The Truth About Burning Waymos
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Welcome back to Free Speech Friday. This week, because I'm on the road, if you can't tell by the shitty hotel behind me, I want to talk to you about something that's been in the news a lot lately, and that is Waymo. These are the automated, all-electric, rideshare vehicles that were set on fire. And that's when a group apparently waiting for those cars attacked them. Waymo is steering clear of downtown LA until further notice after five of its driverless cars were destroyed during the ICE protests. What we've been hearing is that

Some of these agitators have been using some sort of accelerant, possibly spray paint, working to light that. And that's how they've been able to get these on fire. For the past week, especially on X, influencers, pundits, big name figures have all been freaking out about Waymo's being set on fire in downtown Los Angeles last weekend.

The Waymos were burned during protests against ICE. A lot of people seem deeply confused about the burnings of the cars. So I want to talk about why there's so much anti-Waymo sentiment right now, the rise of surveillance at protests, and how it all affects speech. I'll start by saying people in Los Angeles love Waymos, okay? They're easy and convenient rides in a city with abysmal public transport and poor car-centric city planning.

Los Angeles Waymos have largely been immune from the type of attacks that have happened in places like San Francisco, for instance, where the cars have become a symbol of gentrification and battles over public transit funding. Waymo launched its LA robo taxi service last year. And since then, the company has completed hundreds of thousands of rides across cities like Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and even some newer markets like Austin, Atlanta, and soon DC.

As more people begin to understand exactly how Waymos operate, though, and learn what the company's policies are regarding sharing footage and data with the police, I do think that we're going to see a lot more Waymo attacks. So let's back up and explain briefly how Waymos work. Obviously, they're self-driving cars, but to be a self-driving car, you have to collect a lot of data. That's location data, visual data, et cetera, et cetera. Waymos use LiDAR, radar, and 360-degree cameras constantly to record streets, faces, license plate numbers, and literally anything around them.

And this is a good thing, by the way. We want self-driving cars to have this stuff so they don't do things like run over small children. But what a lot of people don't realize is that that data is collected and stored. And it's not just Waymos doing this, by the way. Teslas, which also have self-driving mode, also record what's around them. And as more self-driving cars enter the market, they will begin collecting this type of data too.

Back in April, 404 Media revealed that the LAPD was publishing crime footage it got from a Waymo driverless car in an effort to identify a suspect. As 404 reported, the LAPD obtained video footage from a Waymo driverless car as part of its investigation into a hit and run, in which a separate human-driven car hit a pedestrian. The LAPD published the footage, which has a note on it that reads, Waymo Confidential Commercial Information, on its YouTube page to ask the public for help identifying the driver of the vehicle.

As Jason Kebler at 404 noted, quote, the situation shows that police in Los Angeles are now looking at Waymo robo taxis as potential sources of surveillance footage to investigate crimes that the vehicle's cameras and sensors may have witnessed. In 2023, Bloomberg reported that the police in both San Francisco and Maricopa County, Arizona, had issued search warrants for Waymo footage. Police have also been requesting footage from Tesla's extremely pervasive ring cameras and cruise autonomous vehicles.

Waymo's website explains that the company conducts training sessions for law enforcement and emergency responders, which are designed to teach them about Waymo and explains what they should do when they're responding to a car crash or other emergencies involving a Waymo. The company has allegedly conducted in-person trainings for over 18,000 first responders and police officers.

All of this has obviously led to a lot of backlash against Waymo, especially when Waymos are spotted near a protest. Google has temporarily suspended Waymo service to downtown LA and in San Francisco, where more anti-ice protests have unfolded. The company is also now hiring a community and public affairs specialist in LA, presumably to help convince people not to burn down these cars.

Brian Merchant, a tech journalist who's written extensively about Waymo, went to the scene of the protest the next day in Los Angeles and talked to a cameraman who had been shooting footage the day before. The cameraman told Merchant, quote, they called them up on purpose, lit them up on fire like that. He's talking about Waymo there. Merchant notes that the fact that the charred husks of the cars were in a neat line does seem to suggest that the cars were called and just waiting. Other witnesses and journalists who were there shared the same story. People summoned the cars to light them on fire when they arrived.

Protesters were reportedly calling them spy cars and they were vandalized and set ablaze. Some people also noted how the cars share data with the LAPD. This is also what protesters on the ground told me when I was there last weekend. This has led to a lot of pushback and people saying, oh, so the protesters were doing bad things and that's why they didn't want to be recorded. But that really misunderstands why people are against Waymo.

As Merchant notes, the cars are essentially operating as collaborators with the cops and law enforcement. So people are treating them the way that they think tech collaborators with ICE and the government should be treated, which is with contempt. All of this is happening under the backdrop of more Silicon Valley data harvesting and control over speech. ICE raids are being carried out using data provided by Silicon Valley companies, most notably Palantir, Peter Thiel and Alex Karp's deeply evil data harvesting conglomerate that recently signed a $30 million contract with ICE to manage real-time surveillance on immigrants.

Most of big tech, including Google, has made deals with ICE too, whether directly or through third-party contractors. As Merchant notes, quote,

surveillance technology operated by a tech giant undemocratically, opaquely led by a CEO that visits Mar-a-Lago and donates to Trump. The New York Times spoke to Elise Joshi, an activist in San Francisco who underscored this point. She said, quote, "The robo taxis have become a way for some protesters to display resistance to the tech industry's close ties to the Trump administration. Waymos don't have human drivers. They're devoid of humanity. Destroyed robot taxis are symbolic of the attempts throughout the history of this country by the tech industry to strip us of community."

When protesters' every move might be recorded, geotagged, stored, and turned over to federal agencies, that's a significant deterrent to constitutionally protected free speech, like the right to protest. As more of these driverless cars roam our streets, creating a massive, fluid, real-time surveillance network, they're going to have a significant chilling effect.

Fear of being recorded can dampen speech, assembly, and dissent, especially among marginalized communities that are already wary of law enforcement. Research shows that dense street imagery data sets like those Waymo collects can infer private group membership, political affiliation, and behavioral patterns. One study showed how over 25 million dash cam images could be analyzed to predict highly sensitive personal attributes, even after face blurring.

The academics who published this research noted that protesters' meeting locations and times captured in geotagged images by DSI providers may be surreptitiously shared with political groups that oppose their causes. This information flow enables adversarial groups to target and disrupt peaceful assemblies, undermining the protesters' right to organize and express dissent. The resulting harm includes exposure to retaliation, suppression of free speech, and the erosion of democratic principles.

The researchers also note that this sort of data could be weaponized in professional settings. For instance, shift patterns of nurses inferred from DSI images captured outside healthcare facilities could be sold to exploitative employers or staffing agencies seeking to take advantage of their availability. Such data flows enable adversaries to target nurses with aggressive recruitment tactics, pressure them into accepting poorly compensated shifts at inconvenient hours, or manipulate them into working under unsafe or undesirable conditions.

This undermines nurses' autonomy in the workplace and their ability to make independent decisions about their labor. Geotagged imagery of people gathered at busy crosswalks during peak hours may be sold to predatory advertisers seeking to exploit behavioral patterns. For example, advertisers might use this data to push high-pressure marketing campaigns for products like payday loans or fast food, directly targeting the commuter's mobile devices in certain locations or through interactive billboards.

Muslims or Hasidic Jews photographed in locations perceived as incongruent with their practices, for instance, near entertainment districts, risk having these images and their associated metadata shared with hate groups, potentially exposing them to targeted harassment or discrimination. This flow facilitates that harassment, stigmatization, and even violence against the group, violating societal norms of religious freedom.

This sort of mass surveillance and data collection is a significant threat to speech, especially under authoritarian leaders like Trump. Some California lawmakers are already sounding alarms. Assembly member Chris Ward is pushing to prohibit tech companies from selling location data to federal agencies, citing worries that ICE or the administration could use it to suppress or punish protesters.

Though no confirmed instances of ICE prosecuting protesters using Waymo data has emerged, privacy advocates argue that the risk is very real and growing by the day. This is why we desperately need data privacy regulation. Just this week, Wired and 404 Media revealed that a data broker owned by the country's major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected U.S. travelers' domestic flight records and sold access to them to Customs and Border Protection.

Then as part of the contract, CPB was not allowed to reveal where that data came from. The data included things like passenger names, their full flight itineraries, and even financial details.

Senator Ron Wyden, who I would argue is pretty much the only member of Congress that even remotely understands the tech landscape and is good on tech legislation, said, quote, the big airlines through a shady data broker that they own called ARC are selling the government bulk access to America's sensitive information, revealing where they fly and the credit card that they used.

Jake Lapercue, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, said, quote, while obtaining domestic airline data, like many other transaction and purchase records, generally doesn't require a warrant. There is still supposed to be a thorough legal process that ensures independent oversight and limits data collection to records that will support an investigation. As with many other types of sensitive and revealing data, the government seems intent on using data brokers to buy their way around important guardrails and limits.

I hope that as more people become aware of surveillance tech, we can fight against this because Waymo is just the tip of the iceberg. The cars are only a small part of the broader surveillance ecosystem that the government and private enterprises have constructed across the US. Systems like license plate readers, predictive policing algorithms, CCTV networks, and private mobile carriers are increasingly leveraged by law enforcement. And as the government is collecting more and more data on all of us, we constantly see data-driven enforcement being weaponized among the most marginalized people.

For instance, with New York City's stop and frisk policy, 83% of stops targeted Black or Latino people. Flock Safety, private license plate readers deployed in 5,000 communities, have faced multiple civil liberties lawsuits. With the rise of self-driving cars, we now have cameras roving around filming protests, street vendors, and people going about their everyday lives. Imagine all that footage fed into a centralized database combined with app-based location tracking, facial recognition, and predictive policing algorithms.

rhythms. As The Verge notes, Waymo's mission is to become the world's most trusted driver by making transportation safer and more accessible. And there are cases when Waymo releasing footage to law enforcement can be helpful, like when one of its vehicles witnesses a hit and run. But as the company becomes a bigger part of city life, it will inevitably come into conflict with all the many forces that are currently roiling in our country. And that's something that not even the world's most trusted driver can avoid. I

I think we need to push companies like Waymo, Tesla and Cruise to publish public transparency reports detailing government data requests, how many and for what purposes, and how they responded to these government requests. Without this information, citizens remain in the dark. We also desperately need better privacy laws. Instead of pushing dangerous censorship bills like the Kids Online Safety Act or age verification laws that mandate tech companies collect significantly more data on users, we need the opposite.

We also need the public to become more aware of data privacy. People should know that these cars are recording you. Free speech and the right to protest is essential in maintaining democracy. And the public should not be recorded, traced, or tracked by the government or any other enterprise without consent. That's it for this week's Free Speech Friday. Don't forget to subscribe to my tech and online culture newsletter, usermag.co. That's usermag.co where I'm covering all of this stuff and more.

If you're listening to the show on a podcast platform, don't forget to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. I'll be back next Friday with a brand new episode of Free Speech Friday. See you then.