Safe Street RebelJul 8, 2023

We love that the media is covering #weekOfCone, but they're mostly avoiding talking about one of the biggest problems: surveillance.

A self-driving car network is a city-wide surveillance network under corporate control (as summarized in the SF police department's own training materials!)

A world where cars are all replaced with surveillance robots is a world where everything you are doing is being watched. Where they watch you go from your home to a protest, or to get gender-affirming care, or to get an abortion. And because they're a private entity, who knows what (if any) restrictions there will be on what they do with that data.

Article (with linked SFPD document): https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7dw8x/san-francisco-police-are-using-driverless-cars-as-mobile-surveillance-cameras

San Francisco Police Are Using Driverless Cars as Mobile Surveillance Cameras

“Autonomous vehicles are recording their surroundings continuously and have the potential to help with investigative leads,” an internal training document states.

Show threadSafe Street RebelJul 8, 2023

To give a bit more context for people outside of San Francisco, in addition to being guinea pigs for self-driving cars, SF has also become a testbed for the future of the surveillance state. In SF it's now legal for the police to monitor private surveillance cameras in real time: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/23/23368603/san-francisco-police-private-surveillance-cameras-vote

In addition to the well-known problem with Ring cameras, the SFPD have spun off and funded a "private" nonprofit to set up cameras: https://sfsafe.org/our-mission/.

The SFPD has a history of using these cameras to surveil totally legal protests despite claiming that department policy doesn't allow that:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/sfpd-obtained-live-access-business-camera-network-anticipation-tyre-nichols

Really, just look over all the EFF headlines for San Francisco, and then it'll be clear that we can't let the city be blanketed in surveillance bots.

San Francisco police can now watch private surveillance cameras in real time

The San Francisco board of supervisors has voted to approved a measure that will let the SFPD access live footage from private security cameras in the course of investigating crimes and policing public events such as protests, in a move critics say will enhance surveillance of minorities in the city.

The Verge
Show threadMichael Smith🚎
@SafeStreetRebel Here’s another important article https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-29/self-driving-car-video-from-waymo-cruise-give-police-crime-evidence
Self-Driving Car Video From Waymo, Cruise Give Police Crime Evidence

San Francisco police request driverless car footage from Waymo and Cruise to solve crimes from robberies to murders

Bloomberg
Jul 9, 2023 at 2:43amWeb
Show threadswfongJul 10, 2023

@SkibuSmith @SafeStreetRebel wear a mask.

Btw I occasionally ride off limit trails, and I remember in 2019 being laughed at for suggesting wearing a mask while riding.

Show threadSafe Street RebelJul 10, 2023
@swfong @SkibuSmith Masks are so great, for so many different reasons.