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Robotics AI Technology Your Rights Online

Do Robots Need Passports? Should They? 164

Posted by timothy from the borders-as-prejudice-made-concrete dept.
Hallie Siegel writes: With countries evolving different regulations over robotic devices, law professor Anupam Chander looks into whether robots crossing borders will need passports, and what the role of international trade law should be in regulating the flow of these devices. Fascinating discussion on what happens when technology like robots crosses over international borders, as part of this year's We Robot conference in Seattle.
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Do Robots Need Passports? Should They? More

Do Robots Need Passports? Should They?

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  • Sure.

    Directly after the first incident. Don't kid yourself, if it can be used malevolently, it certainly will be.

    • Now all they need is a way is to uniquely identify a robot in a way that can't be forged so that a passport can only apply to one specific robot. A picture of it isn't exactly going to fly, nor will a serial number that can be physically altered, nor an ID chip that can be changed or replaced. Unless they're talking about a single national certification for an entire model range rather than individuals.

    • Re:Will the robots need passports? (Score:4)

      by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @08:19PM (#49895369)
      But what is a passport? It's proof of citizenship. Giving robots passports would convey upon them rights and responsibilities.

      Now, requiring import duties and restrictions on munitions doesn't have any "human" implications, and was used against lots of military tech previously.

      • Re:Will the robots need passports? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @08:27PM (#49895407) Homepage

        Yeah, no kidding. Bill of lading or customs form.

        Passport, not so much.

      • It most certainly is not. A passport is proof of nationality, not citizenship - two very different legal concepts.

        There are many people right now who, for instance, are US nationals but not citizens. They have US passports but do not have the rights of a citizen i.e. they can't vote, participate in elections, etc.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )

          It most certainly is not. A passport is proof of nationality, not citizenship - two very different legal concepts.

          http://www.uscis.gov/us-citize... [uscis.gov] "Your U.S. passport is your best proof of U.S. citizenship."

          You might want to convince the governments of the world that they are all wrong and you are right.

          There are many people right now who, for instance, are US nationals but not citizens. They have US passports but do not have the rights of a citizen i.e. they can't vote, participate in elections, etc.

          Yeah, they are called felons. They are citizens, just not humans anymore.

          • That has nothing at all to do with what I'm saying, as it's targeted to a very specific group of people. By international law, simply holding a passport is no proof of citizenship.

            > Yeah, they are called felons. They are citizens, just not humans anymore.

            I'm not talking about felons. I'm talking about the pacific US territories/islands.

            God damn, man. Stop advertising your ignorance so loudly.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AK Marc ( 707885 )

              By international law, simply holding a passport is no proof of citizenship.

              Then quote that law. I quoted the US Customs and Immigration, and they differ from your opinion. So post something other than your unsubstantiated opinion.

              Quit asserting I'm wrong, and prove it.

              http://travel.state.gov/conten... [state.gov]

              The US goverment makes it quite clear you are an ignorant liar. There exist non-citizen passports. They are separate documents and aren't full passports. Anyone talking about "passports" isn't talking about refugee travel papers, non-citizen passports, or other non-passport

              • All of that is completely irrelevant because, as I said (this is the THIRD time I'm saying this) I'm talking about international law, not any specifics that may or may not apply to US passport holders.

                Look up the definition of 'passport' in the New Oxford Companion to Law, or "Passports and Nationality in International Law" by Adam Muchmore (section IV. "The Passport in International Law").

                But please, keep on plucking that chicken. You're just making a mockery of yourself. I'm not even sure what the point i

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by AK Marc ( 707885 )
                  This is a US site. US Passports prove citizenship.

                  What are you on about regarding the irrelevant rant you are off on? Link or it doesn't exist. You've not given a link. I have.
            • John Oliver on the citizenship issue in Puerot Rico, Guam and American Samoa [youtube.com].

              According to Oliver, there are 4.1 million people living in Puerto Rico and the island territories. Of that population, 98.4% are racial or ethnic minorities, none of whom have the right to vote in U.S. elections. According to Oliver, the more you look into the reasons that the U.S. territories don’t have voting rights, the harder it is to understand why these dated laws have not been changed.

              Way back in 1901, it was said t

      • > what is a passport? It's proof of citizenship

        A passport is proof of ownership. Sort of like how a company puts a 'property of' sticker on a computer. But maybe my definition of passport is totally consistent with yours if you assume citizenship == subject of the realm == ownership.

    • You're confusing passports with visas.

      A passport is nothing but a document specifying the owner's nationality.

      It's a visa which allows you to enter a country. Now, many countries have visa waiver programs that allow passport holders from certain countries to enter without a visa. But such waivers may not always apply (for instance, if you stay over a certain period of time, you will need to apply for a visa).

      • For many countries, the passport stamp is your tourist visa.

        But back on topic, Does my weedwacker need a passport? Does my electric razor need a passport? WTF would my robot need a passport?

        • > But back on topic, Does my weedwacker need a passport? Does my electric razor need a passport? WTF would my robot need a passport?

          Giving robots literaly passports is silly, of course. I think the point is: do robots need special rules regulating their entry into different countries and would it be useful to use existing rules regarding human travel as a template. As robots become more sophisticated and human-like I think it's a perfectly valid question, but maybe not at the moment.

        • it's just some wanabe futorologist running ahead of things.

          better ask does your gun need a passport? no. it needs a permit or permits.

          once the ai can by itself spontaneously try for argue for getting a permit to go to another country then you can start arguing about robot rights... going ahead of things like this is just fucked up.

          next up, do angels need passports?

    • Why should a robot need a passport? It is a machine. Like your toaster. This will continue to be true for some time to come.

      Should other dangerous machines also need a passport? What about a robot welding machine? A numerically controlled drill press? (Hey, it could decide to hurt you just when you happen to have your hand in the wrong spot!)
  • but that won't stop them.

  • Export license (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why not just an import/export license?

  • No (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @07:32PM (#49895175)
    Just 3D print a new one with the right "nationality" on the other side of the border.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's more likely the control software that would need a "passport", or "export controls". Specifically, robots that are designed to harm humans or do certain things that are illegal in that country (flying over military installations etc.) might not be allowed through customs.

      There has been talk of requiring drones in the US to avoid airports, military bases and certain government installations such as the White House. An imported drone might not take notice of those rules, just like an imported aircraft mi

  • Or just an identity check using a neural-response scan while certain questions are being asked:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Better question (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Do humans need passports?

  • The first question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nytes ( 231372 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @07:45PM (#49895219) Homepage

    This question seems to suggest a question that may have to be answered first: Would robots be considered citizens of a country?

    If so, now we're also talking about the rights of said citizens.

  • For now, they are just machines.

  • See subject.

    Why the hell would _any_ electro-mechanical device be different?????

    They're tools, not sentient beings. Get over it you techno-fappers.

  • Of all the stupid shit... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Freeman ( 933986 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @07:56PM (#49895249)
    This is perhaps the dumbest thing that's been posted to Slashdot this week. Robot passports? Are you fucking serious?

    • Dude just enjoy the buttered popcorn and watch the stupid parade, it beats tracking down law professor Anupam Chander and smacking his head with the nearest engineering book until we're forced to flee by the incoming police sirens by a long shot as far as effort goes.

    • Yes, the whole question is fundamentally stupid. Or else utterly ignorant. Robots are not people, they're just technology. They don't need a passport anymore than my toaster needs a passport!

      We already have many robots crossing country borders all the time - Roombas, industrial robotic equipment, little toy puppies purchased for the kids, and so forth. If we get self driving cars then those will of course also be robots. The Zoltar fortune teller booth is also a robot.

      Ah, but these stupid/ignorant peop

    • You're right, it IS stupid. Robots are property, plain and simple, therefore like any other property, at best the owner of that property would have to have permission from the country in question to have his property operating within it. Otherwise that property could (and probably should) be seized, probably under salvage laws, perhaps as an illegal and unauthorized surveillance device, maybe even as a terrorist weapon.
  • Were they manufactured here or did they cross the border illegally? We can't have all of that cheap illegal robotic labor driving down wages for robot citizens manufactured here!

  • No. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @08:13PM (#49895327) Homepage

    We recently had a media case about an ex-couple suing each other over custody of the dog. In short, despite whatever personal relationship they had to the dog it was not like a child custody case, it was decided by property law. A robot is someone's property, it's no different from flying an RC plane across the border. Unless you got sentient robots granted their own rights, it's a non-issue. And if you do got sentient robots then passport control is the least of your worries.

    • Unless you got sentient robots granted their own rights...

      That would be the only logical sense of the question. If in a distant future robots will think and sense equal or more than men, it could be the case that they will have to be considered individuals with full civil rights. But while arriving there we will need to sort out many other bigger issues first.

  • Stop already, AI is AI robots are not AI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @08:14PM (#49895335) Journal

    There is no AI that has common sense, it's a fantasy.

    And most of all:

    Robot != AI

    A robot is a machine that sits in a factory making cars.

    AI is mostly software which sits in a computer typically in a university or corporate lab.

    Please quit with calling AI robots.

  • What about unicorns and fairies? (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @08:30PM (#49895433) Journal

    Shouldn't we be making sure that unicorns, fairies and dragons get passports - after all, they were first.

    Why are robots jumping the queue?

    • On a more serious note, should we not have this discussion about all greater apes first?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        I guess, and what about dolphins and fish crossing borders, how are we going to stop that or issue passports to fish?

  • whee (Score:5, Funny)

    by dissy ( 172727 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @08:36PM (#49895463)

    Well of course robots need passports, silly!
    Just like my car needs its own passport to cross a border.

    In addition my lawnmower has its own drivers license, my garage door opener has a concealed carry permit, and my 50" big screen TV takes a taxicab to a shrink once a week because of a broken heart from when my ps4 left it for a 60" :P

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      a passport for a car is a real concept when crossing some borders.

      it's more like a permit system though. I don't think the article writer was thinking along those lines because that would be boring, singularity hipsters like much more to ask questions asked in scifi in the late 1940's.

  • Humans SHOULDN'T need passports (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tmosley ( 996283 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @08:43PM (#49895503)
    There was a time when people didn't need passports to travel between nations. They were only introduced in the 1840's and only became popular after the American Civil War. Prior to that, human beings had the right to move between nations as they desired, with only the most autocratic (ie feudal, czarist Russia) demanding that their people remain tied to the land where they were born. And indeed, most people travelled between nations without need for one until WWI, when the need for "security" overwhelmed the difficulty of enforcement between nations that were at war, or were in danger of soon going to war.

    But, of course, the world is no longer at war, is it?

    The question shouldn't be "why should robots have passports?" it is "why should humans?"

    • The world has always been at war and always will be

      If you believe otherwise, you're deluded.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      They were only introduced in the 1840's and only became popular after the American Civil War. Prior to that, human beings had the right to move between nations as they desired,

      Prior to the 1840's people didn't regularly cross borders and governments didn't provide services.

      Passports were invented as a necessity to international travel opening up to the middle and lower classes.

      I wouldn't want to give up my Australian Passport as it grants me a lot of rights, even in foreign countries.

      The question shouldn't be "why should robots have passports?" it is "why should humans?"

      Because you ca

      • Re:Humans SHOULDN'T need passports (Score:4, Informative)

        by tmosley ( 996283 ) on Friday June 12, 2015 @09:01AM (#49897471)
        "Prior to the 1840's people didn't regularly cross borders"

        Yes they did. Much of Europe was composed entirely of borders. Remember Italy was a mess of states until the 1870's, same as Germany.

        "Passports were invented as a necessity to international travel opening up to the middle and lower classes."

        But that's wrong. How could requiring a document (that the individual had to PAY FOR) to enter a country POSSIBLY be cheaper than crossing without it? That doesn't even make sense. Keep in mind that borders were completely porous, and only soldiers were blocked from crossing prior to this time.

        "Because you cant imagine the chaos of hundreds of thousands of undocumented border crossings."

        You're right, that's why the EU and US have descended into chaos. It's total anarchy, I tellz ya!

        "I guarantee every solution you have to that is either going to be stupid, useless or a passport like system (or possibly all three at once)."

        Well, considering that felons [passportsonline.net] can get passports from the US, and God knows where else, a more modern solution would be to simply run criminal background checks on people applying for visas (ie those staying for an extended period). Much better to have a private system (which would necessarily transcend borders and *GASP* treat everyone fairly rather than giving Westerners a golden ticket while completely fucking over the huddled masses yearning to be free). No more of these "stateless" people getting stuck in airport terminals or refugee camps. Treat people like fucking people. What a concept.

    • There was a time when people didn't need passports to travel between nations. They were only introduced in the 1840's and only became popular after the American Civil War.

      International travel before the invention of the railroad and the steamboat was not something to be contemplated lightly. It was an expensive, time-consuming and dangerous business.

      Legal requirements are not the same thing as practical necessities.

      Even when passports were not usually required, Americans requested U.S. passports. Records of the Department of State show that 130,360 passports were issued between 1810 and 1873, and that 369,844 passports were issued between 1877 and 1909. Some of those passports were family passports or group passports. A passport application could cover, variously, a wife, a child, or children, one or more servants, or a woman traveling under the protection of a man. The passport would be issued to the man. Similarly, a passport application could cover a child traveling with his or her mother. The passport would be issued to the mother. The number of Americans who traveled without passports is unknown.

      United States passport [wikipedia.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tmosley ( 996283 )
        But it was. Much of Europe was composed of states the size of Vatican City. You could walk across three of them in a day without trying too hard.

        Also, note that having a passport to aid in travel is very much different from being REQUIRED to have a passport to cross a border. It's like being required to have a business license and a business bank account to have a garage sale. Sure, if you were having them every day, or scaling it up into a "real" business, those things might be a good idea, but requ

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rastos1 ( 601318 )

      There was a time when people didn't need passports to travel between nations.

      And there was a time when Villeins [wikipedia.org] were tied to the land and could not move away without their lord's consent and the acceptance of the lord to whose manor they proposed to migrate to.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tmosley ( 996283 )
        Because there were times when people were less free, we can't ever argue that we should have freedoms that we once held in the past, like the UN-recognized human right to freedom of movement [wikipedia.org]. Note that article 13 mentions nothing about passports, and the concept of a passport that you have to pay money for is, in fact, in direct violation of the same article, as it is a restriction on movement.

        • the UN-recognized human right to freedom of movement [wikipedia.org]. Note that article 13 mentions nothing about passports, and the concept of a passport that you have to pay money for is, in fact, in direct violation of the same article, as it is a restriction on movement.

          Well in that case oil companies charging for gas, or airlines charging air fares are restricting your movement.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tmosley ( 996283 )
            No. You need to understand the difference between negative and positive rights. You have a right to travel. You don't have a right to someone else's vehicle. You should most certainly be able to walk across a border without needing a slip of paper from your government.
    • Before WW1 the only people travelling between countries much were the very well off, who in effect formed their own separate country anyway. A rich upper class French student visiting Greece had much more in common with a rich upper class German student visiting Greece than a poor French peasant.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tmosley ( 996283 )
        You are thinking in a very American centric way. For the third time this thread, much of Europe was composed of states the size of Vatican City. You could walk across three of them in a day. Think about the trade situation in an area like that.
  • Things that do not need passports: drills saws computers scewdrivers Things that do: people

  • What robots need (Score:3)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Thursday June 11, 2015 @08:58PM (#49895573) Journal

    I bought my Roomba it's own cat. Though now that I think about it, I haven't seen the cat since last weekend.


  • I'm going to beat the rush and bring my Roomba to the passport office tomorrow morning.
  • Unless you build a robot with no connectivity at all, robots are distributed systems. For example, If your robot runs Robot Operating System (ROS www.ros.org), then it's distributed. Everything is held together by ROS_MASTER, which is a TCP port somewhere. If you create a VPN on the internet your robot could be composed of two identical machines either side of a border. Perhaps having an import license, such as you would have with cars, weapons and other potentially lethal items, would be the correct th

  • We already have processes for handling things like vehicles (especially aircraft) crossing borders. Unless the vehicle is crossing for an indefinite period of time there is little to no paperwork. It isn't like airlines pay duties on the value of an A340 every time it lands.

    For things like repairs/etc you might pay duties on the parts once, when entering the country where the aircraft is based.

    I don't see how robots would be any different, until we get to the point where they're sentient. At that point,

  • Bin Laden could tell us US drones do not ask for permission to cross borders.

  • I hope no one is paying this guy money to do his "research". What a phenomenal waste of time. Lets give birds passports too, and the wind. The wind definitely needs a passport.

  • They're cargo. They need a passport the same way a box electronic components needs a passport.

    aka... no. A bill of lading is sufficient.

  • What they're talking about is simply called a licence plate

  • No (Score:2)

    by zmooc ( 33175 )

    The most logical answer to this question is another question:

    Do humans need passports?

  • The government (regardless of which one) never misses a good opportunity to waste money. This needs to be investigated in-depth by a large committee of overpaid political and legislative experts who know nothing about robots.

  • It would be easier for the corporations and governments they own to just take citizenship away from those pesky humans, and level the human and robot playing field that way.

  • what if a software bot could buy drugs AND a passport? [gawker.com]

    To those that joke about this, imagine you have a bot car that hits someone? or is programmed to cause harm? a robotic car can drive to canada and back, who is responsible for contents?

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