Risks Digest 34.52

RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Saturday 11 January 2025 Volume 34 : Issue 52

ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, founder and still moderator

***** See last item for further information, disclaimers, caveats, etc. *****
This issue is archived at <http://www.risks.org> as
<http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/34.52>
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Contents:
10 killed and dozens injured in pickup-truck attack on New Orleans crowd
(Lauren Weinstein)
'Fundamentally wrong': Self-driving Tesla steers Calif. tech
founder onto train tracks (SFGate)
Driver accidentally disconnects autopilot, crashes car
(Lars-Henrik Eriksson)
Driver in Las Vegas Cybertruck explosion used ChatGPT to plan
blast, authorities say (NBC News)
It's not just Tesla. Vehicles amass huge troves of possibly
sensitive data. (WashPost)
Tech allows Big Auto to evolve into Big Brother
(LA Times via Jim Geissman)
Wrong turn from GPS leaves car abandoned on Colorado ski run (9news.com)
A Waymo robotaxi and a Serve delivery robot collided in run Los Angeles
(TechCrunch)
Waymo robotaxis can make walking across the street a game of chicken
(The Washington Post)
Trifecta of articles in *LA Times* about cars (Ssteve Bacher)
LA Sheriff outage (LA Times)
Eutelsat resolves OneWeb leap year software glitch
after two-day outage (SpaceNews)
Traffic lights will have a fourth color in 2025
(ecoticias via Steve Bacher)
FAA chief: Boeing must shift focus to safety over profit
(LA Times)
ARRL hit with ransomware (ARRL)
Taiwan Suspects China of Latest Undersea Cable Attack"
(Tom Nicholson)
The Memecoin Shenanigans Are Just Getting Started (WiReD)
Apple to pay $95M to settle lawsuit accusing Siri of
eavesdropping (CBC)
Meta Getting Rid of Fact Checkers (Clare Duff)
Huge problems with axing fact-checkers, Meta oversight
board says (BBC)
Meta hosts AI chatbots of 'Hitler,' 'Jesus Christ,' Taylor Swift
(NBC News)
God can take Sunday off
(NYTimes via Tom Van Vleck)
Several items Google and Meta (Lauren Weinstein_
AI means the end of Internet search as we've known it (Technology Review))
Is it still 'social media' if it's overrun by AI? (CBC)
AI Incident Database (Steve Bacher)
Apple's AI News Summaries and Inventions (BBC)
What real people think about Google Search today (Lauren Weinstein)
WARNING: Google Voice is flagging LEGITIMATE robocalls from
insurance companies to their customers in the fires as spam
(Lauren Weinstein)
A non-tech analogy for Google Search AI Overviews (Lauren Weinstein)
Happy new year, compute carefully (Tom Van Vleck)
How to understand Generative AI (Lauren Weinstein)
Google censoring my AI criticism? (Lauren Weinstein)
U.S. newspapers are deleting old crime stories offering
subjects a clean slate (The Guardian)
EU Commission Fined for Transferring User Data
to Meta in Violation of Privacy Laws (THN)
The Ghosts in the Spotify Machine (Liz Pelly:)
Spotify (Rob Slade)
Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks)

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Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2025 09:09:56 -0800
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Subject: 10 killed and dozens injured in pickup-truck attack on New Orleans
crowd

Driver was killed by police. It is reported that he shot at them and
also had explosive devices. Pickup is reportedly registered to a 42
year old man from Texas. -L

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2025 09:45:55 -0700
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
Subject: 'Fundamentally wrong': Self-driving Tesla steers Calif. tech
founder onto train tracks (SFGate)

Jesse Lyu trusts his Tesla’s “self-driving” technology; he’s taken it to
work, and he’s gone on 45-minute drives without ever needing to intervene.
He’s a “happy customer,” he told SFGATE. But on Thursday, his Tesla scared
him, badly.

Lyu, the founder and CEO of artificial intelligence gadget startup Rabbit,
was on the 15-minute drive from his apartment to his office in downtown
Santa Monica. He’d turned on his car’s self-driving features, called
“Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving (Supervised),” after pulling out of his
parking garage. The pay-to-add features are meant to drive the Tesla with
“minimal driver intervention,” steering, stopping and accelerating on
highways and even in city traffic, according to Tesla's website. Lyu was
cruising along, resting his arms on the steering wheel but letting the car
direct itself, he said in a video interview Friday.

Then, Lyu’s day took a turn for the worse. At a stoplight, his Tesla turned
left onto Colorado Avenue, but it missed the lane for cars. Instead, it
plunged onto a street-grade light rail track between the road’s vehicle
traffic lanes, paved but meant solely for trains on LA’s Metro E Line. He
couldn’t just move over — a low concrete barrier separates the lanes, and a
fence stands on the other side.

“It’s just f–king crazy,” he said, narrating a video he posted to X of the
incident. “I’ve got nowhere to go. And, you can tell from behind -- the
train’s right here.” (He pointed to the oncoming train, stopped about a
block behind his car.) [...]
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/tesla-fsd-jesse-lyu-train-20014242.php

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2025 10:25:39 +0100
From: Lars-Henrik Eriksson <lhe@it.uu.se>
Subject: Driver accidentally disconnects autopilot, crashes car

A Swedish driver was convicted for reckless driving and insurance fraud
after crashing his Tesla.

To show off, he engaged the autopilot at a speed of 70-80 km/h and then
moved over into the passenger seat. After a short while the car
crashed. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. It was initially seen as a
normal car accident and his insurance compensated him for the car which was
a total loss, but his (now ex) wife had recorded everything from the back
seat and later turned the video over to the police.

The police asked him if he was aware that the autopilot would disengage if
the driver seat belt was released and he replied that he wasn't.

The risk here is not primarily one of idiot drivers but of the increasing
complexity of modern cars where the drivers don't fully understand how they
behave and there is no real pressure to motivate them. In traffic, you can
see that drivers frequently mishandle such a relatively simple thing as
automatic front and rear lights.

In aviation, pilots of larger aircraft have to take formal training to
completely understand the aircraft systems. Even with smaller aircraft --
which may have less complex systems than modern cars -- pilots are expected
to read up on how the aircraft systems operate.

(https://www.unt.se/nyheter/tarnsjo/artikel/filmbeviset-trodde-bilen-var-sjalvkorande-kraschade/j8ex8emj, in Swedish and behind a paywall.)

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2025 06:40:48 -0800
From: Steve Bacher <sebmb1@verizon.net>
Subject: Driver in Las Vegas Cybertruck explosion used ChatGPT to plan
blast, authorities say (NBC News)

NBC News (01/07/25) Tom Winter and Andrew Blankstein ; Antonio Planas

The soldier who authorities believe blew up a Cybertruck on New Year's Day
in front of the entrance of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas used
artificial intelligence to guide him about how to set off the explosion,
officials said Tuesday.

Matthew Alan Livelsberger, 37, queried ChatGPT for information about how he
could put together an explosive, how fast a round would need to be fired for
the explosives found in the truck to go off —- not just catch fire -— and
what laws he would need to get around to get the materials, law enforcement
officials said.

An OpenAI spokesperson said, "ChatGPT responded with information already
publicly available on the Internet and provided warnings against harmful or
illegal activities."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/driver-las-vegas-cybertruck-explosion-used-chatgpt-plan-blast-authorit-rcna186704

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2025 08:46:42 -0700
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
Subject: It's not just Tesla. Vehicles amass huge troves of possibly
sensitive data. (WashPost)

Video footage and other data collected by Tesla helped law enforcement
quickly piece together how a Cybertruck came to explode outside the Trump
International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Day.

The trove of digital evidence also served as a high-profile demonstration of
how much data modern cars collect about their drivers and those around them.

Data privacy experts say the investigation -- which has determined t= hat
the driver, active-duty U.S. Army soldier Matthew Livelsberger, died by
suicide before the blast -- highlights how car companies vacuum up reams of
data that can clear up mysteries but also be stolen or given to third
parties without drivers' knowledge. There are few regulations controlling
how and when law enforcement authorities can access data in cars, and
drivers are often unaware of the vast digital trail they leave behind.
``These are panopticons on wheels,'' said Albert Fox Cahn, who founded the
Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, an advocacy group that argues the
volume and precision of data collected can pose civil liberties concerns for
people in sensitive situations, like attending protests or going to abortion
clinics.