Google's Cute Cars And The Ugly End Of Driving
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mathonan/googles-cute-cars-and-the-ugly-end-of-driving#.yvrGvxNqOO
The main thing you should know about autonomous vehicles is that they
are utterly inevitable.
- - -
Leaving aside technical, financial, and cultural issues for the moment,
the question I'd really like to see us thinking about now -- before we
really need the full answers -- is how we're going to prevent mass
government abuse of these vehicles.
The amount of video and other data these vehicles will be collecting
will be immense. You can bet governments will want it, both in
individual cases and en masse. Governments will want to know where every
car is or was, every moment. They will make license plate scanners
totally obsolete.
They will want remote control capabilities. Whether or not vehicles can
be started. Whether they will keep running or automatically pull over to
the side of the road to await a police vehicle (or drive into the
nearest police station, with the windows and doors locked?) if they
believe a suspect is inside. Whether or not you can drive if you haven't
been paying your bills or are having a legal dispute. They will want the
ability to block all vehicles from areas where they don't want to be
observed, and shoo all vehicles already there out of the area. This
means individual and en masse remote control. Pretty powerful stuff.
And remote control is likely to come irrespective of law enforcement,
because it's the most practical way to deal with situations beyond the
scope the car's AI (unusual weather or road conditions, accident and
construction sites with authorities giving voice instructions to
drivers, etc.), assuming a human driver capable of taking over in such
situations is not present.
Remote control capabilities for authorities are also likely to be
mandated at some point due to LEO concerns (already being widely
discussed) of unoccupied vehicles (the "vehicle on demand" scenario)
being used in criminal or terrorist plots.
Most of these issues have already been covered quite convincingly by
prescient science fiction for many decades.
Autonomous vehicle proponents would do well to consider how they're
going to respond to government demands along these lines. 'Cause you can
be sure that there are teams already in governments around the world
brainstorming about their side of this equation.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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