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A distributed system would let people behave in ways advantageous to themselves, to everyone else's detriment, by causing their safety systems to yield to the d

A distributed system would let people behave in ways advantageous to themselves, to everyone else's detriment, by causing their safety systems to yield to the dangerous driver (i.e. what happens currently). If there's nothing stopping people from creating an "everyone needs to wait for me" situation, they will.

EvanAnderson 11y ago
That's a problem that has to be worked around in a system with a centralized control architecture, too. Presumably there will be some safety systems acting autonomously in the car (latency and network reliability being what they are) and those systems will be gamed. To boil my position down: I want to see an Internet-style architecture rather than a "Bell System" style architecture. I'd rather have "smarter cars" with "dumber roads" and as little mandated centralized control as possible. In a decentralized system attestation of identity (likely tied to one or more existing civil methods) and attribution of actions observed to individual vehicles would definitely have to be a component. Any identity system cannot approach 100% reliability, but if every car is able to report to law enforcement (or private driver reputation-tracking networks) the observations it makes of the behavior of other drivers I would expect that "cheaters" would be visible as statistical outliers. "The car to my left doesn't answer as a known transponder challenge/response in the vehicle reputation database I am querying. I am going to assign a lower priority to any non-emergency events it is reporting to me." "Hey-- that car just started broadcasting a different transponder response. Something is really, really funny where. I'm going to alert cars in my proximity that something is up so that they can physically identify the car with their LIDAR / imaging / etc. and treat it cautiously. If enough funny-business occurs eventually law enforcement will be alerted and physical interdiction can occur." "According to the vehicle database I'm subscribed to this car always traverses statistically similar routes 15% more quickly than other cars. Other cars in its proximity on these routes have their traversal slowed as compared to their traversal of the same routes when this care is not present. It sounds like funny business is at-play. I'm going to cast a vote for this car to be more likely to be subject to an inspection." etc. I'd prefer such a world to not involve the ability for totalitarian (or-- ahem-- certain republics who purport to be democratic in nature and are filled with power-mad bureaucrats conducting dragnet surveillance) to use these tools for public surveillance, but I'm resigned to that fate. Self-driving cars themselves aren't a threat to freedom, but the infrastructures of surveillance and control that will grow up around them almost certainly will be. Freedom aside, whatever happens is going to end up being an information security nightmare. Too many disciplines who have never had any exposure to information security are going to intersect with this technology, and each of those intersections is going to be ripe with all kinds of interesting threats and failure modes. People will be inconvenienced. People will be robbed, physically assaulted, and violated. People will die. I have no illusions that criminals are unsophisticated and that these systems won't be attacked in every possible way.

EvanAnderson 11y ago

That's a problem that has to be worked around in a system with a centralized control architecture, too. Presumably there will be some safety systems acting autonomously in the car (latency and network reliability being what they are) and those systems will be gamed. To boil my position down: I want to see an Internet-style architecture rather than a "Bell System" style architecture. I'd rather have "smarter cars" with "dumber roads" and as little mandated centralized control as possible. In a decentralized system attestation of identity (likely tied to one or more existing civil methods) and attribution of actions observed to individual vehicles would definitely have to be a component. Any identity system cannot approach 100% reliability, but if every car is able to report to law enforcement (or private driver reputation-tracking networks) the observations it makes of the behavior of other drivers I would expect that "cheaters" would be visible as statistical outliers. "The car to my left doesn't answer as a known transponder challenge/response in the vehicle reputation database I am querying. I am going to assign a lower priority to any non-emergency events it is reporting to me." "Hey-- that car just started broadcasting a different transponder response. Something is really, really funny where. I'm going to alert cars in my proximity that something is up so that they can physically identify the car with their LIDAR / imaging / etc. and treat it cautiously. If enough funny-business occurs eventually law enforcement will be alerted and physical interdiction can occur." "According to the vehicle database I'm subscribed to this car always traverses statistically similar routes 15% more quickly than other cars. Other cars in its proximity on these routes have their traversal slowed as compared to their traversal of the same routes when this care is not present. It sounds like funny business is at-play. I'm going to cast a vote for this car to be more likely to be subject to an inspection." etc. I'd prefer such a world to not involve the ability for totalitarian (or-- ahem-- certain republics who purport to be democratic in nature and are filled with power-mad bureaucrats conducting dragnet surveillance) to use these tools for public surveillance, but I'm resigned to that fate. Self-driving cars themselves aren't a threat to freedom, but the infrastructures of surveillance and control that will grow up around them almost certainly will be. Freedom aside, whatever happens is going to end up being an information security nightmare. Too many disciplines who have never had any exposure to information security are going to intersect with this technology, and each of those intersections is going to be ripe with all kinds of interesting threats and failure modes. People will be inconvenienced. People will be robbed, physically assaulted, and violated. People will die. I have no illusions that criminals are unsophisticated and that these systems won't be attacked in every possible way.