The Legal and Ethical Ramifications of Letting Police Kill Suspects With Robots; Motherboard, 7/9/16

Jason Koebler, Motherboard; The Legal and Ethical Ramifications of Letting Police Kill Suspects With Robots:

"What are the guidelines for remotely killing a human?

Chief Brown said Dallas police “placed a device on [the robot’s] extension” that later exploded, suggesting that the robot was improvised on the fly. Given the extreme circumstances, it’s unlikely that the Dallas police department has published guidelines about when it’s OK to remotely kill a suspect (we’ve asked and will update if we hear back). Law enforcement will inevitably need those.

“With any new technology that the police use, what precautions should be taken to make sure that things don’t go badly wrong? The Dallas robot appears to have been a jury-rigged one,” Joh told me. “But if police robots become part of the future, how do we ensure that such robots aren’t taken over by third parties? The current landscape of easily hacked devices isn’t very assuring in this regard.”"