Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 223 posts

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#21

Post by the8472 »

bot403 wrote: post #8
kelnos wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

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.

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#22

Post by [deleted] »

anon84873628 wrote: post #12
kelnos wrote: post #3

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 we…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#23

Post by anon84873628 »

handwarmers wrote: post #13
bot403 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

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.

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#24

Post by coderintherye »

handwarmers wrote: post #13
bot403 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

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?

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.

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#25

Post by graemep »

anon84873628 wrote: post #12
kelnos wrote: post #3

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 we…

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.

A human driver would be more able to tell a toy gun from a real one.

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#26

Post by lemmetellya »

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.

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#27

Post by threecheese »

bot403 wrote: post #8
kelnos wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

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?

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#28

Post by krisbolton »

kelnos wrote: post #3

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 we…

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.

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#29

Post by handwarmers »

anon84873628 wrote: post #19
handwarmers wrote: post #9

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)?

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

Re: Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"

#30

Post by adrianN »

Gimpei wrote: post #20

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.
Post reply on HN