Your Cars Are Snitches, Bitches

In a sign of things to come, a Waymo autonomous vehicle in California pulled into a parking lot, locked the passengers inside, and notified police when two 15 year old passengers were drinking alcohol and shooting nearby pedestrians with water guns.

There are those who would call me a criminal lover for being opposed to that. Consider where this is going- your car will monitor you for everything illegal and drive you to the cops when it detects lawbreaking behavior. Tore the tags off your mattress? Didn’t follow the instructions on that can of bug spray to the letter? I promise you that each and every one of us breaks the law each and every day.

1. If you are using a household cleaner, and the label tells you to mix a cap full of the cleaner with a gallon of water, and you only mix it with 3.5 quarts of water, you have just used a labeled product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. Felony.
2. In Texas, it is a felony to own more than 4 sex toys (chapter 43). 11 of the 2,324 acts that the Texas Legislature thinks are worthy of being called felonies, have to do with acts that you can commit with or to an oyster.
3. In Montana It is a felony for a wife to open her husband’s mail.
4. In Florida, it is a felony to access WiFi without permission. There was a man who was convicted in 2005 of using the WiFi of a restaurant that advertised free WiFi for customers, because he was using the access from the parking lot while the establishment was closed. Since it was advertised as free WiFi for customers, and he could not be a customer while the business was closed, hello felony.
5. It’s a felony to have a raffle in Georgia, unless you are registered as a non-profit organization with the state.
6. In Michigan, it is a felony for a man to seduce an unmarried woman, punishable by 5 years in prison. Adultery is also a felony in Michigan, but only if the spouse being cheated on is the one who complained.
7. In Mississippi, if you promise to marry a woman, have sex with her, and then decide not to marry, you are guilty of a felony punishable by ten years in prison.

Soon, your television, car, cell phone, and everything else you own will be monitoring you to ensure you are following the rules. All of them, even those that no sane person would consider to be a crime. Again, the only power a government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Making more criminals makes the government, and those who are employed by it, more powerful.

Of course, not everyone will be tossed in jail. Instead, you will be used as a confidential informant to help convict your friends and acquaintances. Being an informant means getting away with continuing your criminal career, but with protection from the cops. My brother found that out firsthand when a couple of meth users who were CIs for the local cops tried to rob him at his place of business, and he was the one arrested when the criminals escaped and then called their cop handlers.

I don’t know how I got on this dystopian timeline, but I really wish I were in a different one.