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Police Are Using AI to Pull over Drivers for 'Suspicious' Behavior

161 points gumby 1 hour ago 88 comments

bryanrasmussen 1 hour ago | parent

why was this FBI guy so forthcoming with this lady about his agency's arguably civil rights abuses? I mean I guess it's good he was but on the other hand it seems a bit weird, given my experience with feds.

jimt1234 1 hour ago | parent

They're not confessing. They're bragging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c14vfq3jqpo

catigula 1 hour ago | parent

"We have you dead to rights. Check here in my fancy computer."

Just intimidation, pretty common.

Dig1t 1 hour ago | parent

"Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on"

-Larry Ellison

tantalor 1 hour ago | parent

That sentiment seems to fail the test with reality, because you have people following the rules and behaving perfectly normally (like the subject in this story) who end up getting scrutinized anyway. That's a recipe for increasing anti-social behavior. After all, why bother following the rules if it doesn't keep me out of trouble?

shimman 1 hour ago | parent

Because it's not about helping you, it's about control. These people are literal anti-humanists, they just want to control all aspects of society. If people are suffering from the consequences of a massive publicly mandated surveillance state, well that's the price of progress if you listen to the anti-humanists.

dcss_gardener 1 hour ago | parent

Pretty sure the person you're responding to sees that clearly and may in fact be trying to point it out.

The original view presented by the quote is a child's view of authoritarians: they force you to behave the way they want you to.

The other commenter is pointing out how they work in practice, how they'll work with this, is by making noncompliant behavior the accepted norm and then enforcing it selectively based on their changing goals and targets.

pixl97 48 minutes ago | parent

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

lokar 1 hour ago | parent

It’s a fine line. Periodic demonstrations of arbitrary state power over your personal life can enhance the coercive effect. TSA checkpoints serve this purpose.

a4isms 28 minutes ago | parent

All of this airport security, all the searches, the screenings, the cameras, the questions, it's just one more way of reducing your liberty, and reminding you that they can fuck with you anytime they want.

George Carlin, “Airport Security” (1999)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQdC-e82gmk

catigula 1 hour ago | parent

Because they're the exception, not the norm. These systems generally do what they're supposed to do, at least if implemented correctly. The key isn't efficacy; you need to be emotionally prepared to oppose privacy violations even if they're doing exactly what they advertise.

wat10000 1 hour ago | parent

Because instead of merely being scrutinized, you get sent to jail.

amelius 1 hour ago | parent

How much better is the "intelligence" of police officers compared to artificial intelligence?

intrasight 1 hour ago | parent

It's the human in the loop that makes it subjective. Whether it's better or worse to have policing be subjective is a valid question.

I've had plenty of encounters where the discretion of a police officer was of great benefit to me and my friends.

basilikum 56 minutes ago | parent

It's not centralized.

beambot 52 minutes ago | parent

Humans are "artificial artificial intelligence."

jon128 1 hour ago | parent

Reasonable suspicion, where the "reasonable" part is absurdly subjective here, is not probable cause.

These detentions, even for the majority who have documented in writing a full assent to adhere to vehicle codes under public policy, are not legal.

Those who aren't well-educated in law can stop reading here.

A custodial arrest of someone who went to sufficent lengths to opt for not assenting in writing to adhere to vehicle codes, based on reasonable suspicion, would be unlawful, and in addition to the involved false declaration of an emergency on the road (which is a felony) would ipso facto be criminal in nature.

Documentation of dishonor has value in the public space. Blockchains for the win.

taurath 58 minutes ago | parent

We used to call those dragnets which are illegal under the 4th amendment, but the constitution only tends to apply to those with the ability to hire attorneys nowadays.

cogman10 52 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, still illegal, but because they are new they have to work their way up through the courts to be affirmed as illegal once again.

These cameras need to be banned federally. It shouldn't be legal to own or sell access to a network of these pervert cameras.

asveikau 49 minutes ago | parent

I think there is a rise of "this is legal because we used a computer to do it." A HN audience will not appreciate this sentiment, but honestly, a company should not provide tools to do this because they should have a filter. They should say "I won't provide tools to break constitutional rights".

Somewhere along the way, tech stopped asking questions like that, and now, people are hostile to the suggestion that the question should be asked.

ipdashc 45 minutes ago | parent

Many in tech would say that, and sure we'd be better off if even more did, but on some level it doesn't matter. In a sufficiently large country you'll always find someone willing to Be Evil, especially if they're paid well. We can't rely on every single capable company deciding not to take a given government contract, this sort of thing has to be solved via the political and legal system

asveikau 35 minutes ago | parent

But the more dominant the "legal because computer, and how dare you ask me?" attitude is, the less we'll see enforcement. People should demand action, rather than call it a clever business plan.

Folks who were on here praising Uber or Airbnb for skirting the law 10 years ago, this was part of the problem.

psadauskas 37 minutes ago | parent

> A computer can never be held accountable

> Therefore a computer must never make a management decision

philipallstar 35 minutes ago | parent

> Somewhere along the way, tech stopped asking questions like that, and now, people are hostile to the suggestion that the question should be asked.

People never stopped asking this sort of thing, and you can find some people who are hostile to anything. 'Twas ever thus. Constructing a cherry-picked, wistful narrative is not very helpful.

EPWN3D 35 minutes ago | parent

Like it or not, the other team get to play lawyer too. Flock's argument is almost certainly along the lines of "If we had police officers stationed at all these intersections writing down license plate numbers, no one would bat an eye at it. Why is a camera any different?"

We know why it's different of course: scale. But there was never a general principle about scale and automation articulated in the Constitution because it just wasn't a thing to worry about in the 1700s.

We're left to hope that courts agree that just because something is okay for one police officer in one place to do, that doesn't mean the police department can perform that same task a thousand times in a thousand places with a thousand machines and still have it be okay.

taurath 30 minutes ago | parent

> "If we had police officers stationed at all these intersections writing down license plate numbers, no one would bat an eye at it."

This is literally the definition of a police dragnet.

nilamo 20 minutes ago | parent

We used to call second hand information "circumstantial", and it couldn't be used against you. If the officer sitting in court didn't personally see it, then it didn't happen.

Or did Law and Order lie to us?

freeone3000 14 minutes ago | parent

Law and Order absolutely lied to you, in many ways. Video evidence is absolutely evidence. Also, the threshold for a traffic stop is very low. “I thought I saw something on a camera” absolutely meets the limit for a traffic stop.

cogman10 13 minutes ago | parent

Law and Order lied to us. Courts run on circumstantial evidence. A lot of cases turn on it.

For criminal law, prosecutors have to prove beyond reasonable doubt. If they have a gun, search history for "how to kill someone and get away with it", blood in their car, and someone that's been missing for an extended period of time. They can and have gotten convictions based on that. Hans Reiser was convicted under pretty much those circumstances.

hnlmorg 11 minutes ago | parent

I wasn’t aware CCTV was ever called circumstantial. At which point who the principal end? Are forensics circumstantial because a police officer wasn’t there when the material was deposited?

Maybe this is me being naive?

R1D3R 13 minutes ago | parent

I would definitely bat an eye at cops acting like human flock cameras. That sounds like an incredible waste of resources.

taurath 34 minutes ago | parent

Our economy is based on "its legal for a computer to do it", so long as the ones controlling the computers are in the same class and sufficiently subservient to the power structures that selectively enforce laws.

cogman10 31 minutes ago | parent

> A HN audience will not appreciate this sentiment

I don't really agree. I think HN is particularly hostile to the likes of Flock cameras and other surveillance companies like Palantir.

But it's undeniable that spying on people along with other war/defense spending is very lucrative as governments love intel. All it takes is to be an amoral fonder to pitch to the amoral investors. It's a particularly easy pitch as well "We'll charge governments a lot of money and they'll happily pay because they love spying on their citizens".

jacquesm 20 minutes ago | parent

The people that run HN are so hostile they launched the bloody thing:

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety

cogman10 11 minutes ago | parent

Commenters on HN are not the same thing as companies launched through ycombinator.

NoGravitas 28 minutes ago | parent

> I think there is a rise of "this is legal because we used a computer to do it."

Arguably, a lot of the modern tech industry is built on this. AirBnB to sidestep hotel regulations. Uber to sidestep taxi regulations. There's a bit of "this is legal because a private company is doing it and not the government", too.

Eji1700 28 minutes ago | parent

> I think there is a rise of "this is legal because we used a computer to do it.

This has literally been defining the modern age since the 2000's or earlier. Basically every law that ever existed about targeting ads towards children has been WILDLY ignored (to everyone's profit) because of it.

ajsnigrutin 9 minutes ago | parent

There are a million more examples of that

Look at all the anti CSAM laws... "hey, we'll scan all the mail you get and send, and well check all your photo frames in your houses, just in case you have pedo stuff there".

Or the different chat control laws... "well put a mic on you and listen to every conversation, just in case you talk about something illegal".

Then you have the people defending this with "ok, that might be bad, but metadata is just metadata"... sure, every time you go to a bar, we'll record when you came inside, who you sat with, and record how much you talked with each person there.

tarxvf 45 minutes ago | parent

And often, not even then.

taurath 37 minutes ago | parent

Well yeah, it depends on what social class you live in.

linuxftw 36 minutes ago | parent

We could decide to fund civil rights litigation like medicaid.

nonethewiser 21 minutes ago | parent

>We used to call those dragnets which are illegal under the 4th amendment

How is surveillance related to dragnets? A dragnet being an indiscriminate stop and search of suspects that sweeps up lots of people. Police have always been able to watch people and see their license plate. It's the wide-spread stop and search with no specific suspicion that makes something a dragnet.

This plate reader surveillance network, for better or worse, is the exact opposite.

The example they lead with in the article is the police pulling over a woman who spent too much time driving in the left lane. Stupid. But targeted.

mixdup 12 minutes ago | parent

I mean in many (most?) states travelling in the left lane is a moving violation

Using it to fish for other violations is where it crosses into the fuzzy and sometimes outright illegal

The counter to this is demand that they write you the ticket for the moving violation, don't answer any questions other than providing the legally required license, registration, and insurance, and move on

If they don't have evidence of a crime, they can't detain you forever on the roadside

nonethewiser 9 minutes ago | parent

>Using it to fish for other violations is where it crosses into the fuzzy and sometimes outright illegal

OK.

Where is the dragnet?

jon128 13 minutes ago | parent

The first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights of the larger agreement (the constitution) are better enjoyed by those who can write and speak forth without relying on another man or woman (an attorney) to do so on their behalf.

Citizens of the United States, which means the entire family, most of the definitions in the link below, have a right to use the courts.

Unfortunately so many among us are functionally illiterate (unable to read and write legalize) and not educated in law so far too often this essential right goes not exercised.

The more competent attorneys can fully comprehend this comment posted here. But the uncooth among that line of business tend to not like a comment like this being posted, it's not good business for them.

Existing case law sets precedent that only those who can claim with standing as one of citizens of one of the several states, and not only a federal citizen (but also not a state citizen), have absolute and unqualified right to the first eight amendments. Some later case law extended and elaborated enjoyment of the first eight amendments to those who are only federal citizen (and not also state citizen), but didn't overturn the earlier notion that only state citizens have the absolute and unqualified right to the first eight amendments.

  https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1101

causal 55 minutes ago | parent

I'm used to AI agents doing what I tell them to do. Gonna be rough the first time I realize one has direct authority over me...

andix 46 minutes ago | parent

"Land of the Free", lol

k12sosse 20 minutes ago | parent

"home of the brave" LOL

andix 42 minutes ago | parent

Can AI also fully legalize racial profiling?

Some criminal behaviors are somewhat correlated with skin color, age or gender. It would be extremely hard to train an AI to ignore those correlations. But would it even matter? Nobody knows why the AI flagged suspicious behavior, it usually can't tell even if you are able to ask follow up questions. So nobody could prove racial profiling.

smallmancontrov 36 minutes ago | parent

On the contrary, you can feed the model counterfactuals and see what it does. Edit the person to be white then feed the image back into the model and see if its opinion changes.

steveBK123 32 minutes ago | parent

You don't even need there to be any kernel of reality statistically.

If a model is trained on data that shows some bias due to prior human decisions, it would continue to follow those biases while being a lot harder to prove/sue. There were examples of this with AI assisted resume screening & criminal sentencing for example.

throwaway-medic 30 minutes ago | parent

I work on software that Dr and Nurses use. The company I work for trains its own models to provide automated insight on patient history, etc. I've been pretty concerned about these kinds of problems you describe. I sat down with one of the data scientists and talked about biases a while ago. She walked me through the (high level) process they go through to try and detect common biases in the model before publishing.

For example, it is a common belief within the medical community that Black people have higher pain tolerance, and thus don't need as much or as strong of pain killers. People in pain sitting in beds in the ER will be delayed or refused pain killers because of this. This belief has been proven false, but it shows up in papers, notes, etc. and nurses and doctors still will treat their patients as if it's true.

This is just one example of many many things they test for. When training the model the data-science team actually tries to see if they can produce output that exhibit those identified biases/problems and block it from ever been used in production if they do.

I've had people internally tell me how frustrated they are that I or other people aren't letting them get their new-fangled AI-powered feature in front of customers fast enough... Without a lot of discipline and guardrails people would be using ChatGPT or Claude APIs instead.

My point is: I highly doubt that kind of care is being taken in many industries/companies. It's very concerning to me.

the_doctah 29 minutes ago | parent

>Some criminal behaviors are somewhat correlated with skin color, age or gender.

Well, yes, because so is crime.

andix 27 minutes ago | parent

potato, potahto

nonethewiser 11 minutes ago | parent

Have you ever seen those AI videos where countries are competing in a farcical olympic event? Say, longest cold shower or something. And the Indian will just quit and fall to the ground and yell "I NEED CURRY!!!!!!!!"

gxs 39 minutes ago | parent

The Bay Area are the biggest hypocrites in the planet

They know how to present themselves in a way that not only they appear liberal, but appear liberal under scrutiny

They are rolling out versions of this but doing it in poor neighborhoods of course - heaven forbid they roll anything like this out in the Berkeley hills

Obviously im over generalizing for dramatic effect, but if this stuff can get passed in the Bay Area, I hold little hope we will successfully challenge it elsewhere

asdff 19 minutes ago | parent

According to deflock there's cameras in the berkely hills already, in particular on the grizzley peak and shasta road intersection. It's all over the bay area.

dvdyzag 37 minutes ago | parent

Is suspicious a felony or a misdemeanor, officer?

joshbuddy 36 minutes ago | parent

So, we're just speed running Little Brother now?

BatFastard 33 minutes ago | parent

I strangely have mixed feelings on this. Half of me says "Illegal search and seizure", the other half say "We need to get the crazy drivers off the road"

scottyah 24 minutes ago | parent

I do think we need better enforcement of the laws we already have in place, the roads are becoming the wild west, and not in a good way. I think I love the tech and the idea, but not how it's currently being abused. It'd be great for Amber Alert scenarios, consistent reckless driving, a better way to deal with high-speed chases, and just a way to prevent all of the dangerous traffic violations that occur simply because they're not enforced and people just see others doing it and assume it's ok.

siva7 30 minutes ago | parent

alright, so finally a "thought crime" becomes reality. i feel the world leaders need to stop turning their eyes blind to ai but unfortunately they are too detached from tech to get what change is happening around the world.

josh_p 27 minutes ago | parent

I think world leaders are acutely aware of what's happening. They just don't care because shit stains like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk keep shoving money in their faces.

bentt 27 minutes ago | parent

At this point just have the car tell the cops when the driver is misbehaving. And get the taxpayers to fund it!

krunck 25 minutes ago | parent

Lets not forget that all your personal movements are also recorded by your cell location. The US government has access to all this through various "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" agreements with the corporate data holders.

One must assume that the various "fusion centers" are pulling in all this data and connecting all the dots. Unless you are walking, with a face mask, and without your cell phone you have to assume they know were you are.

JumpCrisscross 19 minutes ago | parent

> US government has access to all this through various "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" agreements with the corporate data holders

These claims really need to be more specific to be believable and actionable. Particularly given the law has been changed in reaction to prior fuckery.

jeffbee 15 minutes ago | parent

It isn't "fuckery" as such. There's just an industry of selling dossiers on individuals, groups, or populations that is way, way more intrusive than what people imagine about online advertising, and they have been doing it for decades. It's data on the open market.

the_doctah 5 minutes ago | parent

OK but you seem to imply that my live location data is being streamed to NSA-like orgs

adamsb6 8 minutes ago | parent

They can just buy location data from data brokers, same as everyone else.

whycome 23 minutes ago | parent

Using transit or roads outside of normal commuting hours?? How suspicious. Driving somewhere without a destination? Suspicious.

j3th9n 23 minutes ago | parent

Let’s all commit suspicious driving patterns and overload the system.

cyanydeez 23 minutes ago | parent

lets be fair, police are using ______ to pull over drivers fo suspicious behavior is just a headline you get when you have a functional journalism any time in the 20th and 21st century.

JumpCrisscross 21 minutes ago | parent

"'I just had to be sure because I’m not a regular cop, I’m part of the FBI, and when I scanned your plate I could see you had suspicious travel patterns,' I think is how he worded it" [1].

This isn't traffic cops, it's federal police. And it isn't suspicious driving patterns, e.g. weaving, it's full-on movement tracking.

[1] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/ai-driven-polic...

jon128 5 minutes ago | parent

  18 U.S. Code § 242 - Deprivation of rights under color of law 

  Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both

  https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242

gregwebs 20 minutes ago | parent

Ironically the best defense against police abuse of power seems to be doing your own surveillance. Recording interactions with the police and having a dash cam. Many popular dash cams like Viofo record to an SD and don't send recordings to the cloud.

kazinator 18 minutes ago | parent

Actual human traffickers and whoever not are onto this, and take steps to evade cameras. Even if they aren't this is a very poor strategy. If you have a suspicion about someone, the stupidest thing you can do is pull them over. That risks blowing the whole investigation. That particular vehicle and driver may have nothing incriminating on them, and will now tip off their entire network.

kazinator 13 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

autoventure 7 minutes ago | parent

So scary.. now even taking a road trip can make you look suspicious?

mattlondon 6 minutes ago | parent

And people say the UK is a surveillance state! This is chilling.