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Totally fair to be concerned about pervasive surveillance for the _potential_ of privacy violation. Not sure what to do about that. That being said, just speak

Totally fair to be concerned about pervasive surveillance for the _potential_ of privacy violation. Not sure what to do about that. That being said, just speaking with some knowledge of current state: the scans don't live forever. At this point, all the data they collect is way too big to store even for a short period. They'll only keep data in scenarios that are helpful for improving driving performance, which is a tiny subset. Personally identifiable information is also redacted. You should probably be more worried about what gmail knows about you than Waymo.

Lammy 1y ago
True; I should have said metadata and not just data since you're right that the volume of raw images would be too big to store indefinitely. It's way more feasible to process the raw images and store the inferences, like number of persons visible in last 5 seconds, or dates and times a person who looks like me has been seen by a Waymo while my particular Android phone is nearby, or dates and times they have seen [my OCRed car number plate]. Flock is the same way. For example here's the Flock privacy policy from one of SF's fine local shopping centers: https://www.stonestowngalleria.com/en/visit/lpr-privacy-policy/ https://www.stonestowngalleria.com/en/visit/lpr-privacy-poli... > Video Clips captured by the LPR system will automatically be deleted after 30 days; although Images are deleted when no longer needed, the data obtained from the Images may be retained indefinitely. Should any information from the LPR Dashboard be needed to assist with a security or law enforcement matter, it may be retained indefinitely, in paper and electronic form, as part of the security file until it is determined it is no longer needed; in addition, it may be shared with local law enforcement who may retain it in accordance with their own retention policy. If anyone can share a link to a similar IRL privacy policy for Waymo I would love to read it. The one on their website is conspicuously labeled Waymo Web Privacy Policy lol
- vitus 1y ago
  > If anyone can share a link to a similar IRL privacy policy for Waymo I would love to read it. For riders, there's the Waymo One privacy policy: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9184840?sjid=5254444386753770380-NA https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9184840?sjid=5254444... Beyond that, https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9190819?hl=en https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9190819?hl=en seems to be more relevant to your interests.
  - Lammy 1y ago
    That's still not really what I'm looking for. I am curious about a “what we keep, for how long” policy for the sensors on the outside of the cars like the Flock one I linked above. Your second link does mention cameras and microphones outside the car but doesn't mention what they keep (full video? stills? LIDAR? RADAR?) or for how long: “Waymo’s cameras also see the world in context, as a human would, but with a 360° field of view. Our high-resolution vision system can help us detect important things in the world around us like traffic lights and construction zones. Our systems are not designed to use this data to identify individual people.” The “Our view on your privacy” section links to the same page as your first link, and that page's “What we keep” section is explicitly only about riders: “We will retain information we associate with your Waymo account, such as name, email and trip history, while your account remains active.”
    - vitus 1y ago
      Right. I merely shared the closest thing that I could find, and as mentioned, the first link is specific to the ride-hailing service. Notably, in the second link, there is a reference to sharing information with law enforcement, but it's generally lacking in details.
mort96 1y ago
It's Google we're talking about. In no way do I trust them to take pictures of me using their city-wide camera network and not use face/body recognition to keep track of where I go, for the purposes of targeting advertisement.
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  People are able to get their very boring suburban house that you can find pictures of the interior on zillow of blurred for years (indefinitely?) on google street view. If they were so cartoonishly evil they would not let you do that.
  - mort96 1y ago
    Google is pretty good at not letting other people see your information. They're not good at preventing themselves from using that information.
    - kajecounterhack 1y ago
      I agree in principle that a privately run company could use information in nefarious ways internally, and that barring any additional knowledge you should not trust them. That being said, I have an anecdote as a former googler: the reality with Google though is very thoughtful and favorable for users if you ask Googlers who've worked on their software products. There are audit trails that can result in instant termination if it's determined that you accessed data without proper business justification. I've known an engineer who was fired for an insufficiently justified user lookup (and later re-hired when they did a deeper look -- hilariously they made this person go through orientation again). And safeguards / approvals required to access data, so it's not just any joe shmoe who can access the data. Wanna use some data from another Google product for your Google product? You're SOL in most cases. Even accessing training data sourced from youtube videos was so difficult that people grumbled "if I were outside of Google at OpenAI or something I'd have an easier time getting hold of youtube videos -- I'd just scrape them." This isn't to say any of this is a fair thing to make decisions on for most people, because companies change and welp how do you actually know they're doing the right thing? Imo stronger industry-wide regulations would actually help Google because they already built so much infra to support this stuff, and forcing everyone else to spend energy getting on their level would be a competitive advantage.

Lammy 1y ago

True; I should have said metadata and not just data since you're right that the volume of raw images would be too big to store indefinitely. It's way more feasible to process the raw images and store the inferences, like number of persons visible in last 5 seconds, or dates and times a person who looks like me has been seen by a Waymo while my particular Android phone is nearby, or dates and times they have seen [my OCRed car number plate]. Flock is the same way. For example here's the Flock privacy policy from one of SF's fine local shopping centers: https://www.stonestowngalleria.com/en/visit/lpr-privacy-policy/ https://www.stonestowngalleria.com/en/visit/lpr-privacy-poli... > Video Clips captured by the LPR system will automatically be deleted after 30 days; although Images are deleted when no longer needed, the data obtained from the Images may be retained indefinitely. Should any information from the LPR Dashboard be needed to assist with a security or law enforcement matter, it may be retained indefinitely, in paper and electronic form, as part of the security file until it is determined it is no longer needed; in addition, it may be shared with local law enforcement who may retain it in accordance with their own retention policy. If anyone can share a link to a similar IRL privacy policy for Waymo I would love to read it. The one on their website is conspicuously labeled Waymo Web Privacy Policy lol

vitus 1y ago
> If anyone can share a link to a similar IRL privacy policy for Waymo I would love to read it. For riders, there's the Waymo One privacy policy: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9184840?sjid=5254444386753770380-NA https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9184840?sjid=5254444... Beyond that, https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9190819?hl=en https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9190819?hl=en seems to be more relevant to your interests.
- Lammy 1y ago
  That's still not really what I'm looking for. I am curious about a “what we keep, for how long” policy for the sensors on the outside of the cars like the Flock one I linked above. Your second link does mention cameras and microphones outside the car but doesn't mention what they keep (full video? stills? LIDAR? RADAR?) or for how long: “Waymo’s cameras also see the world in context, as a human would, but with a 360° field of view. Our high-resolution vision system can help us detect important things in the world around us like traffic lights and construction zones. Our systems are not designed to use this data to identify individual people.” The “Our view on your privacy” section links to the same page as your first link, and that page's “What we keep” section is explicitly only about riders: “We will retain information we associate with your Waymo account, such as name, email and trip history, while your account remains active.”
  - vitus 1y ago
    Right. I merely shared the closest thing that I could find, and as mentioned, the first link is specific to the ride-hailing service. Notably, in the second link, there is a reference to sharing information with law enforcement, but it's generally lacking in details.

mort96 1y ago

It's Google we're talking about. In no way do I trust them to take pictures of me using their city-wide camera network and not use face/body recognition to keep track of where I go, for the purposes of targeting advertisement.

kjkjadksj 1y ago
People are able to get their very boring suburban house that you can find pictures of the interior on zillow of blurred for years (indefinitely?) on google street view. If they were so cartoonishly evil they would not let you do that.
- mort96 1y ago
  Google is pretty good at not letting other people see your information. They're not good at preventing themselves from using that information.
  - kajecounterhack 1y ago
    I agree in principle that a privately run company could use information in nefarious ways internally, and that barring any additional knowledge you should not trust them. That being said, I have an anecdote as a former googler: the reality with Google though is very thoughtful and favorable for users if you ask Googlers who've worked on their software products. There are audit trails that can result in instant termination if it's determined that you accessed data without proper business justification. I've known an engineer who was fired for an insufficiently justified user lookup (and later re-hired when they did a deeper look -- hilariously they made this person go through orientation again). And safeguards / approvals required to access data, so it's not just any joe shmoe who can access the data. Wanna use some data from another Google product for your Google product? You're SOL in most cases. Even accessing training data sourced from youtube videos was so difficult that people grumbled "if I were outside of Google at OpenAI or something I'd have an easier time getting hold of youtube videos -- I'd just scrape them." This isn't to say any of this is a fair thing to make decisions on for most people, because companies change and welp how do you actually know they're doing the right thing? Imo stronger industry-wide regulations would actually help Google because they already built so much infra to support this stuff, and forcing everyone else to spend energy getting on their level would be a competitive advantage.