Your data is no longer enough: Silicon Valley now films the city continuously.
Privacy advocates in the United States have criticized the complacency of some self-driving vehicle companies with the police. The latter indeed seem quite inclined to share the hundreds of hours of videos taken while driving, providing a network of mobile surveillance cameras.
What are they accused of?
In December 2021, an Uber driver is murdered, and the San Francisco police, without evidence or witnesses, find themselves at an impasse. The only surveillance camera available at the scene isn’t much help at first sight, until one of the investigators spots that many cars from Waymo (a Google-owned company that puts self-driving vehicles available) pass on an axis close to the crime scene. He then has a revelation when he realizes that all these cars are stacks of cameras and sensors. He asks for a warrant to seize hours and hours of tapes of those who were present in the area at the estimated time of the crime.
This mandate is quickly granted by a judge, then by Waymo itself, which has no problem providing the videos. This is the first known case in which such cameras have been used for a police investigation, but not the last. At least 9 similar requests were made in San Francisco, without counting those which remain perhaps protected by the secrecy of the instruction.
A slippery slope
Not surprisingly, those extra cameras offered on a silver platter to law enforcement by private companies aren’t to everyone’s taste. The measure is criticized by lawyers and privacy groups. For the latter, moreover, it is urgent to think about the practice and to supervise it, because Waymo and its competitors, like Cruise, are rapidly expanding into new American cities. This has the side effect of expanding the already sprawling surveillance system available to US police officers.
Privacy activist Chris Gillard explained to Bloomberg : “ It’s been a long time since we’ve known that these are ultimately surveillance cameras on wheels. ” For him, “ we are supposed to […] not to be monitored unless they are suspected of a crime, but this technology is gradually taking away that possibility. In a similar vein, some “smart” systems, like Amazon’s smart doorbells, can be made available to police or Amazon, sometimes even without the consent of their owners.
Asked about the practice, spokespersons for the company Waymo did not deny, explaining that they checked each request made by the authorities to ensure that it complied with the law. But if necessary, providing these records does not seem to be a problem. The Cruise company, for its part, ensures that it does not provide ” only the minimum information to the authorities, because, read this next sentence without a smile, “ privacy is extremely important to us “.
There is no a priori no known case in France, but it is certain that after the law enforcement drones and the authorization given to the police to remotely capture telephone microphones and cameras, some at the Ministry of the Interior must already be salivating in working on this possibility.
Source : Bloomberg
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