Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Driverless cars and the future of law enforcement

The Texas Tribune has a story out on a new report (pdf) from UT-Austin's Center for Transportation Research that opens thusly: "Self-driving cars once seemed the stuff of science fiction. But with such projects from companies like Google already being showcased in Texas, lawmakers and transportation officials see an opportunity to use new technology to relieve congestion and improve safety in the rapidly growing state."

Volvo has suggested they'll have cars on the market by 2020 that are "impossible to crash"; the Tribune estimates driverless cars will be marketed to the public by 2025. And of course, it'll take some time to transition to the new tech and/or retrofit older vehicles. But a couple of decades from now, when the technology has been well-established, one can foresee a day when insurance companies may charge more or even refuse to cover people driving without such high-tech crash prevention technology.

From a traffic safety perspective, self-driving cars can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned. When it finally happens, though, it's going to change law enforcement forever. For starters, no more drunk drivers, roadside breathalyzers, DWI cases in court, or for that matter $1,000 per year surcharges . Ethan Couch could be as drunk as he wanted in Google's driverless car and get home safely every time. But the even bigger change could be redirecting law enforcement away from the traffic stop as their primary enforcement strategy, since presumably vehicles would be programmed to obey the traffic laws. In that case, what would become of law enforcement's much-beloved pretext stop? As pointed out in this Grits post from January:
In 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (pdf), 59.2% of all citizen contacts with police were traffic related. That year, police conducted searches at about 5% of traffic stops nationally, discovering contraband in about one out of every10 searches. While most drivers (84.5%) thought they were pulled over for good cause, an overwhelming majority of drivers searched, said BJS, said the search was "perceived as not legitimate." Police arrested 2.6% of drivers they stopped that year.

When police no longer have traffic enforcement as a pretext for getting around the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement in this country will lose what's become a primary crime fighting strategy. In that sense, Grits views the focus on traffic enforcement and pretext stops as an example of short-term, numbers-driven myopia. Just as fishermen fish where the fish are, law enforcement focuses on traffic enforcement not just to prevent crashes but also because that's the most cost-effective way to maximize arrests for other offenses, allowing police to find contraband when they otherwise would have no cause to stop, much less search average citizens. For now that makes sense if their goal is to maximize arrests. But police seeking to maximize arrests in the future may have to rely on different tactics that today they tend to downplay, like investigating and solving reported crime.
Overall, I'd view such a shift in law enforcement tactics and culture as a good thing.

On the negative side, the privacy implications are fairly profound because GPS tracking is pivotal to the functioning of driverless cars. There would need to be some way to ensure anonymity before driverless cars are unleashed en masse. That's not an insurmountable problem, but if driverless cars rolled out in large numbers without some sort of anonymizing feature, it would be a privacy concern on the scale of the NSA mining cell-phone location data.

There will be pros and cons to change but make no mistake: In the words of Sam Cooke, "Change is gonna come."

MORE: Here's a piece from Forbes on the massive amounts of data accumulated by new cars and potential privacy implications. The author also articulates some of the limits of anonymizing vehicle data.

12 comments:

  1. Might be a bit unhealthy for the likes of Rosemary Lehmbergs in Travis County. It'll be an excuse to get hammered around the clock without worrying about those pesky DWI warrior deputies and officers. Oh wait; she does that anyway.

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  2. Grits, you bring up the most probable con in aforementioned technology. Lets hope to remain anonymous won't turn out to be an arduous task. And would it be the end of the over criminalization of DWI's. No need for DPS checkpoints. For those that will be on probation or parole (will be used to further immobilize those on supervision.) ; FORGET ABOUT IT!

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  3. Even if the vehicles won't be equipped with features and mechanisms to remain anonymous. I anticipate a market for virtual programs that will, stay ahead of government. Just think, even the German Chancellor Angela Merkel would appreciate such programs.

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  4. There needs to be a distinction between collecting information and actually analyzing or looking at it. A lot of the NSA activity is capturing data that would be lost and storing it for possible future use. The question becomes "under what conditions and protections can the data be analyzed or studied in ways that identify individuals". Having a data archive can be useful in solving crime after the fact, when a warrant to look at the data could be obtained with specific purpose presented to the magistrate. My understanding is that most of the issue with the data being looked at derives from rogue employees and contractors like Snowden, rather than systematic approved examination of data that identifies an individual.

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  5. I disagree, An Attorney. If I've done nothing wrong, the government is not justified in tracking my every movement just in case sometime in the future they want to accuse me of something. I consider your collection/analysis dichotomy a specious distinction.

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  6. An Attorney must be a prosecutor!

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  7. It can't come soon enough. And if the insurance will not cover these vehicles, I sure bet there will a change in that industry and watch the manufactures cover them? There would be little risk and high rewards - I'm not sure why insurance would not cover them. DWI's are over criminalized, and they really hurt those educated professionals gain employment during hard economic times. So they go live on the state and unemployment? Defense attorneys may suffer given how many DWI's this state hands out, but knowing Texas, they'll find another reason to get you to keep these counties and the state funded.

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  8. I think Grits means that the non-driverless cars might not be insurable anymore at some point.

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  9. Should such change come, and I doubt it will come nearly as fast as predicted, the police will alter their focus on the larger commercial vehicles that will most certainly not be covered as quickly and/or be targetted for their potential as drug transportation. There would also likely be a change in focus to both reduce the sheer number of police for the fiscal savings and using them in other areas that you might not like.

    Just as the whole war on drugs has fostered creative interpretations of Constitutional protections and those seeking more safety over freedom have proven willing to hand over the keys to the hen house of law enforcement, they will do so again under slightly different circumstances. And automatic cars or not, criminals will still drive as needed to further their escapades so perhaps they will be targetted more in the future than just the average speeder, drunk driver, or other traffic code violator.

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  10. "There would also likely be a change in focus to ... using [police] in other areas that you might not like"

    Of what, specifically, are you thinking? I agree one response might be to reduce the number of cops.

    And targeting actual criminals instead of engaging in fishing expeditions among the general public wouldn't bother me in the least. Of course, they'd still have to have probable cause.

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  11. Right now I have the app for Uber, which is owned by Google. Someday will I be logging on to Goober? ;)

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