Police in San Mateo, Calif., posted Monday on social media that they had apprehended a pair of teenagers from a Waymo driverless robotaxi after the company alerted authorities to suspected criminal activity.It's the latest incident involving video surveillance of passengers and others by autonomous vehicles — raising questions about the limits of privacy in such vehicles.The Facebook post by the San Mateo County Police said: "Parents do you know where your teens are? @waymo does!"The 15-year-olds were allegedly drinking alcohol and shooting toy guns from the car, according to the police.
They said Waymo's systems detected behavior that then triggered a safety response, after which the company disabled the vehicle and contacted police.Waymo's cars, equipped with an array of cameras, microphones and other sensors to monitor passengers and other nearby vehicles, are becoming more common in cities across the United States.Experts say the detention of the two teens in San Mateo highlights a potential — but not inevitable — trade-off between privacy and convenience.
It also questions the extent to which companies similar to Waymo are required to hand over private data, including audio and video of passengers, in situations where a crime is suspected.NPR reached out to Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, for comment on the details of the San Mateo incident and how the company responded, but did not hear back.But on its website, the company says that as many as 29 cameras in its autonomous cars provide an all-around view and "are designed with high dynamic range and thermal stability, to see in both daylight and low-light conditions, and tackle more complex environments.""There already exist laws that govern duty to report or even duty to protect" for carriers such as Waymo, according to Alessandro Acquisti, a professor of information technology at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
"The privacy problems arise when and if driverless ca...