Uh yeah? I’m pretty sure a normal taxi driver would call the cops if you waved around a loaded rifle in the back of the car. Tf lol
Boy, some of these responses make me realize how we got to this point when it comes to our rights.
A lot of folks seem focused on the sensationalized details-“Two juveniles waving a rifle around in a Waymo!” Obviously that's bad, but it doesn't address the underlying issue.
The question is, what happens when private companies have technology capable of detecting a firearm that a human driver wouldn't otherwise know was there? If that technology can identify a concealed firearm, flag the passenger, stop the ride, and potentially involve law enforcement, what happens when the person is a law-abiding CCW holder who hasn't committed a crime?
There's a fundamental difference between saying, “Waymo should report someone visibly committing a crime,” and saying, “therefore we shouldn't care how its surveillance technology is used or what happens when it's applied to otherwise lawful conduct.”
And yes, Waymo is a private company with rights of its own. It can establish conditions for using its service, including firearm restrictions. That's not really what's being disputed.
But where does “it's a private company, so that's the end of the discussion” lead? What if autonomous transportation becomes the norm, or a downtown area effectively requires people to use privately operated transportation? Would private ownership mean the operator can use increasingly sophisticated technology to monitor passengers, detect otherwise lawful activity, and potentially involve law enforcement without any meaningful questions about privacy or individual rights?
We've seen similar concern with technologies like Flock cameras and automated red-light enforcement: once technology makes it possible to monitor or identify something at scale, the question isn't only whether it can be done, but what kind of limitation and oversight should apply to how the capability is used.
Private property rights matter. So do individual rights. One doesn't automatically make the other irrelevant.
If the response to every question about surveillance and private enforcement is simply “yeah, but the guy was doing something illegal,” you're missing the underlying issue. The outcome of this particular incident doesn't answer the broader question about the mechanism being used.
That's how rights can disappear incrementally: every new restriction seems acceptable because there's always a bad enough circumstance to justify it.