I'll bet there are interesting hacks and attacks you can perform against an autonomous vehicle. "I spoofed the LIDAR" is... mmmmmmmaybe a small part of that? I mean, Google isn't really much of an "autonomous" company. They're a "let's collect stone craptons of data and accomplish everything in the cloud" company. So let's say you stand on a street corner with your arduino laser and slow a car down. What do you think are the odds that Google's control software shoots an instantaneous email saying "hey - my LIDAR data is all fucked up at this street corner, y'all wanna check this out?" and then every other autonomous car anywhere near says

- "wasn't fucked up a minute ago"

- "wasn't fucked up thirty seconds ago"

- "wasn't fucked up ten seconds ago"

- "I'm the next lane over and I don't see shit"

- I'm coming from the other direction and I don't either"

And all of a sudden the car being spoofed goes "there's someone spoofing my LIDAR I'd best report that to Google, the local police department and the department of roads" faster than you can say "SEO detection."

The funny thing is if you want to get an autonomous car to slow down abruptly, run in front of it. You need not worry one iota about its reaction time. Hijacking an autonomous vehicle would be as simple as having a bunch of dudes swarm it so it couldn't get anywhere and then bust the window and grab the occupant. No LIDAR necessary - do it Somalia-style.

The funnier thing is if you did that, Google would have exquisite surveillance coverage of the whole affair, immediate and realtime, as well as 3D telemetry on the entire attack. By reviewing the tracks of cars coming through, they'd have 3D telemetry of the setup. And by tagging everything that happened after, they'd be able to follow your ass anywhere you went. All of a sudden "carjacking" becomes an extraordinarily difficult crime to commit... all through the leveraged power of creepy big brotherdom.

That's the story no one wants to tell - it's not

- "holy shit you can spoof LIDAR with a laser pointer and arduino"

it's

- "self-driving cars will operate through heavily leveraged totalitarian surveillance and if you think that won't change society, you aren't paying attention."