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submitted 4 days ago by XLE@piefed.social to c/privacy@lemmy.ca

A Waymo representative said the vehicles’ data collection while parked is limited and not designed to continuously record pedestrians, license plates, families walking on sidewalks or children playing in driveways.

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[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 24 points 4 days ago

A Waymo representative said the vehicles’ data collection while parked is limited and not designed to continuously record pedestrians, license plates, families walking on sidewalks or children playing in driveways.

Much like "anything is a dildo if your brave enough" any internet connected recording device can be abused or sold to be used by anyone legally.

Like, there's a non zero chance someone could book a Waymo to stalk someone all day.

The representative said a parked vehicle may need to recognize conditions such as an emergency vehicle passing by or debris in the road

No, legally parked vehicles sit still literally all the time...

An actual solution would be emergency services having a real procedure to move them if necessary, but if they're parked they should stay parked like every other driverless car has done for the entire existence of cars.

[-] XLE@piefed.social 6 points 4 days ago

We already have a procedure to remove parked cars in an emergency situation too. We could do it before the advent of computers...

[-] SnoopSqueak@lemmy.today 11 points 4 days ago

not designed to continuously record

"It's continual recording, not continuous. Totally different and nothing to be alarmed about."

[-] huquad@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 days ago

What's not clear? It's not designed to do that. We've just decided to operate it that way

[-] MNByChoice@midwest.social 4 points 4 days ago

Someone may have directly asked about recording children, but this feels suspicious:

A Waymo representative said the vehicles’ data collection while parked is limited and not designed to ... children playing in driveways.

(Ellipsis points inserted where words were removed to clarify the interesting part.)

Why would Waymos be designed to record children playing in driverways even when running? Sure, detect children, don't hit children, but record?

Epstein friends at Waymo?

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

and not designed

Standard corpo newspeak....

Like you know "pistol braces" that look and function like a stock and can be legally used as a stock, as long as they're not sold as a stock. That is because they were explicitly not designed to do that, so the manufacycan not be held responsible.

Also the crux of lawsuits against gun manufacturers. Their products used exactly as designed, shoot a bunch of bullets that do exactly what bullets do exactly where the user pointed the gun.

They're saying a Waymo could park outside your house, and your kids could play in the driveway and the Waymo would turn on it's cameras and record your kids, using their movements to train it's AI on predicting the movements of kids playing by a street.

However, while them intentionally designing the car to do that may have legal privacy concerns, but making it a much wider thing that triggers anytime people are around for general training, that means anything else they want to do has a foot in the door because "we already have the data, it's not about if we should gather it".

[-] 20cello@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
73 points (100.0% liked)

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