In a recent incident posted on Instagram, police were spotted pulling over an autonomous Cruise taxi because it allegedly didn’t have its headlights on. The video shows the Cruise car coming to a stop, though it’s unclear if any automated systems were activated. Observers say the incident shows that policies governing police interactions will have to be established as autonomous vehicles become more common. “Not only should law enforcement not have remote control [capabilities] because [it] will ultimately fall into the wrong hands, but technology that allows remote control should not be installed on production automobiles even if it is a disabled feature,” Brian Contos, the chief security officer of Phosphorus Cybersecurity, told Lifewire in an email interview. “Just having these technical capabilities, even if not activated, could lend themself to future exploitation by a nefarious actor such as redirecting the vehicle to a different destination, causing the vehicle to operate unsafely, or disabling door locks.”
Self-Policing?
In the video, a Cruise car pulled over to the side of the road when signaled by an officer ahead of an intersection. The officer tries to open the driver-side door, but the Cruise vehicle begins to drive down the road before stopping a second time. Cruise wrote on Twitter about the incident, saying, “our AV yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location for the traffic stop, as intended. An officer contacted Cruise personnel, and no citation was issued.” But in the future, Contos suggested autonomous car makers could be forced by law enforcement to install ways for police to control their cars. He cited the case in which the FBI tried to get backdoor access to the iPhone to bypass Apple’s robust encryption but noted the problem with this approach is that a backdoor cannot be limited to just one entity, such as law enforcement. “It’s basically a vulnerability which you are deliberately adding into your code,” Contos said. “So once you build that backdoor into your software, you have created a big gaping hole in your security that other actors could potentially exploit. A backdoor is a backdoor, period. The same is true with a car, it’s just a much bigger system.” Contos speculated that attackers could trigger vehicle malfunctions on the road, which could lead to vehicles being held hostage until the owner or manufacturer paid a ransom.
Know Your Rights
Unfortunately, you might not have a legal leg to stand on if the police want to control your autonomous car, civil rights attorney Christopher Collins told Lifewire via email. “From a legal standpoint, police already have the right to pull over vehicles under a very low standard called reasonable suspicion,” Collins explained. “They can almost always point to some objective criteria to justify why they suspected this particular vehicle needed to be stopped.” The FBI is already looking into how autonomous cars will affect policing. The bureau wrote on its website that police admins need to plan for the increasing number of robot cars that will impact their work. “In the transition from human-operated to driverless vehicles, [autonomous vehicles] most likely will be programmed to obey traffic laws and control devices, such as stoplights,” the FBI writes. “It also appears probable that [level] 4 and 5 [self-driving] systems will adhere to those constraints more precisely than human operators, lessening the priority of traffic enforcement within a law enforcement agency.” But Contos said that in the case of autonomous vehicles such as a street sweeper, waste disposal truck, or similar vehicle owned by a city government that doesn’t have passengers, police should have remote control capability. “That use case makes perfect sense,” he added. Contos also proposed that if an autonomous vehicle is out of control, police could use the same analog measures they use today, such as flattening the tires with spike strips or trapping the autonomous automobile with police cars. “If a passenger is suffering a medical emergency, they can pull the car over, and if the doors are locked, gain access to the passenger with a Slim Jim or break the window,” Contos said.
