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posted by martyb on Wednesday August 26 2015, @04:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the could-get-interesting-on-Halloween dept.

A police officer is directing traffic in the intersection when he sees a self-driving car barreling toward him and the occupant looking down at his smartphone. The officer gestures for the car to stop, and the self-driving vehicle rolls to a halt behind the crosswalk. "This seems like a pretty plausible interaction. Human drivers are required to pull over when a police officer gestures for them to do so. It’s reasonable to expect that self-driving cars would do the same." But Will Oremus writes that while it's clear that police officers should have some power over the movements of self-driving cars, "what’s less clear is where to draw the line." Should an officer be able to "do the same if he suspects the passenger of a crime? And what if the passenger doesn’t want the car to stop—can she override the command, or does the police officer have ultimate control?"

According to a RAND Corp. report on the future of technology and law enforcement “the dark side to all of the emerging access and interconnectivity is the risk to the public’s civil rights, privacy rights, and security.” It added, “One can readily imagine abuses that might occur if, for example, capabilities to control automated vehicles and the disclosure of detailed personal information about their occupants were not tightly controlled and secured.”


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  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday August 27 2015, @06:02AM

    by tftp (806) on Thursday August 27 2015, @06:02AM (#228480) Homepage

    I guess what I took objection to was the notion that survival is necessarily more important than standing up for freedom, which is how it appeared to me, and wasn't necessarily what you meant.

    Well, don't we know from history that all slave-owning societies fell because slaves, instead of choosing personal survival, chose to stand up and fight for their freedom?

    Sorry, I mixed up the worlds. This is not how it unfolded on this Earth. Here slaves were slaving away until the world around them crumbled, and slaves one day discovered that they have no masters anymore. Rebellions of slaves were extremely rare, and not that large.

    Why is it so? I guess it's because when the choice is between living and dying, most people choose life, no matter how bad it is. True rebels are rare; and when they do appear, they often are flooded with so many injustices that they have difficulty sorting them out. You choose to fight for software freedom, as an example - but how much does that matter if the router upstream is monitoring every byte that you send? How much that matters if a policeman is watching for everything that you do on your "free" computer? My point is that you cannot focus on one aspect of freedom and ignore all other. And when you defocus and see the large picture you may realize that software is just one tiny aspect of freedom; so tiny that most people do not even understand what you are talking about.

    I simply will not use non-free proprietary user-subjugating software.

    You need to talk to Teela Brown about that. Don't you see the similarity of her problems to this one? If you have to save Earth from destruction, but the laser cannon that can shoot that asteroid down runs on Windows 10, will you boot that computer up?

  • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday August 27 2015, @07:05AM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Thursday August 27 2015, @07:05AM (#228495)

    Sorry, I mixed up the worlds. This is not how it unfolded on this Earth. Here slaves were slaving away until the world around them crumbled, and slaves one day discovered that they have no masters anymore. Rebellions of slaves were extremely rare, and not that large.

    Many people still fought against slavery. Slavery didn't just magically disappear; that's not how it happened.

    True rebels are rare; and when they do appear, they often are flooded with so many injustices that they have difficulty sorting them out.

    The majority usually gets little done. It's mostly the "true rebels" that move things along, though the process is still very slow.

    but how much does that matter if the router upstream is monitoring every byte that you send?

    It matters a lot, because I desire freedom in and of itself. A victory for software freedom is one victory. We might need to be victorious in other areas too, but that doesn't mean it's less of a victory.

    My point is that you cannot focus on one aspect of freedom and ignore all other.

    Then you are arguing with a point I did not make.

    And when you defocus and see the large picture you may realize that software is just one tiny aspect of freedom

    Tiny to you, but I see great significance in it in the Age of Information.

    You need to talk to Teela Brown about that.

    I speak of reality, not insanely unlikely hypothetical scenarios. But I'll address that anyway. Software freedom is gravely important, but there are a few instances where I think an individual might choose to make a sacrifice. For instance, in a world where no Free Software exists, maybe an individual would have to use proprietary tools to create some; their freedoms are infringed upon, and that is bad, but it is a net good for freedom. Likewise, you might choose to use Windows 10 to stop the asteroid so humanity can live and you can continue fighting against non-free software and other injustices. Likely, if you don't stop the asteroid, someone else will; it doesn't make much difference.

    But absent such situations, I will not use non-free proprietary software. And which rights this sort of logic apply to depend on how much I value those rights, which isn't always the same.