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Alex Rubalcava writes that autonomous vehicles are the greatest force multiplier to emerge in decades for criminals and terrorists and open the door for new types of crime not possible today. According to Rubalcava, the biggest barrier to carrying out terrorist plans until now has been the risk of getting caught or killed by law enforcement so that only depraved hatred, or religious fervor has been able to motivate someone to take on those risks as part of a plan to harm other people. "A future Timothy McVeigh will not need to drive a truck full of fertilizer to the place he intends to detonate it," writes Rubalcava. "A burner email account, a prepaid debit card purchased with cash, and an account, tied to that burner email, with an AV car service will get him a long way to being able to place explosives near crowds, without ever being there himself." A recent example is instructive. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were identified by an examination of footage from numerous private security cameras that were recording the crowd in downtown Boston during the Marathon. Imagine if they could have dispatched their bombs in the trunk of a car that they were never in themselves? Catching them might have been an order of magnitude more difficult than it was.
According to Rubalcava "the reaction to the first car bombing using an AV is going to be massive, and it's going to be stupid. There will be calls for the government to issue a stop to all AV operations, much in the same way that the FAA made the unprecedented order to ground 4,000-plus planes across the nation after 9/11." He goes on to say that "unlike 9/11, which involved a decades-old transportation infrastructure, the first AV bombing will use an infrastructure in its infancy, one that will be much easier to shut down. That shutdown could stretch from temporary to quasi-permanent with ease, as security professionals grapple with the technical challenge of distinguishing between safe, legitimate payloads and payloads that are intended to harm."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Nuke on Monday August 31 2015, @12:31PM
Oh dear, bang goes one of the much vaunted advantages of self driving cars - the ability to send it off to a parking lot or back home after dropping its rider off at school or work, and summoning it back later.
Never mind, that was going to be a sure way to double the amount of traffic on city roads.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday August 31 2015, @06:51PM
Oh dear, bang goes one of the much vaunted advantages of self driving cars
Better than Bang goes the Brooklyn bridge!
There is really no value in sending the cars any significant distance back to a parking facility. If they can't park within 4 blocks they won't provide a responsive service anyway.
If one of the sensing methodologies looked for weight within the unoccupied vehicle, it could refuse to move. If another looked for any packages in the unoccupied vehicle (regardless of weight), it could refuse to move.
If yet another detected a transmitter in the unoccupied vehicle, (especially a cell phone) it could refuse to move.
(Receivers are harder to detect, but strictly in-vehicle jamming of un-occupied vehicles might be be useful.)
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:05AM
"There is really no value in sending the cars any significant distance back to a parking facility." = false. My wife is working at the state fair. Parking within about a six block radius is both limited and expensive. I've been dropping her off at 6:15am and picking her up at 9:20pm. If I could just send the car to drop her off and pick her up I could spend much less time in the car. Also, in the general case, if she needed to go or return while I was at work, the car could be sent to whoever needs it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:18AM
Six blocks is not significant, neither is 8 or 10. Bringing the car all the way home would be ridiculous.
A rent-for-the-ride car service would locate parking/recharging lots near events like fairs, not to mention office buildings, school campuses, factories etc.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.