A Waymo Robotaxi May Have Recorded Footage of a Deadly Shooting in San Francisco

A lethal shooting in San Francisco over the weekend may have been recorded by a nearby robotaxi—a possibility that suggests the ways in which America’s new autonomous vehicle cadres may soon become pivotal to law enforcement probes.

The shooting in question, which took place in the city’s Mission neighborhood, left one man dead and another critically injured. The San Francisco Standard cites calls to 9-1-1 dispatchers to reveal that a Waymo had been parked nearby and may have recorded the deadly incident. It’s unclear whether cops have since asked the company for data from that vehicle. Gizmodo reached out to Waymo and the San Francisco Police Department for more information.

The suspect in the shooting has been identified as 23-year-old Larry Hudgson Jr., police revealed on Sunday. Hudgson was located in a nearby neighborhood of the city, arrested without incident, and booked into the county jail.

Waymos are covered with tiny cameras and are thus perfectly outfitted to surveil their surroundings (by one recent count, there are at least 29 different cameras on their interior and exteriors). Privacy advocates have previously complained about the cars, noting their capacity to act as little mobile narcs. However, the company has previously stated that it is not in the habit of feeding data to law enforcement unless served with a proper request.

During a recent interview with the New York Times tech podcast Hard Fork, Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana noted that the company has been transparent about its privacy policy. “On the question of when and how law enforcement gets access to our data, we make that publicly known,” Mawakana told the podcasters. “We follow the legal process to receive footage from our vehicles, and we narrow the scope of that as needed.” A Waymo representative also previously told Business Insider that the company will challenge data requests that are not considered to have a proper legal basis. “Our policy is to challenge, limit, or reject requests that do not have a valid legal basis or are overbroad,” the rep said.

Autonomous vehicles are just the latest evidence that smart devices are part of the surveillance economy. In general, any time cops can use a device to secure digital evidence of a crime, they will. In 2018, Amazon was ordered to turn over data from an Echo device as potential evidence for a murder that took place in New Hampshire the previous year. In 2021, the cameras on a Tesla helped lead to an arrest in a series of hate crimes. More recently, footage from an Uber Eats delivery bot was used in a criminal case involving its own attempted abduction. With driverless cars clogging the streets of more and more American cities, it seems inevitable that self-driving cars will be the next.