First robbery: Thief ordered Waymo and disappeared after theft. They haven’t been able to track him down yet

A robbery carried out with surgical precision

The entire incident at the Hot 8 yoga studio in the elite Marina neighborhood took place in less than three minutes. According to surveillance footage, a white Waymo autonomous Jaguar first drove the suspect to the location. The man came out, entered the studio and grabbed men’s sports clothes. Then he calmly returned to the car that was waiting for him, loaded the booty into the trunk, sat in the back seat and disappeared into the city streets. Everything seemed less like a panicked escape and more like an arranged transport.

​ – He just stole a bunch of men’s shorts – said the manager of the robbed studio.

For San Francisco police, this was the first recorded case of a robot taxi serving as a getaway vehicle.

The investigation at a dead end in the pastč the ‘all-seeing eye’ of technology

At first glance, it seemed that solving the case would be simple. Waymo vehicles are equipped with dozens of high-definition cameras, and using the service requires registration with credit card information, a combination that should provide a clear trail of evidence. But the reality turned out to be much more complicated. The lead detective on the case, Sergeant Tim Faye, admitted that he was convinced that the case would be easier to solve precisely because of the involvement of Waymo.

​- I would have thought it would have been easier to deal with at Waymo, Faye told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The problem arose due to several key factors. The police did not request a search warrant for data from the vehicle until April, three months after the robbery. Until then, the Waymo company was alreadyć deleted footage from inside the vehicle. The company doesn’t publicly disclose how long it stores videos, but a three-month gap was too long. Exterior footage was available but useless for identification as the faces of the suspects and bystanders were blurred to protect privacy. Account and credit card information did not lead to suspicion either, suggesting that he used stolen data or a “burner” cell phone.

User privacy ahead of police investigation?

The case inadvertently shed light on Waymo’s privacy policy, which proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for investigators. The company said that they are carefully checking all requests from law enforcement agencies to ensure their legal validity and that they will “oppose or seek to challenge the scope of the request if it is necessary to protect the user’s privacy.” For privacy campaigners, this may be good news, as it shows that autonomous vehicles are not necessarily ubiquitous surveillance tools. Ironically, a similar case in Los Angeles last year had a completely different outcome. A thief who fled to Waymo after robbing a store was quickly apprehended because an autonomous vehicle, programmed to stop when it detects police sirens, obediently pulled over and made the arrest possible.

*with the use of AI