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The Coming Terrorist Threat From Autonomous Vehicles
HughPickens.com writes: Alex Rubalcava writes that autonomous vehicles are the greatest force multiplier to emerge in decades for criminals and terrorists and open the door for new types of crime not possible today. According to Rubalcava, the biggest barrier to carrying out terrorist plans until now has been the risk of getting caught or killed by law enforcement so that only depraved hatred, or religious fervor has been able to motivate someone to take on those risks as part of a plan to harm other people. "A future Timothy McVeigh will not need to drive a truck full of fertilizer to the place he intends to detonate it," writes Rubalcava. "A burner email account, a prepaid debit card purchased with cash, and an account, tied to that burner email, with an AV car service will get him a long way to being able to place explosives near crowds, without ever being there himself." A recent example is instructive. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were identified by an examination of footage from numerous private security cameras that were recording the crowd in downtown Boston during the Marathon. Imagine if they could have dispatched their bombs in the trunk of a car that they were never in themselves? Catching them might have been an order of magnitude more difficult than it was.
According to Rubalcava the reaction to the first car bombing using an AV is going to be massive, and it's going to be stupid. There will be calls for the government to issue a stop to all AV operations, much in the same way that the FAA made the unprecedented order to ground 4,000-plus planes across the nation after 9/11. "But unlike 9/11, which involved a decades-old transportation infrastructure, the first AV bombing will use an infrastructure in its infancy, one that will be much easier to shut down" says Rubalcava. "That shutdown could stretch from temporary to quasi-permanent with ease, as security professionals grapple with the technical challenge of distinguishing between safe, legitimate payloads and payloads that are intended to harm." (And don't forget The Dead Pool.)
According to Rubalcava the reaction to the first car bombing using an AV is going to be massive, and it's going to be stupid. There will be calls for the government to issue a stop to all AV operations, much in the same way that the FAA made the unprecedented order to ground 4,000-plus planes across the nation after 9/11. "But unlike 9/11, which involved a decades-old transportation infrastructure, the first AV bombing will use an infrastructure in its infancy, one that will be much easier to shut down" says Rubalcava. "That shutdown could stretch from temporary to quasi-permanent with ease, as security professionals grapple with the technical challenge of distinguishing between safe, legitimate payloads and payloads that are intended to harm." (And don't forget The Dead Pool.)
is going to be massive, and it's going to be stupid. There will be calls for the government to issue a stop to all AV operations, much in the same way that the FAA made the unprecedented order to ground 4,000-plus planes across the nation after 9/11.
That wasn't a stupid decision. It was a reversible order to prevent any immediate further terrorist attack that might be planned until they could get a handle on the situation and figure out who we were at war with and what to do in terms of airline security. While we ultimately made really stupid decisions about airline security, it was the right call. If you remember the mood of the general public on 9/11, we would all have considered it profoundly stupid to let most commercial airlines fly right after that, at least without better precautions than were standard. They had just flown an airplane into the Pentagon and another had crashed on its way toward the Capitol or White House. We had thousands of planes in the air we were trying to keep track of and only a few military jets ready to intercept.
This wouldn't happen if we could track immigrants like FedEx packages!
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
The auto industry is utterly clueless compared to most industries about just how important security is when you "computerize" something. It's a toss up as to whether they or the medical device companies will be the first to produce a product with such shoddy security that a script kiddy can actually kill someone with a kit.
And no, that's not sensationalism. You don't see any of them reacting to the news of hacked vehicles at various conferences with a bold corporate initiative to hire a Chief Security Architect to implement a security process for all of their engineering teams to ensure the reduced hackability of their vehicles. You see "meh."
They want you to worry about AVs, while they are actually learning to fly DRONES!
Sig ?
The problem is not terrorisst control, it is *State* control.
If cars can be remotely controlled, it is *inevitable* the State will require the ability to do so - to prevent crime, terrorism, for safety purposes, you name it.
All good reasons *but* with the appalling unintended outcome that the State will end up literally able to shut down at will every single car in the country, or have them lock their doors and drive themselves to the nearest police station.
The last ten years have seen the expansion of State power into the complete monitoring of all commuication - in the next decade or so, the State will gain control over personal transportation. States are terrible things. They are so unable to act with and with only their intended consequence that any power they have causes great harm.
The problem then becomes, how to prevent the clever bad guy (with physical access to an AV for as much time as he needs) from fooling the AV into thinking it is carrying a person.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Why not social ones? There's two things that create terrorists, mental illness and poor economic conditions. Sane people in wealthy countries don't become terrorist, they've got better things to hope for than Valhalla. Crazy people will exist for about another hundred years or so until we figure out the mechanisms of the brain. Until then we can manage it with treatment.
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I'm afraid of autonomous cars carrying drones that drop bombs and fire 3D printed weapons.
I'm also afraid of drones carrying autonomous cars that are equipped with 3D printed weapons.
And 3D printed weapons that fire autonomous cars from drones.
I don't know all the laws and regulations we will create, but I absolutely guarantee you that unlicensed vehicles will NOT be allowed to drive around with no people and load of cargo, unless they picked up that cargo at a licensed and regulated facility (aka UPS, FedEx, Amazon, etc.). There will be sensors in non-licensed vehicles to make sure that if they have any cargo in them, they have to have a person in them at first. Licensed vehicles will most likely be airborne with very light cargo capacity at first (if you don't have a human, it makes more sense to fly).
No, these sensors will not be easy to counter.
And vehicles will also have hard coded restrictions on where they can go and can't go.
The vehicles will NOT even have a receiving antenna, not at first. At first they will require instructions to be made inside the car, with the door closed - and cancel them when the door opens. They will however broadcast their destination to be recorded by the police, but not be able to receive any radio commands.
And most importantly, it is already possible to JUST as much damage, simply by taking a stolen van full of explosives, parking it some place, and leaving it set to detonate in 20 minutes. The author of this paper is clueless about both the current level of risk we have and the level of risk we will accept in the future
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
honestly this is 100% stupid. If you dont think you can do this RIGHT NOW then you are an uneducated moron. Call up towing service and have a vehicle towed to the rear of a building, or a delivery service.
Honestly Slashdot just needs to change it's name to Gizmodo.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
AVs might make it a little easier to do terrorism, but I'm not seeing order-of-magnitude change. Islamist radicals already have AVs in the form of suicide drivers. They go where they want and ram the gates down. McVeigh and Nichols were nowhere near the truck when it went off; the FBI figured everything out from serial numbers on the truck parts in a few hours.
In the early days of AV cars, no package deliveries will be permitted without a person riding in the car
That is knee jerk overkill. There is little evidence that there are massive numbers of domestic terrorists waiting to murder random people at the first opportunity. Anyone could do what the Tsarnaev brothers did, and with a little more brains, they could get away with it. Yet it almost never happens. Autonomous vehicles are not going to change that.
And the simple solution to that, from the terrorist point of view, is just to use either a willing suicide bomber (there seem to be plenty of those) or an unknowing patsy.
This is a load of fuss about nothing, firstly because the terrorist threat is not as remotely terrible as everyone seems to think it is, and secondly because autonomous vehicles really don't change anything at all.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Requiring an ID is discriminatory.
We already require an ID to operate a vehicle. I have never before heard that described as "discrimination".
Agreed. The novelty and utility of not having to own a car will more than compensate for the added inconveniences that the fleet owners will require when they first arrive on the market.
Adter all, something like 4 million people now make their living driving cars and trucks and buses. They and their unions will put up a hell of a fight against automation. Fleet owners will have to bend backwards to allay the many threat scenarios proposed. Validation of driver ID and car passenger is a very small bump in the road.
Simply put code in the system to allow remote redirection and then in high density areas have a system scan a car using IR. If the car doesn't have a human shaped heat source in it then pull the car over and have an officer verify occupancy.
That just means that each terrorist attack will be preceded by a kidnapping.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Going back to the main point: that changes everything.
No, it doesn't. There are people willing to blow themselves up for their cause, and there are plenty of ways for people to blow things up without killing themselves.
As far as furthering terrorist aims goes, autonomous vehicles are a solution in search of a problem.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You make a good point. The first building I worked in out of college had an elevator operator and he was a cool old dude. Extremely helpful, and much much much more useful than the new digital building directory systems in place today. He could not only tell you which floor and suite you wanted, but he'd give helpful tips on the way up like, "his secretary seems nasty, but if you ask her about her kids in the photo on her desk, she'll be really nice and even bring you coffee while you're waiting for your appointment". For those in the know, he was also a horse-player and would give very good tips in races at Arlington Park. More than once he told me, "A sharp lad might want to put $10 on Lightning Switch in the 7th race today." One time he even gave me the 1-2-3 combination in the trifecta and made me over $300 bucks, which to a barely-paid mail-room boy was a lot of scratch. Let's see some Siri-fied automated building directory system do that. He would also make sure that if you were hustling to the elevator carrying boxes, he'd wait until you caught up. There were several banks of elevators in that building, all with elevator operators, and I'd use his every single time.
Hell yes we need to have elevator operators again.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Technology is very bad. Fool. Technology is gonna git ya. Fool. I'm telling you, we don't know what technology will do next .. therefore let's try to stop it. Let's stop evolving. Are you a fool who panics when something goes wrong because you don't understand a system and think all problems are unsolvable because you yourself can't think of how to solve them? Well then technology isn't for you. Technology is bad. You don't know nothing about technology, so it means technology will always be bad. Because if a fool like you can't solve it, it must mean non-fools can't come up with a solution either.
I am enamored of your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Trying to follow these simple "but! terrorists can use it!" angles is like watching that Thug Life video, Cat Loves To Knock Things Over!. You know it's a cat video, you've read the title, you know what the cat is about to knock things over, and look, it's happening. Wow. It happened. Cats are cute and we'll watch them do anything. But terrorists aren't cute, so being told to imagine them doing some no-duh obvious thing that could never be avoided with any great assurance without compromising our human desire to innovate, is kind of boring.
When I'm bored, I re-post.
___
(Meanwhile, in some sorry-ass future)
I know autonomous cars will be "oh so safe". At the moment I'm just as worried about what these things will make people do to people.
[OPENING OVERTURE]
Your driver liability insurance policy has come up for review. We have been recently been acquired by AAAA, the quadruple-A company -- the "Autonomous AAA of the future" and what that means for you as a member is -- it has never been easier to upgrade to an a-car! Financing is available! [link] Due to increasing pressure in the political, legal and underwriters' arenas, we regret to inform you that the cost of your driver policy will be rising this quarter in order to begin collection of fees for the Federal National Driver Insurance Pool, and rising at a steady rate thereafter. It will continue to rise over time despite your [good to excellent] driving record. Now that the Autonomous Vehicle Safety Act is law, and blanket liability accident investigation procedures have been approved by Congress, the legal liability of autonomous vehicles is capped nationwide. While this grants the manufactures freedom from risk of direct criminal penalty and potentially unlimited civil liability, it places human drivers in a difficult position. Most a-car accidents will, of historical necessity rather than actual circumstances, be "no-fault". Since human drivers and any victims claiming injury from them are still obliged to use traditional law enforcement and legal means of redress -- and the cost of these continues to rise -- underwriters are pressuring insurance companies to drop human drivers altogether. We do not intend to do this, but we can no longer provide policies for extended periods. Your new maximum policy period is now [one month]. Thank you for insuring with AAAA.
[INTERMISSION]
Meanwhile...
Dear editor: DRIVERS cause accidents. A-CARS prevent them. That's what the billboard says -- and if Howard County Referendum passes this September manually operated cars will soon be a thing of the past here. What started as a discussion at a hearing after last year's tragic accident grew into a full heated debate, and to think it all started with the parents who provide their children with a-cars pinning the blame squarely on other peoples' children. But then, after co-opting the national campaign with its slick literature and canned answers for everything -- NOW
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I personally LIKE driving my vehicles....the autonomy and freedom it gives me....and well, I've never in my (getting longer) life owned a car with more than two functional seats, always sports/performance cars.
Every day when I sit in it, fire up the engine and crank up the stereo...even a trip down the street to the grocery store is an adventure and a pleasure.
I feel sorry for folks who think a car is nothing but a means to get from point A to point B.
Life is short...it should be enjoyed.
And personally, I like it when I'm getting from point A to point B in a fast manner (of course, given that driving conditions at that time/place are safe enough to do so).
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........