Waymo’s Driverless Cars Revealed to Be Narcs as Cops Use Them to Probe Crimes

Well, that didn’t take long. Cops are now using videos recorded by Waymo self-driving cars to assist them in their investigations. If you live in a city where robotaxis are prevalent (i.e. San Francisco or Los Angeles), this likely means you have a good shot at inadvertently ending up in the background of some sort of police evidence footage someday.

404 Media reports that the Los Angeles Police Department recently acquired video from one of the self-driving cars as part of a hit-and-run investigation. The video was published on the LAPD’s YouTube channel in an effort to gin up tips from the public. In the video, an on-screen note characterizes the footage as “Waymo Confidential Commercial Information.”

404 discusses the significance of this development:

The situation shows that police in Los Angeles are now looking at Waymo robotaxis as potential sources of surveillance footage to investigate crimes that the vehicles’ cameras and sensors may have witnessed. In 2023, Bloomberg reported that police in both San Francisco and Maricopa County, Arizona, had issued search warrants for Waymo footage. Police have also requested footage from Teslas, extremely pervasive Ring cameras, and Cruise autonomous vehicles.

When reached for comment by Gizmodo, a Waymo spokesperson provided the following statement:

Waymo does not provide information or data to law enforcement without a valid legal request, usually in the form of a warrant, subpoena, or court order. These requests are often the result of eyewitnesses or other video footage that identifies a Waymo vehicle at the scene. We carefully review each request to make sure it satisfies applicable laws and is legally valid. We also analyze the requested data or information, to ensure it is tailored to the specific subject of the warrant. We will narrow the data provided if a request is overbroad, and in some cases, object to producing any information at all.

Look, solving violent crimes is obviously a good thing, but what’s not so good is living in a society where your every waking move is recorded for potential future law enforcement scrutiny. More and more, that’s the society we’re living in.

Teslas come equipped with a trove of sensors and cameras, which is why many of the people who have recently decided to take out their anger about Elon Musk and DOGE on the billionaire’s cars have been caught relatively quickly. If you’re keying a Tesla or wiping your butt on one or throwing a Molotov cocktail at a dealership where they’re sold, chances are there are multiple videos of you doing it. A couple of years ago, a Tesla played a key role in a hate crime investigation, helping police to apprehend a suspect via its onboard surveillance gear.

In short: more automation clearly means more surveillance—there’s just no two ways about it. The more robots and automated vehicles roam the roads and airways, the more the American public is going to be under constant watch. In a time when the federal government is illegally rounding up people and shipping them off to foreign prisons, excuse me if I’m not super excited about that.