One effect of the AB 481 is to add local monitoring to hardware like the kind obtained through the U.S. Department of Defense program sending billions of dollars military equipment such as armored vehicles and ammunition for local police departments. Equipment from the show was used against protesters following the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 and George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
Earlier this year, San Francisco supervisor Aaron Peskin revised San Francisco’s draft policy on military-grade police equipment to explicitly prohibit the use of robots to deploy force against any person. any person. But an amendment proposed by the SFPD this month argues that police should be free to use robotic forces, because their officers must be ready to respond to incidents that have killed many people. “In some cases, deadly force against a threat is the only option for minimizing such mass casualties,” the amendment said.
Ahead of yesterday’s vote, Brian Cox, director of the Integrity Unit at the San Francisco Office of Public Defenders, called the change “contrary to the progressive values the city has long advocated for.” and urged supervisors to reject the SFPD proposal. “This is a wrong choice, based on fear and their desire to write their own rules,” he said in a letter to the supervisory board.
Cox said deadly robots on the streets of SF can cause great harm, made worse by the SFPD’s “long history of excessive use of force—especially against people of skin. color.” The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Civil Rights Attorney’s Committee have also spoken out against the policy.
The San Francisco Police Department has revealed that it has 17 robots, though only 12 are active. These include search and rescue robots designed for use after natural disasters like earthquakes, but there are also models that can be armed with pistols, explosives or pepper spray.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin mentioned the possibility of police use of explosives as false during the debate before yesterday’s vote. During a 1985 confrontation in Philadelphia, police dropped explosives from a helicopter onto a house, causing a fire that killed 11 people and destroyed 61 homes.
Peskin called it one of the most brutal and illegal incidents in the history of U.S. law enforcement but said the fact that nothing like it had ever happened in San Francisco gave him partial consolation. any. In the end, he voted to allow the SFPD to use deadly robots. However, he added the restriction that only the sheriff, assistant chief executive or special deputy chief executive could authorize the use of deadly force against a robot, along with urging language. consider de-escalation.
Licensing for killer robots is the latest twist in a series of laws regulating technology from the tech hub of San Francisco. After passing the law to deny the police use electric gun in 2018, and provide surveillance technology monitoring and Banning the use of facial recognition In 2019, city leaders in September granted police access to private security camera footage.
Supervisor Dean Preston addressed San Francisco’s inconsistent record on police technology in his dissent yesterday. “If police shouldn’t be trusted with Tasers, then they certainly shouldn’t be trusted with killer robots,” he said. “We have a police force, not an army.”
San Francisco’s new policy comes at a time when police access to robots is expanding and those robots are becoming more and more likely. Most existing police robots move slowly on caterpillar tracks, but police forces in New York and Germany are starting to use legged robots like Spot Mini has four agile legs.
Axon, the maker of the Taser, suggested adding this weapon to Drones to prevent mass shootings. And in China, researchers are working on quadrupedal drones that work in tandem with small drones to chase down suspects.
Boston Dynamics, a pioneer in robotics with legs, and five other robot manufacturers have published a open letter in October protesting the weaponization of their cyborgs. The signatories said they felt it was urgent to make their position known as “a few people have made clear their temporary efforts to weaponize commercially available robots.” But as robots become more advanced and cheaper, there are plenty of competitors without such reservations. Ghost Robotics, a Pennsylvania company in pilot projects with the U.S. military and Department of Homeland Security at the U.S.-Mexico border, allows customers to mount guns on their legged robots.
