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'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
by mLuby 9y ago
'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 happens in Fast and the Furious 8… https://fsmedia.imgix.net/19/8a/19/0d/3e81/44e8/ab9d/679cbb29bbb6/hack-the-cars-why-not-hack-the-planet.gif https://fsmedia.imgix.net/19/8a/19/0d/3e81/44e8/ab9d/679cbb2...
- seanp2k2 9y agoRetain all sensor data forever: absolutely not, and the storage requirements would be insane anyway, especially in a harsh automotive environment (think industrial SSD pricing) Push back e.g. updated model data to help with updating routes, real-time construction developments, new driveways, ways humans make mistakes on the road, etc? I believe that every AV company will be doing this, and hopefully this data is useless to law enforcement. OTA updates? Tesla already does. It won’t even be a choice, and that’s probably a good thing. Many people who don’t work with computers professionally don’t see the importance of updating things. In a situation where software updates could literally prevent deaths, I’m pretty sure that it will be mandatory to have vehicles receive OTA updates that can’t be disabled.
- mLuby 9y agoWhy wouldn't un-disable-able OTA updates be vulnerable to large-scale remote hacking? Sounds like Teslas can already be hacked. By far the simplest way to prevent this vulnerability is to prevent automatic connections to the outside world.
- pimmen 9y agoThe 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...
- mLuby 9y agoThat's one major reason companies will want all this telemetry. (And will it be streaming video over cell networks, dumping once back on home wifi?) Perhaps homomorphic encryption can help achieve both aims, or sending back aggregated data only.
- Clubber 9y agoIt's only tricky because there isn't an "off" button. That's the problem, it's forced on your rather than optional.
- oh_sigh 9y agoWould you take an 'off' button, but with the caveat that put the burden of proof on you if you were in an accident while telemetry is off?
- Clubber 9y agoNo, I'm not willing to compromise my privacy in any way. I haven't had a ticket since l996 and refuse to install the insurance company monitoring tool.
- rebuilder 9y agoAlso 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.
- jdavis703 9y agoAircraft, 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.
- dtech 9y agoCars, especially in the US, is very closely linked to the location of a person. For private aircraft that is generally not the case I assume. I work for a semi-governmental organization in the Netherlands and we track ships. Tracking company-owned commercial ships is no problem, but we are heavily restricted by law in what we can do with the location data of privately owned ships because people live on them.
- rayiner 9y agoIf you want privacy maybe don’t drive around on what is literally government property.
- lovich 9y agoPrivately owned boats and autonomous cars are government property?
- PeterisP 9y agoThat post probably means public roads.
- lovich 9y agoI guess I can understand the argument but I don't see what kind of world view thinks that you can go out into the world r have privacy. Roads are what connect the vast majority of all land. It's not like you can just trespass into other people's land and expect privacy either
- mannykannot 9y agoThat 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 who they communicate with, which is definitely a privacy issue, and not justified in the context of accident investigation.
- mLuby 9y agoYeah 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).
- mannykannot 9y agoIt is the people who want to expand general surveillance who would like to blur the distinction between that and accident investigation, in a bogus attempt to justify the former, and I don't think we should go along with it.
- harlanji 9y agoI eat popcorn watching the double-think these days. Laws simply weren't designed for perfect enforcement. We need a new legal framework that can handle omnipresence.
- whatshisface 9y agoMany penalties have been scaled to compensate for the expected likelihood of getting caught (so as to keep the expected value of the crime negative.) Even without the radical overhaul it sounds like you're suggesting, we'll definitely have to update at least a few things.
- 9y ago
- lostlogin 9y agoI 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.
- alsetmusic 9y ago> 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. Body camera already demonstrate that (some) police will actively disable recording devices. https://www.thedailybeast.com/baltimore-cops-turned-off-body-cameras-before-finding-drugs https://www.thedailybeast.com/baltimore-cops-turned-off-body...
- mLuby 9y agoLove the sentiment, but that suggests that the public has access to these tracking data. (We also need access to police emergency calls and locations, which we might already have, IDK.) I'd be quite surprised if the vehicle data would be made public.
- FireBeyond 9y agoHell, even if specifically requested, you'd be "amazed" at how many times, if the information looks negative it will be "lost" or the camera will be "non-functional". One department tried to claim that their cameras were "malfunctioning" in the majority of FOI / criminal cases where they were requested.
- jhayward 9y agoModern police dispatch systems already do this. The car automatically sends whenever the lights or siren are used, and it is flagged at the dispatch station if the car isn't on a call that authorizes that mode. I'm fairly sure Austin PD uses this.
- mozumder 9y agoThe public roads aren't private spaces. We allow you to drive on the public roads, in exchange for you giving up your driving privacy. This is why cops can stop you and give you a breathalyzer at will, because that's the trade-off you agreed to when you got your driver's license. If you want to encrypt your driving data, you should only drive on private roads. I never assume that driving is a right, instead of a privilege, and the best way to maintain privacy is to just not participate in public activities in the first place..
- white-flame 9y agoIn a practical sense, people DO have their own expectation of privacy in being "lost in the crowd" when in public places, regardless of what the legal systems project & rationalize. Regarding public roads, we need licensing and insurance because we can severely damage other people sharing the same space, but that's not necessarily linked to consent to eliminate privacy there. We expect as reasonable for license plates to be recorded when something bad or suspicious happens, and that things like comprehensive license plate tracking is an invasion of privacy.
- paganel 9y ago> I never assume that driving is a right, instead of a privilege, and the best way to maintain privacy is to just not participate in public activities in the first place.. You can extend that reasoning to public sidewalks. I mean, walking is indeed a "public activity" that takes place in a public space, so I assume that following your line of logic you'd be ok with any public authority following you or me (or anyone else for that matter) without any warrant, wouldn't you?
- UncleEntity 9y ago> We allow you to drive on the public roads, in exchange for you giving up your driving privacy. This is why cops can stop you and give you a breathalyzer at will, because that's the trade-off you agreed to when you got your driver's license. Uh-huh... It's been a long time so perhaps I missed the part where I signed away my constitutional protections in exchange for my privilege to operate a motorized vehicle. Unless by "at will" you mean "under reasonable suspicion" and/or "with probable cause"? Yet again you people make me sad...