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posted by martyb on Monday November 07 2016, @05:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the bring-back-the-trolly,-too dept.

The New York Times has a story about what may be a more likely future of public transportation.

A small electric bus chugged along at a slow but steady seven miles per hour when a white van, entering the street from the side, cut in front of it. The bus slowed, as if its driver had hit the brakes, and got back up to speed after the van moved out of the way.

But this bus has no brake or accelerator pedal. It has no steering wheel, either. In fact, it doesn't have a driver — it operates using sensors and software, although for now, a person is stationed on board ready to hit a red "stop" button in an emergency.

At a time when self-driving cars are beginning to make progress — most notably with a trial program that the ride service Uber began in Pittsburgh this fall — the bus represents a different approach to technologically advanced transportation.

I say a more likely future because of the following:

A driverless car, after all, is still a car, carrying at best a few people. By transporting many passengers on what could be very flexible routes, driverless buses could help reduce the number of cars clogging city streets.

Few advantages accrue from driverless cars if the streets and highways are clogged with them. The passenger(s) can curse the vehicle up ahead instead of its idiot driver. My take: The idea has some promise, especially in places where people do not have long distances to travel.


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  • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:50AM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:50AM (#423979)

    And where does the concept of privacy fit into all of this? Can I pay these automated Uber cars with cash so I don't have to give away my personal details? Do the Uber cars run proprietary software or conduct surveillance? Any of these ideas that fail to take into account privacy are non-starters.

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  • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday November 08 2016, @02:48PM

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 08 2016, @02:48PM (#424083)

    > And where does the concept of privacy fit into all of this?

    Same place as always - what you do in public isn't private. Your privacy is waiting for you at the boundary of your property, right where you left it.

    Unless, somehow, you are living in a world where you can rent cars without showing id, where cars don't have id plates that are registered to an owner who is legally obliged to identify the driver at any particular time, where taxi drivers never notice or remember who is in the back, where public transport is somehow not-public, where you can't be watched on the street. It's always been this way, it's just that now the watchers' jobs (like many others) have been automated by robots - cameras and card processing - and they are legion. The principle, however, was conceded long ago.

    If you're really asking where does anonymity and untraceability fit into all this, that too is in the same place as always - in the dark, in the alleyways, on foot or on vehicles without plates, behind sunglasses and masks, false papers, fake cards, behind clothing changes and disguise, and in crowds, always in crowds. Right where it's always been.
     

    • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:03PM

      by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:03PM (#424185)

      Same place as always - what you do in public isn't private. Your privacy is waiting for you at the boundary of your property, right where you left it.

      It's easy to repeat nonsense like this without thinking about it, but much harder to think about the implications this has on society. For one thing, there are different kinds of privacy; there is privacy that keeps others from seeing you (something that doesn't really exist in public places) and privacy from mass surveillance (something that could easily exist in public places). Automated mass surveillance allows governments to accurately record tons of information about individuals in the long-term on a scale that was never before possible, and it is far, far cheaper than hiring humans to do the same job. This type of surveillance allows governments to harass lawyers, dissidents, politicians, activists, whistleblowers, and journalists, and therefore threatens democracy. [gnu.org] This is almost entirely different from a taxi driver or someone else having a vague recollection of your existence, because their memories aren't perfect and aren't transferred to a powerful authority, hiring humans to do the work of a massive surveillance engine would cost far too much, and so on. The effects that mass surveillance has on society are totally different from the effects of someone spotting you in a public place, so comparing them is ludicrous. We can ban automated mass surveillance, even in public places.

      We shouldn't have license plate readers tracking your location everywhere, shouldn't have central records of who drove where and at what time, and shouldn't have massive spy agencies spying on or collecting your communications. We should also try to use cash as much as possible and push back against efforts to create a cashless society. That is, if you want freedom and democracy to exist.

      • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday November 10 2016, @12:08PM

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 10 2016, @12:08PM (#425094)

        It's easy to repeat nonsense like this without thinking about it, but much harder to think about the implications this has on society. For one thing, there are different kinds of privacy; there is privacy that keeps others from seeing you (something that doesn't really exist in public places) and privacy from mass surveillance (something that could easily exist in public places).

        If it's legal to do something once, using a person, it's legal to do it many times using a computer, there is no difference in legality or rights, just automation and scale. What you are saying is that using a computer to do something somehow makes it fundamentally different, it doesn't, despite people trying to patent 50yr old stuff all over again by adding "using a computer", changing the tool you use does not change what you are doing.

        far cheaper than hiring humans to do the same job.

        Humans are cheap too, in the right circumstances, and en-masse, see Mechanical Turk and consider if (as you hold) it is legal to do something by human but not but automated machine, is it legal to do it by (lots of) humans pretending to be an automated machine?

        This is almost entirely different from a taxi driver or someone else having a vague recollection of your existence, because their memories aren't perfect

        The taxi now has a camera to augment the driver's memory. Most people on the street have a phone to do the same. Many road accidents are now recorded in far better quality than cctv by multiple dashcams and helmet cams. Is all that footage individuals taking control and in some cases holding authority to account, or is it mass surveillance? At some point in the future we'll probably all have eye-cams and augmented memory for perfect digital recollection - and mandatory memory erasure after going to a movie...

        Tools and technology change, but that is all it is, they can all be used for good or evil. Cops are now aware that everyone has camera phones so they try and confiscate or prevent filming or demand erasure - but people adapt. So now we have live streaming and soon that will be ubiquitous too, you can view that as a response to authority, a guarantee that the citizens' footage cannot be captured and suppressed or altered, or you can view it as a tool for authority to get all the footage onto a central server where it can be easily searched, but it is just a tool, that is all.

        • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:04PM

          by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:04PM (#425143)

          If it's legal to do something once, using a person, it's legal to do it many times using a computer, there is no difference in legality or rights, just automation and scale.

          Unless the law says otherwise, you mean. Are you saying it's simply impossible to write a law like that?

          What you are saying is that using a computer to do something somehow makes it fundamentally different,

          It does. It has drastically different implications for society, since levels of surveillance never before possible become possible, and the government is then able to use that surveillance to efficiently crush its opponents. I don't see how you can just ignore the actual degree to which something affects society, but it is foolish.

          despite people trying to patent 50yr old stuff all over again by adding "using a computer", changing the tool you use does not change what you are doing.

          The purpose and effects that patents have on society and the purpose and effects that mass surveillance has on society are totally different. Patents are about innovation, whereas highly efficient mass surveillance threatens democracy and freedom.

          Humans are cheap too, in the right circumstances

          Please tell me how the government could hire enough people to replace countless automated license plate readers (for example) who are both efficient and accurate enough to record countless license plates every single day (number, time, location), and then send that data to a central authority. If this is really feasible, then I would only say that that too should be banned, so you're getting nowhere fast.

          Many road accidents are now recorded in far better quality than cctv by multiple dashcams and helmet cams. Is all that footage individuals taking control and in some cases holding authority to account, or is it mass surveillance?

          Are those cameras all controlled by the government, or does the footage necessarily end up in the hands of the government? If so (which isn't true), then we should stop the government from getting all the footage.

          Tools and technology change, but that is all it is, they can all be used for good or evil.

          And it's patently obvious that the government will use mass surveillance for evil, seeing how often they use regular surveillance for evil. Who knows, maybe they'll actually be able to succeed in getting the next MLK to commit suicide, or be able to stamp out whistleblowers activists before they even have a chance to make their move. Also, mass surveillance necessary violates our rights, so I would oppose the practice no matter what.

          Even in some hypothetical future where cameras are everywhere and we have augmented eyes that record everything, we should not allow the government to simply collect all of that data. Government mass surveillance should be banned. Period. What a shame it is to see someone defending something that so fundamentally threatens our freedoms and democracy.

      • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday November 10 2016, @01:54PM

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 10 2016, @01:54PM (#425113)

        Also should point out that the concept of paying an Uber in cash to preserve your privacy, after you have used your phone to log into a server and given it your location and destination, is not really well thought through....