The Police Seem a Little Gung-Ho About Having Gun-Welding Robots

Fortunately, the idea is not universally popular...yet:

The proliferation of police robots has sparked pushback from civilians, elected officials, and civil rights groups alike. In 2021, residents and local politicians castigated the New York Police Department for its use of a so-called “Digidog”—an unarmed, four-legged, robotic “dog” built by Boston Dynamics—after footage of its deployment in two separate incidents went viral. The city has since canceled a $94,000 contract to lease the robo-dog. While Boston Dynamics was one of multiple companies that signed an open letter last week condemning the use of armed robots, other companies haven’t drawn such a line in the sand. As TechCrunch noted this week, a Philadelphia company named Ghost Robotics sells its products to the U.S. military and seems totally fine with the strapping of rifles to its robo-dogs.

On Monday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital privacy nonprofit, issued a scathing statement slamming the San Francisco Police Department’s request for killer robots.

“This is a spectacularly dangerous idea and EFF’s stance is clear: police should not arm robots,” the organization said. “Police technology goes through mission creep–meaning equipment reserved only for specific or extreme circumstances ends up being used in increasingly everyday or casual ways. We’ve already seen this with military-grade predator drones flying over protests, and police buzzing by the window of an activist’s home with drones.”

As EFF noted, the language governing police use-of-force policies tends to be extremely broad, including for the use of robots. While departments often claim that military technology will only be used in rare circumstances, the actual rules are often written to give cops leeway to do virtually whatever they want with the technology. In San Francisco, the policy would allow the department to deploy armed robots during nearly any situation—cops could use these weapons to kill people remotely so long as they claim to fear for their lives.

I mean, it's not like the police allows anyone to join without proper vetting, so we shouldn't be worried, right?