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Don’t Let Police Arm Autonomous or Remote-Controlled Robots and Drones

282 points by DiabloD3 5y ago

pmoriarty 5y ago
How often have proposed limits on police power actually been effected (or effective)? It seems that every year, year after year, and decade after decade police are only ever getting more and more powerful.
- ku-man 5y ago
  To be honest, I wouldn't mind a powerful and controlling police as long as they effectively control crime. But the sad truth is criminality doesn't go down regardless of how much power is handled to the police. I don't blame too much the police as the judiciary system that considers criminals some sort of victims of society.
- doc_gunthrop 5y ago
  On the upside, three states so far have abolished qualified immunity (New Mexico joined the list earlier this year). The first was Colorado in 2020. So there's hope this may spread to other states in the coming years.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    The problem is that abuse tends to vastly outpace incremental reform. We are just now making serious strides to legalizing cannabis and decriminalizing other sorts of drug use. That's great, but stack it up against the length of the drug war, the billions involved, and the number of lives it has impacted.
TheChaplain 5y ago
Sorry to be a downer but it will happen if it hasn't already, and the biggest reason is cost savings which is pretty hard to argue against when the budget is up for discussion at the local gov. Having drones patrol large areas, running plates and face-matching against a warrant database is much quicker and cheaper than having people doing it. They're also cheaper than helicopters to follow fleeing suspects, and a bit harder to detect. I agree though it's a huge privacy issue here, but when it comes down to money it'll be a tough fight.
- JCharante 5y ago
  > Having drones patrol large areas, running plates and face-matching against a warrant database is much quicker and cheaper than having people doing it. Why would it be cheaper than metal poles with cameras attached to them? Surely stationary devices will be cheaper and safer.
  - badjeans 5y ago
    I guess a drone can just land on a roof (or even street-level)? Basically a battery powered camera that can be deployed very quickly to an area of interest.
- jMyles 5y ago
  I have no problem with any of this, and I'm a full-blown police abolitionist. I love drones and their potential for public safety assurances. However, it's a completely different discussion when we talk about arming them.
tpmx 5y ago
The Dallas police did that in 2016: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/12/us/dallas-police-robot-c4-explosives/ https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/12/us/dallas-police-robot-c4...
thepasswordis 5y ago
Unfortunately the cake is already in the oven in this. There will almost certainly be major changes to civil liberties coming as a result of the “capital insurrection”. If you want to fight against police overreach, you kindof have to fight against it even when it comes for your enemies.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  You guys are way too late. The police already have armed robots. Have already used them to kill. And police overreach is already a thing. All of it happened decades before the capitol insurrection. I'm surprised so many seem unaware of this.
GartzenDeHaes 5y ago
They're about 30 years too late on this one. Police and the FBI have been using EOD robots with shotguns for a long time now and have even killed a few people with them. In a hostage situation or standoff, they'll send in the robot with food or a phone hanging from the arm, which has a Remington semi-automatic shotgun attached to the base. Ruby Ridge is one of the more famous examples.
- gravstar 5y ago
  If you're referring to the 1991 Idaho - Ruby Ridge then no, robotics were not deployed.
  - GartzenDeHaes 5y ago
    Weaver's testimony to Congress: "Come out and get the telephone, and later on I got a chance to look at that robot sitting out there, and it had a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun on the side of it, bolted to it, aimed aright at the telephone, which later they said was empty. I do not believe that. I will never believe that. If they want to negotiate with you and they honestly want you to come out and pick up a telephone, they are not going to have a shotgun there, because they know if I see that I am not going to come out after that telephone. They was hoping I did not see it, and the way it was aimed at the house, I did not see it the first time I looked at it. The second time I looked at it, I saw the hole of that barrel pointing up, and I got to looking better, and I said, holy cow, that is a sawed-off shotgun pointed at the telephone. I did not see it the first time."
- millzlane 5y ago
  The guy in Texas was the first IIRC killed with an explosive. https://www.cnet.com/news/dallas-shooter-killed-by-bomb-equipped-robot-in-first-for-law-enforcement/ https://www.cnet.com/news/dallas-shooter-killed-by-bomb-equi...
  - frickinLasers 5y ago
    And that appears to be the first case on US soil where a robot was actually used to kill.
throwawayswede 5y ago
We shouldn't allow anyone to do this, not just the police. Although it already happens, and the American military already does this internationally. Drone attacks flourished under Obama's administration basically, look up the incident around 2013 when US military drone fired at a wedding convoy in Yemen and killed 10+ people.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Drone attacks increased with every president. The one after Obama also set his own record and even tried to hide them from reports.
- thefounder 5y ago
  If the US doesn't do it the others will(Russia, China etc).
  - throwawayswede 5y ago
    That's an empty argument. Criticizing American military and government doesn't mean you can't criticize others.
    - thefounder 5y ago
      My point is that the enemy would gain a tech and tactical advantage if you restrict the usage of robotics in your army.
      - throwawayswede 5y ago
        They already have the advantage, American military is stretched too thin because politicization think they're running an empire. The pentagon is a corrupt institute. They made triple-digit trillions in "accounting adjustments" over the years.
- drran 5y ago
  Hey, officer, send this guy to do drone job manually.
robohoe 5y ago
If the police can do it, so should private citizens. If not, then neither the police should do it.
- jMyles 5y ago
  This simple calculus needs to be the basis of police armament generally, not just robotics.
underseacables 5y ago
I’m less worried about the police doing this than I am rogue nation, groups, and individuals. It’s only a matter of time until Hamas launches an armed, low flying, autonomous drone swarm in the heart of Tel Aviv. The book “Kill Decision” by Daniel Suarez convinced me that we have less to fear from government and more to fear from private actors when it comes to lethal drones. Actually, I’m really surprised it hasn’t happened already given the low cost.
- virtuabhi 5y ago
  Terrorist organizations have started drone attacks - https://www.livemint.com/news/india/jammu-airport-attack-from-nia-taking-over-the-case-to-israeli-anti-drone-systems-10-points-11624945922576.html https://www.livemint.com/news/india/jammu-airport-attack-fro...
- throwawayswede 5y ago
  Israel uses "AI" controlled drones with no human contact to terrorize people in Gaza. Palestinians absolutely already manufacturer and deploy simple drones against Israeli military targets. Israeli terrorist army force (in a euphemistic doublespeak manner called defense force) does way more damage against civilians while Palestinians resist against an occupier.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "I'm less worried about the police doing this than I am rogue nation, groups, and individuals." Governments have killed exponentially more of their own people throughout history in genocides, pogroms, civil wars, starvations, and so on than have ever been killed by rogue nations, non-government groups or individuals.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  I always thought targeted assassination will be the primary use of autonomous weapons. And since I don't really see any obvious means of authoritative attribution, I'm not really sure how you would stop it? I think it will be ultra popular. Not only with cartels looking to rid themselves of annoyances in Mexico. Also with people looking to remove any mayor they don't like, or any police chief they don't like, or, more commonly, any boss they don't like, or even any neighbor they don't like. Most people in society would be almost a free target. Combine that with the fact that most people would have access to this tech and I could see tit-for-tat killings going on all over the place. I'm really interested in seeing what law enforcement and military thinkers are working on to solve this problem. It really will be fascinating to watch this space, because I could see it getting out of hand on a time scale shorter than we'd at first anticipate.
plank_time 5y ago
The militarization of the police in the US is a huge problem that is out of control. I was extremely disappointed that Obama didn’t not only rein in this militarization but effectively made it worse. We are now having to deal with a generation of cops who think they are GI Joe but don’t have the training. This is why so many unarmed people are getting shot by the cops, because they start their day thinking they are in Fallujah instead of Cleveland.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  I don’t understand why normal community police are armed at all. There’s absolutely no need for it.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    It's a sad fact in the USA that you might encounter an armed criminal almost anywhere. I have personally seen a bunch of crimes involving gunfire, rather than mere brandishing of weapons. On the other hand, police carry a lot of weapons, typically a handgun, pepper spray, a taser, a baton, and a heavy switchblade knife, plus a shotgun or rifle in the car. But they're relatively poorly trained and (even taking police claims at face value) deaths of civilians have resulted from confusion involving use of the wrong weapon. Another factor is that urban areas are often policed by people who live in surrounding suburban towns, and end up feeling like they're going to work in a war zone every day because they are not embedded in the communities they ostensibly serve.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      The vast majority of police never actually need their weapons. So why are they routinely carrying them? https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-look-at-police-officers-who-have-fired-their-weapon-on-duty/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-lo... There's tons of dangerous things we could carry around just in case, but we don't because they'd be seen as aggressive.
      - 5y ago
loup-vaillant 5y ago
> But police technologies malfunction all the time. > When, inevitably, a robot unjustifiably injures or kills someone--who would be held responsible? That Robocop scene where ED209 kills that poor executive used to be a joke. Though now that I think of it, Paul Verhoeven was probably serious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5NAswnEewg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5NAswnEewg
- glogla 5y ago
  It is a perfect moment since you can see the low level people panicking while the true bosses are like "ugh, this is going be so annoying to fix", completely uncaring about murdering someone. What a wonderful glimpse into corporate soul.
hermannj314 5y ago
I am not sure I agree with the EFF on this one. If the future of cars is autonomous to save lives, then the future of police could be the same for the same reasons. The 1951 version of the The Day the Earth Stood Still, with an all-powerful robot GORT that neutralized human aggression left an imprint on me. I honestly think a legion of GORTs will be better than a legion of humans - if only because I believe the end of the line for robots will be significantly better than human potential. John Henry 'loses' against the machine in the end, now matter how much we root for him.
- jMyles 5y ago
  > If the future of cars is autonomous to save lives, then the future of police could be the same for the same reasons. The presumption that there is such a thing as "the future of police" is worrisome. The now nearly 200-year experiment of designating a tiny subset of the population as exclusively responsible for public safety and law enforcement goes very poorly. The abolitionist movement is as strong today as any time since the conclusion of the American Civil War. When do we start getting serious about visualizing a future without police?
  - glogla 5y ago
    The police abolitionism is much stronger in the US, where you can trace lineage of police to slavers and union-busting hit squads, than in the rest of the civilized world.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      This is accurate. From Time's "How the U.S. Got Its Police Force"[1]: > The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.” > In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system.* Police were union-busting, as well: > For example, businessmen in the late 19th century had both connections to politicians and an image of the kinds of people most likely to go on strike and disrupt their workforce. So it’s no coincidence that by the late 1880s, all major U.S. cities had police forces. Fears of labor-union organizers and of large waves of Catholic, Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants, who looked and acted differently from the people who had dominated cities before, drove the call for the preservation of law and order, or at least the version of it promoted by dominant interests. [1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/
SMAAART 5y ago
Here's the "problem": on a worldwide level there are bad actors who will for sure deploy armed robots. Period. So, do we (we = any country in the world) want to be ahead of this technology or behind? Leading or lagging? Because the leaders will have the power to overthrow the laggards, and if history has served us as a teacher, if it MIGH happen (capability) it WILL happen. Add to the mix overpopulation and the related scarcity of resourced (e.g.: water, protein rich food) and now we have an interesting GLOBAL Game Theory case.
- sneak 5y ago
  There must not be a mine shaft gap!
- TX0098812 5y ago
  Other people may do bad things, let's... beat them to it?
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  The police don't respond to foreign threats, they enforce laws domestically and locally. Armed police drones aren't going to be used against foreign threats, they'll be used against everyday US residents while enforcing domestic and local laws.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  That's a legitimate debate, but you're exploring a military problem in a criminal context. True, gangs and drug cartels could and perhaps will use robots to gather intelligence or kill enemies, including police. But let's be realistic here, they could attack each other with faked up tanks or from stolen helicopters...but that almost never happens.
- aurizon 5y ago
  Aye, There's the rub - these bad actors who have already demonstrated the use of AI enhanced robots/drones that we must face a defeat or be beaten. Make no bones about it, there are latter day hitlers out there running countries like Iran, North Korea etc - much as we dislike the concept we can not allow them to defeat us.
yawaworht1978 5y ago
I was always wondering which one would become true first. Robocop or Terminator. With enough abuse of technological advances, both are only a matter of time. I hope humanity figures out a peaceful utopia where everyone can be fed with tablets which give all nutrients and are freely distributed, and robots do work so humans don't have to. But looking at human history, I remain sceptical, it looks like the robocop/terminator scenario is more likely. Throughout history, humans have thrived for power and wealth accumulation, by peaceful or violent means. The day might come where many people will ask "how did we permit this to happen?". It will likely happen because the politicians , generals etc will say "like this, we don't have to risk human lives". They might be remote human operated at first, but the push for autonomous beta test will be inevitable. One bug or vulnerability will make the American police violence today look like a picnic in comparison. Maybe I am totally wrong, but this is a gut feeling.
- effingwewt 5y ago
  I picture ED209 from Robocop 1. Just a matter of time I suppose. It's our children I truly fear for- as in by the time they are in their 40's who knows how bad things will be. Edit-added last stuffs.
notatelloshill 5y ago
with enough check and balances I think this is only a positive. It will lead to faster and more accurate police work. It will also take the "life was in danger" aspect away from policing in which people are killed unncessarily. A drone can target a leg of a suspect without having anyones life in danger. The police are not moral arbiters. They are policy enforcers. So you basically have a robot that has a soul and fears mortality going around right now. This is more dangerous than actually having a robot do the job. Some police are community protectors but that has gone the way of the dodo bird a long time ago. Especially in big cities.
deleted 5y ago
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andyjohnson0 5y ago
Slaughterbots (from 2018) is pretty terrifying. Do you want your local police force to have this? https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw
- trhway 5y ago
  resounding yes. With an armed drone/robot being in the line of perceived danger instead of a police the police looses that "split second decision" argument that has been letting them to kill all those people just because the shadow looked like a gun instead of a say giraffe. You remove police from the harms ways - you remove the glorification and their high-caste "above the law" status, and their union wouldn't have such huge political power, nor public support for those state budget crushing humongous pensions. Also with a robot shooting precisely there would be no need for that "stopping power" BS with illegal under Geneva hollow point bullets killing that violently that the police so likes to use (driving end result more toward death due to large blood loss and tremendous tissue damage inflicted by the hollow point - all unnecessary really). The robot(s) can just precisely disable arms and/or legs with much less severe wounds (like police in some other countries do) using smaller caliber or even just an electric shock or temporarily motor nerve blocking agent, sleeping chemicals, etc. Also the robots will treat people equally, and thus big people getting the same law enforcement treatment as the rest of us little people may force the big people to adjust the law enforcement toward more reasonable approach. (i mean for example why the corporate IT support sucks so much? Well, what you would expect giving that the execs have their separate IT. Imagine if they had to use the same IT as rank-and-file and the IT couldn't tell whether it is an exec or regular Shmoe :)
- andrew_ 5y ago
  What's the over/under on ED-209 making a comeback?
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> That’s true whether these mobile devices are remote controlled by a person or autonomously controlled by artificial intelligence, and whether the weapons are maximally lethal (like bullets) or less lethal (like tear gas) Autonomous fire control, I agree. But remote fire control on non-lethal weapons? The EFF’s argues a physically-present officer “will have better information about unfolding dangers and opportunities to de-escalate.” I want evidence. A remote officer has no threat to life. They can’t use a self defence argument in court. And they can think through things calmly. We also have more opportunity to record their inputs and actions and thus increase accountability. The “hackers will inevitably try to commandeer armed police robots” concern is real, but not insurmountable, and de-risked by limiting networked drones to non-lethal weapons. As for “capabilities of police to conduct crowd control by force” being “too great,” forcing humans into harm’s way seems like a wrong, circuitous way to address it. Police brutality is real. But so is the brutality of criminal activity. We owe this question more thought than a knee-jerk NRA-esque reaction.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Crime, including violent crime, has been on a long downward trend since 1994. > But remote fire control on non-lethal weapons? Non-lethal weapons are used for compliance, and are often abused, sometimes with fatal consequences. Turning it into a video game for the police drone operators and detaching them from it will breed more abuse. I particularly don't want to live in a world where can you get tased if you don't do what a drone tells you to do.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Turning it into a video game for the police drone operators and detaching them from it will breed more abuse Again, where is the evidence for this? We’re proposing a ban that puts people’s lives at risk. You’re willing to do that on a hunch?
argvargc 5y ago
How about we spend less time debating which horrifically powerful weapons to make or not, and more time on how to foster a society that doesn't have any use for them?
- andrew_ 5y ago
  Five thousand years of recorded history suggests that's a pipe dream. Such cultures only exist in fiction (that we know of). Utopia is often described as imaginary.
  - foobarbecue 5y ago
    Utopia literally translates to "no place."
  - toomanyducks 5y ago
    What's your argument here? That working towards something perfect is inherently a waste of effort? It should not need to be pointed out that trying to change things for the better does not have to create a utopia to be beneficial. Reducing crime in non-militant ways (and therefore a reliance on police) does not need to remove crime to be a good thing to do.
  - argvargc 5y ago
    I can reel off a list longer than recorded history of entirely unprecedented events of worldwide impact that have happened in the past few decades versus the past 5000. The imagination being entertained here is your own; that humanity's future from this point could be even remotely similar to anything that's ever happened before. Every choice we make as a whole now is of extreme importance, and almost nothing we can conceive of can be sensibly considered to be off the table.
- handmodel 5y ago
  Doesn't the solution to your second question probably involve settling the debate on not making weapons at all, anyway. Which is the first question.
AYBABTME 5y ago
I think _autonomous_ weapon systems that pick targets and fire autonomously are obviously scary. However - and this is probably not going to be popular - I think if robots are remote controlled, it's probably for the best if lawful-violence-monopoly-appliers (i.e. the state) uses them instead of putting humans out there with weapons. I think a lot of situations escalate to higher echelons of violence when the (e.g.) police officer is faced with a threat to their life and needs to quickly go up the escalation of force ladder to disable the opponent, euphemism for shooting them. If instead a robot is the agent being threatened, the equation would be much different. There would be no need to kill the human opponent, since a robot is not worth sacrificing a human life for. To me, remote controlled weapon systems are a great way to avoid unnecessary escalation of force. And escalation of force are, in my opinion, what is at the heart of most display of police violence (police cars driving into crowds, police officers shooting someone). Of course there's no denying that there are many cases where force was unjustifiably misused, but I'm an optimist at heart and I think the majority of cases isn't so, and that robotic telepresence would be a good way of defusing a lot of situations that would otherwise have escalated.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> If instead a robot is the agent being threatened, the equation would be much different. There is no need to have an armed robot then, since self defense is not necessary. It is IMHO very bad for police to shoot in domestic calls, as you never really know who the "bad guy" is, and killing someone is equivalent to saying "is someone is gonna kill some here, its gonna be me". For other situations like robbery maybe it's not as bad, but again there's no need to protect the robot.
  - AYBABTME 5y ago
    Not as big a need to protect the robot, but the robot might be trying to protect other people, and thus would require some method of disabling an attacker. Egregious example: a hostage situation, or an active shooter situation. With a remote controlled robot, you can use less lethal weapons against the attacker, since the robot can be sacrificed (whereas I assume we'd rather not sacrifice police officers).
tacojimjennings 5y ago
Let’s do it. Let’s robocop the shit out of this country.

282 points by DiabloD3 5y ago

How often have proposed limits on police power actually been effected (or effective)? It seems that every year, year after year, and decade after decade police are only ever getting more and more powerful.

ku-man 5y ago
To be honest, I wouldn't mind a powerful and controlling police as long as they effectively control crime. But the sad truth is criminality doesn't go down regardless of how much power is handled to the police. I don't blame too much the police as the judiciary system that considers criminals some sort of victims of society.
doc_gunthrop 5y ago
On the upside, three states so far have abolished qualified immunity (New Mexico joined the list earlier this year). The first was Colorado in 2020. So there's hope this may spread to other states in the coming years.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  The problem is that abuse tends to vastly outpace incremental reform. We are just now making serious strides to legalizing cannabis and decriminalizing other sorts of drug use. That's great, but stack it up against the length of the drug war, the billions involved, and the number of lives it has impacted.

TheChaplain 5y ago

Sorry to be a downer but it will happen if it hasn't already, and the biggest reason is cost savings which is pretty hard to argue against when the budget is up for discussion at the local gov. Having drones patrol large areas, running plates and face-matching against a warrant database is much quicker and cheaper than having people doing it. They're also cheaper than helicopters to follow fleeing suspects, and a bit harder to detect. I agree though it's a huge privacy issue here, but when it comes down to money it'll be a tough fight.

JCharante 5y ago
> Having drones patrol large areas, running plates and face-matching against a warrant database is much quicker and cheaper than having people doing it. Why would it be cheaper than metal poles with cameras attached to them? Surely stationary devices will be cheaper and safer.
- badjeans 5y ago
  I guess a drone can just land on a roof (or even street-level)? Basically a battery powered camera that can be deployed very quickly to an area of interest.
jMyles 5y ago
I have no problem with any of this, and I'm a full-blown police abolitionist. I love drones and their potential for public safety assurances. However, it's a completely different discussion when we talk about arming them.

tpmx 5y ago

The Dallas police did that in 2016: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/12/us/dallas-police-robot-c4-explosives/ https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/12/us/dallas-police-robot-c4...

thepasswordis 5y ago

Unfortunately the cake is already in the oven in this. There will almost certainly be major changes to civil liberties coming as a result of the “capital insurrection”. If you want to fight against police overreach, you kindof have to fight against it even when it comes for your enemies.

bilbo0s 5y ago
You guys are way too late. The police already have armed robots. Have already used them to kill. And police overreach is already a thing. All of it happened decades before the capitol insurrection. I'm surprised so many seem unaware of this.

GartzenDeHaes 5y ago

They're about 30 years too late on this one. Police and the FBI have been using EOD robots with shotguns for a long time now and have even killed a few people with them. In a hostage situation or standoff, they'll send in the robot with food or a phone hanging from the arm, which has a Remington semi-automatic shotgun attached to the base. Ruby Ridge is one of the more famous examples.

gravstar 5y ago
If you're referring to the 1991 Idaho - Ruby Ridge then no, robotics were not deployed.
- GartzenDeHaes 5y ago
  Weaver's testimony to Congress: "Come out and get the telephone, and later on I got a chance to look at that robot sitting out there, and it had a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun on the side of it, bolted to it, aimed aright at the telephone, which later they said was empty. I do not believe that. I will never believe that. If they want to negotiate with you and they honestly want you to come out and pick up a telephone, they are not going to have a shotgun there, because they know if I see that I am not going to come out after that telephone. They was hoping I did not see it, and the way it was aimed at the house, I did not see it the first time I looked at it. The second time I looked at it, I saw the hole of that barrel pointing up, and I got to looking better, and I said, holy cow, that is a sawed-off shotgun pointed at the telephone. I did not see it the first time."
millzlane 5y ago
The guy in Texas was the first IIRC killed with an explosive. https://www.cnet.com/news/dallas-shooter-killed-by-bomb-equipped-robot-in-first-for-law-enforcement/ https://www.cnet.com/news/dallas-shooter-killed-by-bomb-equi...
- frickinLasers 5y ago
  And that appears to be the first case on US soil where a robot was actually used to kill.

throwawayswede 5y ago

We shouldn't allow anyone to do this, not just the police. Although it already happens, and the American military already does this internationally. Drone attacks flourished under Obama's administration basically, look up the incident around 2013 when US military drone fired at a wedding convoy in Yemen and killed 10+ people.

NicoJuicy 5y ago
Drone attacks increased with every president. The one after Obama also set his own record and even tried to hide them from reports.
thefounder 5y ago
If the US doesn't do it the others will(Russia, China etc).
- throwawayswede 5y ago
  That's an empty argument. Criticizing American military and government doesn't mean you can't criticize others.
  - thefounder 5y ago
    My point is that the enemy would gain a tech and tactical advantage if you restrict the usage of robotics in your army.
    - throwawayswede 5y ago
      They already have the advantage, American military is stretched too thin because politicization think they're running an empire. The pentagon is a corrupt institute. They made triple-digit trillions in "accounting adjustments" over the years.
drran 5y ago
Hey, officer, send this guy to do drone job manually.

robohoe 5y ago

If the police can do it, so should private citizens. If not, then neither the police should do it.

jMyles 5y ago
This simple calculus needs to be the basis of police armament generally, not just robotics.

underseacables 5y ago

I’m less worried about the police doing this than I am rogue nation, groups, and individuals. It’s only a matter of time until Hamas launches an armed, low flying, autonomous drone swarm in the heart of Tel Aviv. The book “Kill Decision” by Daniel Suarez convinced me that we have less to fear from government and more to fear from private actors when it comes to lethal drones. Actually, I’m really surprised it hasn’t happened already given the low cost.

virtuabhi 5y ago
Terrorist organizations have started drone attacks - https://www.livemint.com/news/india/jammu-airport-attack-from-nia-taking-over-the-case-to-israeli-anti-drone-systems-10-points-11624945922576.html https://www.livemint.com/news/india/jammu-airport-attack-fro...
throwawayswede 5y ago
Israel uses "AI" controlled drones with no human contact to terrorize people in Gaza. Palestinians absolutely already manufacturer and deploy simple drones against Israeli military targets. Israeli terrorist army force (in a euphemistic doublespeak manner called defense force) does way more damage against civilians while Palestinians resist against an occupier.
pmoriarty 5y ago
"I'm less worried about the police doing this than I am rogue nation, groups, and individuals." Governments have killed exponentially more of their own people throughout history in genocides, pogroms, civil wars, starvations, and so on than have ever been killed by rogue nations, non-government groups or individuals.
bilbo0s 5y ago
I always thought targeted assassination will be the primary use of autonomous weapons. And since I don't really see any obvious means of authoritative attribution, I'm not really sure how you would stop it? I think it will be ultra popular. Not only with cartels looking to rid themselves of annoyances in Mexico. Also with people looking to remove any mayor they don't like, or any police chief they don't like, or, more commonly, any boss they don't like, or even any neighbor they don't like. Most people in society would be almost a free target. Combine that with the fact that most people would have access to this tech and I could see tit-for-tat killings going on all over the place. I'm really interested in seeing what law enforcement and military thinkers are working on to solve this problem. It really will be fascinating to watch this space, because I could see it getting out of hand on a time scale shorter than we'd at first anticipate.

plank_time 5y ago

The militarization of the police in the US is a huge problem that is out of control. I was extremely disappointed that Obama didn’t not only rein in this militarization but effectively made it worse. We are now having to deal with a generation of cops who think they are GI Joe but don’t have the training. This is why so many unarmed people are getting shot by the cops, because they start their day thinking they are in Fallujah instead of Cleveland.

chrisseaton 5y ago
I don’t understand why normal community police are armed at all. There’s absolutely no need for it.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  It's a sad fact in the USA that you might encounter an armed criminal almost anywhere. I have personally seen a bunch of crimes involving gunfire, rather than mere brandishing of weapons. On the other hand, police carry a lot of weapons, typically a handgun, pepper spray, a taser, a baton, and a heavy switchblade knife, plus a shotgun or rifle in the car. But they're relatively poorly trained and (even taking police claims at face value) deaths of civilians have resulted from confusion involving use of the wrong weapon. Another factor is that urban areas are often policed by people who live in surrounding suburban towns, and end up feeling like they're going to work in a war zone every day because they are not embedded in the communities they ostensibly serve.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    The vast majority of police never actually need their weapons. So why are they routinely carrying them? https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-look-at-police-officers-who-have-fired-their-weapon-on-duty/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-lo... There's tons of dangerous things we could carry around just in case, but we don't because they'd be seen as aggressive.
    - 5y ago

loup-vaillant 5y ago

> But police technologies malfunction all the time. > When, inevitably, a robot unjustifiably injures or kills someone--who would be held responsible? That Robocop scene where ED209 kills that poor executive used to be a joke. Though now that I think of it, Paul Verhoeven was probably serious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5NAswnEewg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5NAswnEewg

glogla 5y ago
It is a perfect moment since you can see the low level people panicking while the true bosses are like "ugh, this is going be so annoying to fix", completely uncaring about murdering someone. What a wonderful glimpse into corporate soul.

hermannj314 5y ago

I am not sure I agree with the EFF on this one. If the future of cars is autonomous to save lives, then the future of police could be the same for the same reasons. The 1951 version of the The Day the Earth Stood Still, with an all-powerful robot GORT that neutralized human aggression left an imprint on me. I honestly think a legion of GORTs will be better than a legion of humans - if only because I believe the end of the line for robots will be significantly better than human potential. John Henry 'loses' against the machine in the end, now matter how much we root for him.

jMyles 5y ago
> If the future of cars is autonomous to save lives, then the future of police could be the same for the same reasons. The presumption that there is such a thing as "the future of police" is worrisome. The now nearly 200-year experiment of designating a tiny subset of the population as exclusively responsible for public safety and law enforcement goes very poorly. The abolitionist movement is as strong today as any time since the conclusion of the American Civil War. When do we start getting serious about visualizing a future without police?
- glogla 5y ago
  The police abolitionism is much stronger in the US, where you can trace lineage of police to slavers and union-busting hit squads, than in the rest of the civilized world.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    This is accurate. From Time's "How the U.S. Got Its Police Force"[1]: > The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.” > In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system.* Police were union-busting, as well: > For example, businessmen in the late 19th century had both connections to politicians and an image of the kinds of people most likely to go on strike and disrupt their workforce. So it’s no coincidence that by the late 1880s, all major U.S. cities had police forces. Fears of labor-union organizers and of large waves of Catholic, Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants, who looked and acted differently from the people who had dominated cities before, drove the call for the preservation of law and order, or at least the version of it promoted by dominant interests. [1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/

SMAAART 5y ago

Here's the "problem": on a worldwide level there are bad actors who will for sure deploy armed robots. Period. So, do we (we = any country in the world) want to be ahead of this technology or behind? Leading or lagging? Because the leaders will have the power to overthrow the laggards, and if history has served us as a teacher, if it MIGH happen (capability) it WILL happen. Add to the mix overpopulation and the related scarcity of resourced (e.g.: water, protein rich food) and now we have an interesting GLOBAL Game Theory case.

sneak 5y ago
There must not be a mine shaft gap!
TX0098812 5y ago
Other people may do bad things, let's... beat them to it?
heavyset_go 5y ago
The police don't respond to foreign threats, they enforce laws domestically and locally. Armed police drones aren't going to be used against foreign threats, they'll be used against everyday US residents while enforcing domestic and local laws.
anigbrowl 5y ago
That's a legitimate debate, but you're exploring a military problem in a criminal context. True, gangs and drug cartels could and perhaps will use robots to gather intelligence or kill enemies, including police. But let's be realistic here, they could attack each other with faked up tanks or from stolen helicopters...but that almost never happens.
aurizon 5y ago
Aye, There's the rub - these bad actors who have already demonstrated the use of AI enhanced robots/drones that we must face a defeat or be beaten. Make no bones about it, there are latter day hitlers out there running countries like Iran, North Korea etc - much as we dislike the concept we can not allow them to defeat us.

yawaworht1978 5y ago

I was always wondering which one would become true first. Robocop or Terminator. With enough abuse of technological advances, both are only a matter of time. I hope humanity figures out a peaceful utopia where everyone can be fed with tablets which give all nutrients and are freely distributed, and robots do work so humans don't have to. But looking at human history, I remain sceptical, it looks like the robocop/terminator scenario is more likely. Throughout history, humans have thrived for power and wealth accumulation, by peaceful or violent means. The day might come where many people will ask "how did we permit this to happen?". It will likely happen because the politicians , generals etc will say "like this, we don't have to risk human lives". They might be remote human operated at first, but the push for autonomous beta test will be inevitable. One bug or vulnerability will make the American police violence today look like a picnic in comparison. Maybe I am totally wrong, but this is a gut feeling.

effingwewt 5y ago
I picture ED209 from Robocop 1. Just a matter of time I suppose. It's our children I truly fear for- as in by the time they are in their 40's who knows how bad things will be. Edit-added last stuffs.

notatelloshill 5y ago

with enough check and balances I think this is only a positive. It will lead to faster and more accurate police work. It will also take the "life was in danger" aspect away from policing in which people are killed unncessarily. A drone can target a leg of a suspect without having anyones life in danger. The police are not moral arbiters. They are policy enforcers. So you basically have a robot that has a soul and fears mortality going around right now. This is more dangerous than actually having a robot do the job. Some police are community protectors but that has gone the way of the dodo bird a long time ago. Especially in big cities.

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andyjohnson0 5y ago

Slaughterbots (from 2018) is pretty terrifying. Do you want your local police force to have this? https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw

trhway 5y ago
resounding yes. With an armed drone/robot being in the line of perceived danger instead of a police the police looses that "split second decision" argument that has been letting them to kill all those people just because the shadow looked like a gun instead of a say giraffe. You remove police from the harms ways - you remove the glorification and their high-caste "above the law" status, and their union wouldn't have such huge political power, nor public support for those state budget crushing humongous pensions. Also with a robot shooting precisely there would be no need for that "stopping power" BS with illegal under Geneva hollow point bullets killing that violently that the police so likes to use (driving end result more toward death due to large blood loss and tremendous tissue damage inflicted by the hollow point - all unnecessary really). The robot(s) can just precisely disable arms and/or legs with much less severe wounds (like police in some other countries do) using smaller caliber or even just an electric shock or temporarily motor nerve blocking agent, sleeping chemicals, etc. Also the robots will treat people equally, and thus big people getting the same law enforcement treatment as the rest of us little people may force the big people to adjust the law enforcement toward more reasonable approach. (i mean for example why the corporate IT support sucks so much? Well, what you would expect giving that the execs have their separate IT. Imagine if they had to use the same IT as rank-and-file and the IT couldn't tell whether it is an exec or regular Shmoe :)
andrew_ 5y ago
What's the over/under on ED-209 making a comeback?

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> That’s true whether these mobile devices are remote controlled by a person or autonomously controlled by artificial intelligence, and whether the weapons are maximally lethal (like bullets) or less lethal (like tear gas) Autonomous fire control, I agree. But remote fire control on non-lethal weapons? The EFF’s argues a physically-present officer “will have better information about unfolding dangers and opportunities to de-escalate.” I want evidence. A remote officer has no threat to life. They can’t use a self defence argument in court. And they can think through things calmly. We also have more opportunity to record their inputs and actions and thus increase accountability. The “hackers will inevitably try to commandeer armed police robots” concern is real, but not insurmountable, and de-risked by limiting networked drones to non-lethal weapons. As for “capabilities of police to conduct crowd control by force” being “too great,” forcing humans into harm’s way seems like a wrong, circuitous way to address it. Police brutality is real. But so is the brutality of criminal activity. We owe this question more thought than a knee-jerk NRA-esque reaction.

heavyset_go 5y ago
Crime, including violent crime, has been on a long downward trend since 1994. > But remote fire control on non-lethal weapons? Non-lethal weapons are used for compliance, and are often abused, sometimes with fatal consequences. Turning it into a video game for the police drone operators and detaching them from it will breed more abuse. I particularly don't want to live in a world where can you get tased if you don't do what a drone tells you to do.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Turning it into a video game for the police drone operators and detaching them from it will breed more abuse Again, where is the evidence for this? We’re proposing a ban that puts people’s lives at risk. You’re willing to do that on a hunch?

argvargc 5y ago

How about we spend less time debating which horrifically powerful weapons to make or not, and more time on how to foster a society that doesn't have any use for them?

andrew_ 5y ago
Five thousand years of recorded history suggests that's a pipe dream. Such cultures only exist in fiction (that we know of). Utopia is often described as imaginary.
- foobarbecue 5y ago
  Utopia literally translates to "no place."
- toomanyducks 5y ago
  What's your argument here? That working towards something perfect is inherently a waste of effort? It should not need to be pointed out that trying to change things for the better does not have to create a utopia to be beneficial. Reducing crime in non-militant ways (and therefore a reliance on police) does not need to remove crime to be a good thing to do.
- argvargc 5y ago
  I can reel off a list longer than recorded history of entirely unprecedented events of worldwide impact that have happened in the past few decades versus the past 5000. The imagination being entertained here is your own; that humanity's future from this point could be even remotely similar to anything that's ever happened before. Every choice we make as a whole now is of extreme importance, and almost nothing we can conceive of can be sensibly considered to be off the table.
handmodel 5y ago
Doesn't the solution to your second question probably involve settling the debate on not making weapons at all, anyway. Which is the first question.

AYBABTME 5y ago

I think _autonomous_ weapon systems that pick targets and fire autonomously are obviously scary. However - and this is probably not going to be popular - I think if robots are remote controlled, it's probably for the best if lawful-violence-monopoly-appliers (i.e. the state) uses them instead of putting humans out there with weapons. I think a lot of situations escalate to higher echelons of violence when the (e.g.) police officer is faced with a threat to their life and needs to quickly go up the escalation of force ladder to disable the opponent, euphemism for shooting them. If instead a robot is the agent being threatened, the equation would be much different. There would be no need to kill the human opponent, since a robot is not worth sacrificing a human life for. To me, remote controlled weapon systems are a great way to avoid unnecessary escalation of force. And escalation of force are, in my opinion, what is at the heart of most display of police violence (police cars driving into crowds, police officers shooting someone). Of course there's no denying that there are many cases where force was unjustifiably misused, but I'm an optimist at heart and I think the majority of cases isn't so, and that robotic telepresence would be a good way of defusing a lot of situations that would otherwise have escalated.

phkahler 5y ago
>> If instead a robot is the agent being threatened, the equation would be much different. There is no need to have an armed robot then, since self defense is not necessary. It is IMHO very bad for police to shoot in domestic calls, as you never really know who the "bad guy" is, and killing someone is equivalent to saying "is someone is gonna kill some here, its gonna be me". For other situations like robbery maybe it's not as bad, but again there's no need to protect the robot.
- AYBABTME 5y ago
  Not as big a need to protect the robot, but the robot might be trying to protect other people, and thus would require some method of disabling an attacker. Egregious example: a hostage situation, or an active shooter situation. With a remote controlled robot, you can use less lethal weapons against the attacker, since the robot can be sacrificed (whereas I assume we'd rather not sacrifice police officers).

tacojimjennings 5y ago

Let’s do it. Let’s robocop the shit out of this country.