Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

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Yes. Well, not exactly wave guns around, but say and do stupid stuff? Not in a taxi around a human driver, no. And not in a subway car with people other than me and my friends, no. But your question had an “or” in it. If we had nerf guns and no one else was there to witness? It’s not unimaginable that someone might get a nerf dart to the ear when they didn’t expect it.

My wife and I like watching real-life police detective shows. Sometimes we discuss mistakes the killer made, and how we’d avoid them. “I wouldn’t kill anyone, but if I did, I wouldn’t cheap out and keep the clothes I wore to do it instead of tossing them into a river.” Of course we’re not going to do that, but it’s a puzzle to solve, so we try to solve it. We would not have those conversations around a taxi driver or a crowded subway, lest someone overhear and get the wrong idea. On an empty subway or Waymo? Yeah, sure. And if BART or my cab reported us for planning a murder, I’d be livid enough to plan how to murder the computer that made the decision to rat me out.

Good thing Waymo yells you you're being monitored then.

And the sign along the highway says my speed might be monitored by airplane, but I don’t want to live where that means a surveillance drone is flying along side me at all times. Consenting to let a taxi record me in case it comes up later that I did something bad and they want to have footage of it is one thing. But now we know Waymo is a little Flock tattletale, and people generally aren’t ok with their robocab proactively narcing on them.

So don't use it? You seem to want the benefits of the service but without having to comport your behavior accordingly.

Other countries already have highway cameras track speed and automatically issue citations. I am happy for Americans to petition their government against implementing that, but I won't pretend it's anything other than a desire to break the law for personal gratification.

I’m anti surveillance but I don’t get this take.

Every uber driver I’ve been ive been in has an inside dashcam to protect themselves and their property. I would do the same thing if I were them.

Waymo has every right to monitor their property and if someone does something illegal in their car why would they not report? An Uber driver would do the same, as would I. Otherwise you are an accomplice.

This comparison to Flock is bunk. Flock cameras are in public places and paid for with public dollars. I don’t want that.

But in a surveillance state, every private citizen should be keeping their own footage. Nobody is going to share theirs with you.

But what if I've done nothing illegal and they only think I have?

Again, I believe every private citizen should keep their own footage for exactly this reason.

Other people’s footage will only be used against you.

It is a real big shame that Meta is the only one pushing personal video capture right now. It has tainted the idea of personal surveillance as a counter to all this madness.

> I’m anti surveillance but I don’t get this take.

Some people foresee a future where self-driving cars are the norm. The big prize being fewer deaths on the road (about 40k people per year in the USA) which is a pretty big prize.

If today's self-driving cars are heavy on the AI surveillance of passengers, and you foresee self-driving cars doing 90% of journeys within your lifetime, that's a pretty ominous situation.

Especially if you interpret it in light of EU driver-facing-camera mandates.

I would love it if self driving cars became the norm, and I could just hop into my car, doze off, and arrive at my destination. Key word being my car, and not Waymo's car. A future where every car is self driving is a utopia, but a future where every car is hired and actually owned by a company (spying on you) is a dystopia.

We should try to separate "self driving" from "owned and operated by someone else." One is good and one is very bad.

It depends on if you think private surveillance should exist to help the property owner in court, after something happens to them, e.g. the taxi driver getting robbed or the Waymo getting vandalized, or if you think private surveillance should exist solely to pipe any and all actual or imagined crimes to law enforcement in real time.

Private surveillance that immediately sends any and all crimes to law enforcement is indistinguishable from government surveillance and should treated the same way.

> Private surveillance that immediately sends any and all crimes to law enforcement is indistinguishable from government surveillance and should treated the same way.

Don’t use Snapchat then…

https://www.gadgetreview.com/student-teacher-sent-a-private-...

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