Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car • Hacker News Board

Re: Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car

#41

Post by mattmanser » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

bhauer wrote: post #38

Imagine a world with less centralizing force, where owners of devices are encouraged to decentralize data storage. In such a world, autonomous vehicles would ask you to specify where to store the data they collect. The owner could select to choose on-vehicle storage, vendor-provided central storage, or a data server they personally own and operate. And in all cases, given an option to encrypt using a key selected by…

I'd love that, but there are three problems with it, even if you put aside the commercial benefits:

1. Means people have to build and test two systems

2. It's confusing to the normal user

3. It's better for the product if it's shared as they can iterate and improve based on the data.

This actually applies to loads of products, like voice recognition (Google has recorded and stored everything you've ever said to 'ok Google's on their servers).

So I don't think we'll see a solution until we see a massive shift in privacy becoming a key election issue. Which it probably won't for decades or until a ruthless dictator takes over a developed country (sort of happening in Turkey).

Re: Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car

#42

Post by drdaeman » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #13

They won‘t „pull the data off your car“ anyway, because all the interesting data will be elsewhere. Also considering that all the big car manufacturers are working on business models where usually driver and owner are different entities this even gets more involved. We had an interesting case in Germany where data ended up in the court room neither the manufacturer nor the car-sharing provider claimed to have.

Well, I think the essential mistake here is that it's not your car to begin with. You may fully or partially own the hardware, but the actual autonomous vehicle core is not your property - it's only licensed to you.

Re: Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car

#43

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

mLuby wrote: post #19

mannykannot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote is in the context of accident reconstruction. Putting aside the question of how many accidents there will be in our future autonomous world, accidents already leak personal information, especially if they lead to court cases, and it does not seem to me that improved crash investigation need necessarily leak any more. I think this is a qualitatively different situation than tracking people's location and wh…

Yeah it's about an accident, but if an ordinary police officer can view this, you know more powerful agencies are going to collect all of it (incidentally).

Are we even in the ballpark of being able to collect real time video (and other sensor data) from tens of millions of vehicles?

That's a completely different technical problem than having the vehicle store some period of data.

I guess authoritarians will push to have the ability to install monitoring programs locally.

Re: Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car

#44

Post by rebuilder » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #35

metaobject wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, like, track people's phone location?

You may be sarcastic, but I'm sure you know that the mobile phone companies already do this, as does Google if you have Location Services on. Not sure what Apple does.

I believe that was the point.

Re: Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car

#45

Post by konschubert » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #33

jdavis703 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aircraft, even private aircraft, are tracked and recorded. Why should automobiles be any different? Far more people are killed and injured by vehicles than are killed by aircraft. In general I'm pretty pro-privacy but I've had way too many close calls and accidents with bad drivers who were found to be at fault. Maybe there's a better way to get to vision zero, and if so I'd love to hear it.

> Aircraft, even private aircraft, are tracked and recorded. Why should automobiles be any different? FAA and NTSB agencies aren't known for abuses of power. Local law enforcement, on the other hand, routinely abuse power (civil forfeiture, unwarranted traffic stops, racial profiling, police brutality, falsifying evidence, lying under oath, illegal search and seizure...). Self driving cars should reduce accidents, be…

> Local law enforcement, on the other hand, routinely abuse power

I guess here is the real problem. I think it's better to go after the real problem instead of trying to work around it.

Re: Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car

#46

Post by rebuilder » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

pimmen wrote: post #7

mLuby wrote: post #2

'I felt like I was in heaven,' the cop said. 'It's like instant replay in the NFL, I can tell what happened.' The engineers looked at each other like, 'Aw, crap.' As engineers, we have an obligation to think through privacy concerns. These (and nearly all) devices should either not retain data or should encrypt it. Also my self-driving car better not be phoning home or getting updates over the air. I've seen what hap…

The problem is that I do want the data to be stored because it could act as training data to make the vehicles better. But I also recognize the potential for abuse. This one's tricky...

Also there's the issue of liability. Inevitably, autonomous vehicles will be involved in accidents. If the manufacturer has telemetry, they can prove their car was not at fault if the accident was caused by something else. Without stored telemetry, the legal risks for manufacturers seem much greater.

Re: Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car

#47

Post by userbinator » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

The scariest thing is that the government could just ban non-autonomous cars completely, under the guise of "safety", meaning there would be no opting out of being tracked for any long-distance travel. I've never been a fan of self-driving cars, and everything I've seen hasn't convinced me to change my opinion.

"If you outlaw freedom only outlaws will have freedom."

Re: Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car

#48

Post by walterbell » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

j3097736 wrote: post #28

walterbell wrote: post #10

Why is raw sensor data needed for longer than a few minutes? Is it not sufficient to update models and discard the raw data?

Because you might want to process it differently?

For development/debug, yes.

How/why would a production car need to process it differently and why couldn't all processing be done in real time? Safety certification means the car's functionality has to be static, until the next certified software update. Data does not need to leave the car, since the purpose of the data is for the car to drive, which is a transient state.

Re: Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car

#49

Post by 0xcde4c3db » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #47

The scariest thing is that the government could just ban non-autonomous cars completely, under the guise of "safety", meaning there would be no opting out of being tracked for any long-distance travel. I've never been a fan of self-driving cars, and everything I've seen hasn't convinced me to change my opinion. "If you outlaw freedom only outlaws will have freedom."

Even if everyone were to opt out of autonomous vehicles, law enforcement bodies would just continue deploying and upgrading their own sensor networks. Cameras that read license plates are pretty much standard equipment now; face and gait recognition can't be far behind.

Re: Cops won’t need a warrant to pull the data off an autonomous car

#50

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

mLuby wrote: post #2

'I felt like I was in heaven,' the cop said. 'It's like instant replay in the NFL, I can tell what happened.' The engineers looked at each other like, 'Aw, crap.' As engineers, we have an obligation to think through privacy concerns. These (and nearly all) devices should either not retain data or should encrypt it. Also my self-driving car better not be phoning home or getting updates over the air. I've seen what hap…

I wonder what the police reaction will be to the same tracking on police cars. Using their lights to get though red lights and traffic jams when there is no emergency etc will be nicely logged.