Self Driving Cars & Internet of Things extend NSA's reach everywhere

Self-Driving Cars Will Turn Surveillance Woes Into a Mainstream Worry | Opinion | WIRED


We need to ask: what happens when cars become increasingly like computers? With self-driving cars, are we getting the best of the computer industry and the car industry, or the worst of both worlds?
“Self-driving” is another misnomer. Driving decisions are never “self-made.” They are accounted for by algorithms when they are not accounted for by drivers. These algorithms reflect many decisions that aren’t self-made either: they are the conscious answers to complicated safety, ethical, legal and commercial dilemmas. Calling a robotic car “self-driving” diverts attention from the surrender of autonomy to algorithms, making it harder to navigate the policy questions that arise.

Self-driving cars are coming–slowly and progressively, with various stages of automation before the streets are filled with no-hand-on-wheel vehicles like the prototype Google revealed Tuesday–but they are surely part of our near future. They hold considerable promise for the environment and for road safety.

They also embody our debate on freedom, autonomy, and privacy when it comes to computing systems–revealing just how intrusive remote access to computing systems by the government or individuals can become.

Articles: NSA's Big Payday

Key Judgments

Governments that can give you everything, say universal health care, can take anything; to wit, civil rights or personal privacy. The ACA was a party line vote. Nobody got to vote on the NSA expansion and surely not the PRISM computer and universal federal/commercial snooping.

Despotism has three requirements: control, compliance, and secrecy. The ethos of social and political absolutism are alive and well in the West, where failure is never pretty. But it still pays pretty well.