Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun" • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by anon84873628 » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #68

anon84873628 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proa…

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.

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

#82

Post by handwarmers » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

anon84873628 wrote: post #79

handwarmers wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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 u…

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.

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

#83

Post by the8472 » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 4:28 PM UTC

anon84873628 wrote: post #77

the8472 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #52

adrianN wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by diydsp » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

anon84873628 wrote: post #23

handwarmers wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#86

Post by monster_truck » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

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.

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

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

#87

Post by mr_toad » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

MostlyStable wrote: post #2

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…

> 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.

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

#88

Post by mplanchard » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:55 PM UTC

monster_truck wrote: post #86

anon84873628 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 b…

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.

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

#89

Post by gruez » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #50

ryandrake wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pol…

[flagged]

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.

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

#90

Post by Rebelgecko » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

lemmetellya wrote: post #26

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 ka…

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.