San Francisco police request driverless car footage from Waymo and Cruise to solve crimes from robberies to murders. — Image by Freepik
In December 2021, San Francisco police were working to solve the murder of an Uber driver.
As detectives reviewed local surveillance footage, they zeroed in on a grey Dodge Charger they believed the shooter was driving.
They also noticed a fleet of Waymo’s self-driving cars, covered with cameras and sensors, passing by around the same time.
Recognising the convenient trove of potential evidence, Sergeant Phillip Gordon drafted a search warrant for Alphabet’s Waymo, demanding hours of footage that the SUVs had captured the morning the shooting took place.
“I believe that there is probable cause that the Waymo vehicles driving around the area have video surveillance of the suspect vehicle, suspects, crime scene, and possibly the victims in this case,” Gordon wrote in the application for the warrant to Google’s sister company.
A judge quickly authorised it, and Waymo provided footage.
As self-driving cars become a fixture in major American cities like San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles, police are increasingly relying on their camera recordings to try to solve cases.
In Waymo’s main markets, San Francisco and Arizona’s Maricopa County, nine search warrants had been issued for the company’s footage, plus another that had been sent to rival autonomous driving firm Cruise. More warrants may have been issued under seal.
The footage presents new avenues for police to investigate serious crimes, as they did in the murder of Uber driver Ahmed Yusufi, who was killed between shifts.
Yet privacy advocates say it is crucial to consider the implications of handing police another tool for surveillance, especially as Waymo and Cruise accelerate expansion to more cities.
While security cameras are commonplace in American cities, self-driving cars represent a new level of access for law enforcement – and a new method for encroachment on privacy, advocates say.
Crisscrossing the city on their routes, self-driving cars capture a wider swath of footage.
And it’s easier for law enforcement to turn to one company with a large repository of videos and a dedicated response team than to reach out to all the businesses in a neighbourhood with security systems.
“We’ve known for a long time that they are essentially surveillance cameras on wheels,” said Chris Gilliard, a fellow at the Social Science Research Council.
“We’re supposed to be able to go about our business in our day-to-day lives without being surveilled unless we are suspected of a crime, and each little bit of this technology strips away that ability.”
Waymo said it occasionally receives requests from local police in markets where it operates and generally requires law enforcement to provide a warrant or court order.
“We carefully review each request to make sure it satisfies applicable laws and has a valid legal process,” Waymo said.
“If a request is overbroad (asks for too much information), we try to narrow it, and in some cases we object to producing any information at all.”
Cruise said it also strives to provide the minimum amount of data necessary to satisfy requests from law enforcement.
“Privacy is extremely important to us, which is why we disclose relevant data only in response to legal processes or exigent circumstances, where we can help a person who is in imminent danger,” Cruise said in a statement.
Waymo emerged from the labs of Google, whose rich user data creates opportunities for law enforcement at every turn.
In one hit-and-run case in San Francisco, police learned Waymo had passed by the crime scene while reviewing footage from a Nest home surveillance camera, presenting yet another connection with Google, which bought the smart-home hardware maker in 2014.
Tapping into IoT
Privacy advocates are particularly concerned about the evidence that police can glean from the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), the growing landscape of connected devices such as doorbells and home security cameras that collect vast amounts of data.
Amazon’s Ring doorbells have found a following with both consumers and law enforcement; thousands of agencies subscribe to its Neighbors app, where camera owners voluntarily upload footage.
Last year, Amazon revealed that it had shared footage in emergencies without owners’ permission, sparking criticism from lawmakers.
Amid the controversy over Ring’s data collection, Amazon has begun offering end-to-end encryption of the videos and has asked cops to request footage publicly in the Neighbors app.
While self-driving services like Waymo and Cruise have yet to achieve the same level of market penetration as Ring, the wide range of videos they capture while completing their routes presents other opportunities.
In addition to the San Francisco homicide, a review of court documents shows police have sought footage from Waymo and Cruise to help solve hit-and-runs, burglaries, aggravated assaults, a fatal collision and an attempted kidnapping.
Waymo said it responds to law enforcement requests with footage that blurs licence plates and faces “in order to protect the privacy of bystanders who may appear in the imagery that’s requested by the warrant”.
But San Francisco police seem to be trying to find a way around that. Two of the warrants that were reviewed, which were obtained in burglary cases, noted Waymo’s practice of “fogging” footage and requested “a true and accurate depiction of the vehicle’s recordings”.
Comprehensive privacy legislation, which has languished for years in the United States, is ultimately the only thing that can thwart overly broad requests from police, experts say.
“With the lack of consumer privacy protections that we have in the US right now, companies are able to collect as much information as humanly possible,” said Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, adding that police are then able to capitalise on the trove of data.
Police who have obtained footage from self-driving cars say they view it as a tool to be used judiciously – and that the evidence can be used not just to build cases but to exonerate suspects.
Last year, a teen in Mesa, Arizona, said she was trying to hop into a Waymo she had hailed when her cellphone, which riders use to enter the vehicle, ran out of battery.
She claimed that a man offered to help her charge her phone and then attempted to force her into his vehicle. Bystanders intervened. All the while, Waymo was recording.
When Mesa Detective Trisha Jackson received the report, she recalled a flyer she had received from her department when self-driving cars became more prevalent in the area about the opportunities that footage from the vehicles could create for cops. She reached out to the company, which, she said, offered guidance on the warrant process.
But when Waymo ultimately produced the footage, it contradicted the teen’s account. Jackson saw no evidence of a crime.
Jackson said reviewing the Waymo footage enabled her to close the case more quickly, saving police resources.
‘Constant irritant’
Last year, San Francisco police obtained a search warrant for Waymo footage to try to solve a spate of residential burglaries. John McCammon, whose apartment was among those burglarised, says he has mixed feelings about police seeking such evidence.
He’s wary of handing police a new tool, especially in San Francisco, where the police department has made headlines for its proposal to use robots and other high-tech investigative techniques.
When he was informed that Waymo had witnessed the crime, McCammon wasn’t surprised. The vehicles are such a regular presence on his street that he has considered writing to the local government to complain.
He said Waymo’s assistance in his case was unlikely to change his opinion of the self-driving service, which he has already written off as a “constant irritant”.
And the footage isn’t always helpful. In the case of the Uber driver who was shot, San Francisco police arrested Clifford Stokes, who was convicted of murdering Yusufi earlier this year.
Yusufi had worked as an interpreter for the American military during the war in Afghanistan, and after settling in California, he supported himself by working as an Uber driver, according to local media reports. He was killed in a botched armed robbery in between shifts.
A lawyer involved in the case said that though police did obtain the Waymo video, it was not ultimately used in the prosecution of Stokes as Waymo had not actually filmed the Dodge Charger.
Still, such cases are a reminder of the new frontier that self-driving cars open up for law enforcement, privacy advocates say.
“Whenever you have a company that collects a large amount of data on individuals, the police are eventually going to come knocking on their door, hoping to make that data their evidence,” Guariglia said. – Bloomberg
