Autonomous Jaguar from Waymo
Blurred faces and unavailable images of the interior limited what investigators were able to uncover. What happened?
San Francisco police are accustomed to collecting video surveillance footage from nearby stores or street cameras when investigating a robbery. In this case, there was something much more advanced: an autonomous car equipped with sensors, cameras and trip data.
Still, it wasn’t enough, says .
In January, a robber used a Waymo robot as a getaway vehicle after robbing a Hot 8 Yoga studio in the Marina District neighborhood. The theft was quick. Video surveillance footage shows the suspect entering the studio, grabbing items for sale and leaving a few minutes later.
Outside, a Waymo autonomous vehicle was waiting for him. The thief got in and the car drove away.
Almost six months later, the police continue to make no arrests — or even publicly identify a suspect.
The case draws attention not because of what was stolenmainly sportswear, but due to the technology involved. Waymo’s latest Jaguar vehicles are equipped with 29 cameras that offer a 360-degree view, and trips are associated with user accounts.
To investigators, it seemed like a case that should be relatively simple to resolve. “I would think that it would be easier to solve the case with a Waymo”, he told the sergeant Tim Fayethe detective responsible for the investigation.
But the digital trail ended up being lost.
Police obtained a search warrant to access information related to the trip, includingaccount data and images captured by the vehicle. The account, however, didn’t lead anywhere. Services such as ride-hailing apps can be used with stolen payment data or disposable cell phones, which makes it difficult to identify a real person.
The biggest problem was the images. When the warrant was presented in April, Waymo I no longer had the recordings inside the vehicle relating to the theft. There were images of the outside, but with limitations. The faces captured outside the car had been blurredwithin the scope of the more general privacy protection measures adopted by the company.
“It is, of course, highly unusual for a Waymo to be used by a suspect,” said Faye. “It was disappointing that the interior video did not allow us to recognize a suspect.”
Waymo has not publicly revealed How long do you keep the data? of video captured by its vehicles, and the company refused to comment on the details of the case.
He said, however, that he analyzes requests from authorities to ensure that they are legally valid and that can contest them or limit their reach to protect passenger privacy. The company also states that it does not use facial recognition nor other biometric identification tools.
In recent years, police forces have increasingly turned to internet-connected vehicles to obtain evidence. You Tesla, for example, can record activity around the car, and these images have already been used in investigations.
In some cases, authorities They even towed vehicles which could contain useful recordings, to preserve potential evidence. But the Waymo case shows the limits of this strategy when privacy protections and data retention policies come into play.
Fully autonomous transportation services remain limited to a small number of cities, so Cases like this are still rare.
A similar incident that occurred in Los Angeles last year involved a suspect who got into a Waymo after a robbery, but at the time police were able to stop the vehicle after officers turn on the emergency lights. In San Francisco, the outcome was less conclusive.
At the yoga studio, the episode became mmore a curiosity than a crisis. The studio manager, Farah Issasays that the theft itself was minor, judging by what he saw in the images. “I found it quite funny“, said Issa. “He just stole a number of men’s shorts.”
Still, the case leaves open a broader question about autonomous systems. Vehicles like Waymo’s are designed to continually capture a 360-degree view of your surroundings.
But when this data is filtered, anonymized or are no longer available, a procedure followed by standard to protect user privacy, may end up tell investigators very little.
