble?

  • dvdyzag 2 days ago

    Is suspicious a felony or a misdemeanor, officer?

    • cucumber3732842 2 days ago

      "joke's on you it's a civil infraction so you have basically no rights"

      -the officer, at least in his head if not out loud

  • SR2Z 2 days ago

    We need hard math for statistical construction of probable cause.

    Probably a public model, which is independently vetted against actual detentions, needs to show a 99% probability of an actual crime being committed for police to make a stop like this.

    The opportunities for abuse are simply too high.

  • amelius 2 days ago

    How much better is the "intelligence" of police officers compared to artificial intelligence?

    • intrasight 2 days ago

      It's the human in the loop that makes it subjective. Whether it's better or worse to have policing be subjective is a valid question.

      I've had plenty of encounters where the discretion of a police officer was of great benefit to me and my friends.

    • beambot 2 days ago

      Humans are "artificial artificial intelligence."

    • basilikum 2 days ago

      It's not centralized.

  • gregwebs 2 days ago

    Ironically the best defense against police abuse of power seems to be doing your own surveillance. Recording interactions with the police and having a dash cam. Many popular dash cams like Viofo record to an SD and don't send recordings to the cloud.

    • incompatible 2 days ago

      My understanding is that it's not recommended in the USA to talk with cops. Anything you say will be used against you, or your friends. Just ask if you are being arrested and if you are free to go. If you have anything to say in your defence, save it for court.

    • bmitch3020 2 days ago

      The downside of offline cameras is they are mysteriously missing the SD card after the vehicle gets impounded.

    • dabinat 2 days ago

      Isn’t it bad if it doesn’t upload to the cloud? The officer can just seize it and you don’t have another copy.

  • gcanyon 2 days ago

    On the one hand, freedoms!

    Technology like this is stuck in a no win situation.

    Human police officers are allowed to take action based on reasonable suspicion.

    AI, if it is worse than humans, will be criticized for false positives.

    And if it is better than humans, without being able to explain why it will be criticized for that as well even if it is in general better than humans, it will be criticized for the false positives.

    But as the saying goes, this is the worst it will ever be. At some point this thing or something like it will have a precision over 95%. At what point will the debate become awkward because the thing is superhumanly efficient at sorting out the baddies?

  • maerF0x0 2 days ago

    Just turn up the temperature when it's time for police raises or retirements

  • ev0lv 2 days ago

    Can't wait for AI to make it possible to reverse engineer automotive firmware and just bypass all the spyware like we can with Debloat Samsung TVs

    • esalman 2 days ago

      You can't. The guy who posted about bloating in his Samsung TV already got his account by OpenAI.

  • gxs 2 days ago

    The Bay Area are the biggest hypocrites in the planet

    They know how to present themselves in a way that not only they appear liberal, but appear liberal under scrutiny

    They are rolling out versions of this but doing it in poor neighborhoods of course - heaven forbid they roll anything like this out in the Berkeley hills

    Obviously im over generalizing for dramatic effect, but if this stuff can get passed in the Bay Area, I hold little hope we will successfully challenge it elsewhere

    • asdff 2 days ago

      According to deflock there's cameras in the berkely hills already, in particular on the grizzley peak and shasta road intersection. It's all over the bay area.

    • platevoltage 2 days ago

      What you are describing IS in fact Liberalism.

  • bluecalm 2 days ago

    I prefer AI doing that over police using their judgement. AI is better and will get better. Reckless driving is a huge problem. Imo it's an emergency situation so I am willing to accept about any measures that leads to getting crazies/speeders/phone watching idiots off the roads. Bring SkyNet if you have to. Solving this is the highest priority.

  • ChrisArchitect 2 days ago
  • deaton 2 days ago

    This seems like a great excuse to pull over minorities. In general pulling people over for vague "suspicious behavior" without suspicion of a specific issue is a massive violation of everyone's rights.

  • j3th9n 2 days ago

    Let’s all commit suspicious driving patterns and overload the system.

  • mattlondon 2 days ago

    And people say the UK is a surveillance state! This is chilling.

    • rootusrootus 2 days ago

      Why do you think the UK is not doing exactly the same thing?

  • joshbuddy 2 days ago

    So, we're just speed running Little Brother now?

  • krunck 2 days ago

    Lets not forget that all your personal movements are also recorded by your cell location. The US government has access to all this through various "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" agreements with the corporate data holders.

    One must assume that the various "fusion centers" are pulling in all this data and connecting all the dots. Unless you are walking, with a face mask, and without your cell phone you have to assume they know were you are.

    • JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

      > US government has access to all this through various "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" agreements with the corporate data holders

      These claims really need to be more specific to be believable and actionable. Particularly given the law has been changed in reaction to prior fuckery.

    • adamsb6 2 days ago

      They can just buy location data from data brokers, same as everyone else.

  • exabrial 2 days ago

    Don't worry, thanks to the Democrats, then affirmed by the Republicans, your car will soon dial them directly!

  • bentt 2 days ago

    At this point just have the car tell the cops when the driver is misbehaving. And get the taxpayers to fund it!

    • platevoltage 2 days ago

      People voluntarily do this in exchange for cheaper insurance rates.

  • taurath 2 days ago

    We used to call those dragnets which are illegal under the 4th amendment, but the constitution only tends to apply to those with the ability to hire attorneys nowadays.

    • cogman10 2 days ago

      Yeah, still illegal, but because they are new they have to work their way up through the courts to be affirmed as illegal once again.

      These cameras need to be banned federally. It shouldn't be legal to own or sell access to a network of these pervert cameras.

    • jon128 2 days ago

      The first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights of the larger agreement (the constitution) are better enjoyed by those who can write and speak forth without relying on another man or woman (an attorney) to do so on their behalf.

      Citizens of the United States, which means the entire family, most of the definitions in the link below, have a right to use the courts.

      Unfortunately so many among us are functionally illiterate (unable to read and write legalize) and not educated in law so far too often this essential right goes not exercised.

      The more competent attorneys can fully comprehend this comment posted here. But the uncooth among that line of business tend to not like a comment like this being posted, it's not good business for them.

      Existing case law sets precedent that only those who can claim with standing as one of citizens of one of the several states, and not only a federal citizen (but also not a state citizen), have absolute and unqualified right to the first eight amendments. Some later case law extended and elaborated enjoyment of the first eight amendments to those who are only federal citizen (and not also state citizen), but didn't overturn the earlier notion that only state citizens have the absolute and unqualified right to the first eight amendments.

        https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1101
    • nonethewiser 2 days ago

      >We used to call those dragnets which are illegal under the 4th amendment

      How is surveillance related to dragnets? A dragnet being an indiscriminate stop and search of suspects that sweeps up lots of people. Police have always been able to watch people and see their license plate. It's the wide-spread stop and search with no specific suspicion that makes something a dragnet.

      This plate reader surveillance network, for better or worse, is the exact opposite.

      The example they lead with in the article is the police pulling over a woman who spent too much time driving in the left lane. Stupid. But targeted.

    • techteach00 2 days ago

      The powerful are aware of this. Forget having the money to hire an attorney, the general public wouldn't even know who to contact, what kind of attorney etc to defend them in these cases.

    • quantified 2 days ago

      Without probable cause for a crime, they need to let you go, yes?

    • 2 days ago
      [deleted]
    • tarxvf 2 days ago

      And often, not even then.

    • linuxftw 2 days ago

      We could decide to fund civil rights litigation like medicaid.

  • siva7 2 days ago

    alright, so finally a "thought crime" becomes reality. i feel the world leaders need to stop turning their eyes blind to ai but unfortunately they are too detached from tech to get what change is happening around the world.

    • josh_p 2 days ago

      I think world leaders are acutely aware of what's happening. They just don't care because shit stains like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk keep shoving money in their faces.

  • kazinator 2 days ago

    Persistent driving in the left lane basically just confirms American birth.

  • cyanydeez 2 days ago

    lets be fair, police are using ______ to pull over drivers fo suspicious behavior is just a headline you get when you have a functional journalism any time in the 20th and 21st century.

  • BatFastard 2 days ago

    I strangely have mixed feelings on this. Half of me says "Illegal search and seizure", the other half say "We need to get the crazy drivers off the road"

    • scottyah 2 days ago

      I do think we need better enforcement of the laws we already have in place, the roads are becoming the wild west, and not in a good way. I think I love the tech and the idea, but not how it's currently being abused. It'd be great for Amber Alert scenarios, consistent reckless driving, a better way to deal with high-speed chases, and just a way to prevent all of the dangerous traffic violations that occur simply because they're not enforced and people just see others doing it and assume it's ok.

    • 2 days ago
      [deleted]
  • reactordev 2 days ago

    So, pre-crime... which is illegal.

  • autoventure 2 days ago

    So scary.. now even taking a road trip can make you look suspicious?

    • asdff 2 days ago

      Already is as a side effect of heterogeneous weed laws. Cops camp state borders and pull people over they think are bringing back dispensary purchased weed into an illegal state.

  • kazinator 2 days ago

    Actual human traffickers and whoever not are onto this, and take steps to evade cameras. Even if they aren't this is a very poor strategy. If you have a suspicion about someone, the stupidest thing you can do is pull them over. That risks blowing the whole investigation. That particular vehicle and driver may have nothing incriminating on them, and will now tip off their entire network.

    • MSFT_Edging 2 days ago

      Imagine how powerful the human trafficking group with a couple cops on their payroll would be.

      Basically like pulling up a menu of possible victims and tracking their location down to the minute.

  • bluegatty 2 days ago

    this has to go to the supreme court right away

  • andix 2 days ago

    "Land of the Free", lol

    • 2 days ago
      [deleted]
    • dualvariable 2 days ago

      "Whoever told you that is your enemy"

    • k12sosse 2 days ago

      [flagged]

  • sehw 2 days ago

    [dead]

  • 2 days ago
    [deleted]
  • jon128 2 days ago

    Reasonable suspicion, where the "reasonable" part is absurdly subjective here, is not probable cause.

    These detentions, even for the majority who have documented in writing a full assent to adhere to vehicle codes under public policy, are not legal.

    Those who aren't well-educated in law can stop reading here.

    A custodial arrest of someone who went to sufficent lengths to opt for not assenting in writing to adhere to vehicle codes, based on reasonable suspicion, would be unlawful, and in addition to the involved false declaration of an emergency on the road (which is a felony) would ipso facto be criminal in nature.

    Documentation of dishonor has value in the public space. Blockchains for the win.

    • gverrilla 2 days ago

      > even for the majority who have documented in writing a full assent to adhere to vehicle codes under public policy

      hello sovcit. are you writing this from jail?