Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Are you one of the forty nine
Speaker 1: point three million Americans who hit the road this Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1: Are you perhaps listening to this in a car right now?
Speaker 1: If either of these things is true, this is definitely
Speaker 1: the episode for you. We're here to talk about how
Speaker 1: cars have shaped the history of policing in America and
Speaker 1: how the space of the car has been fundamental to
Speaker 1: the definition of your rights under the Fourth Amendment to
Speaker 1: the Constitution, specifically your right to privacy. To discuss this,
Speaker 1: we're talking to Sarah Seo. She's a professor at the
Speaker 1: University of Iowa's College of Law, and she's the author
Speaker 1: of Policing the Open Road, How Cars Transformed American Freedom. Sarah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me in reading your book.
Speaker 1: I was really struck. The first thing that struck me
Speaker 1: and maybe they should have been obvious to me before,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. Is that probably cars are the single
Speaker 1: most significant technological event of the last hundred years in
Speaker 1: American life. I mean, we talk a lot about the Internet.
Speaker 1: We imagine that the transformation of social media is so enormous,
Speaker 1: none of it seems to hold a candle to the
Speaker 1: car as a transformative technology. Do you buy that? I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think of the car is really the be all,
Speaker 1: in the end all of technological change, making the computer
Speaker 1: look kind of secondary. Well, in the twentieth century, we
Speaker 1: call that the automobile age, like the Bronze age, right,
Speaker 1: and so we've defined that century as defined by the
Speaker 1: car and how it transformed our life, our culture, the
Speaker 1: way our cities look, the way our countryside looks. So
Speaker 1: my answer would be yes, it completely transformed almost every
Speaker 1: aspect of our life. I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: idea of privacy and how it has evolved over the
Speaker 1: course of our century or the last century, really in
Speaker 1: relationship to cars. And you say some really fascinating things
Speaker 1: about this, starting with the idea that the idea of
Speaker 1: privacy as a fundamental right was really just getting started
Speaker 1: in the United States around the same time as the
Speaker 1: rise of the automobile, probably initially almost by coincidence. But
Speaker 1: then once those two ideas met up, things got tricky because,
Speaker 1: according to the pre car conception, if I was inside
Speaker 1: my home, I had a right to privacy, and if
Speaker 1: I was outside on the street, I didn't have a
Speaker 1: right to privacy, And cars raised the question of are
Speaker 1: you at home or are you on the street. So
Speaker 1: say something, if you will, about how courts and the
Speaker 1: society tried to get a grip on that tween nature
Speaker 1: of being in your car. So one of the main
Speaker 1: themes of my book is that cars are just a
Speaker 1: completely new space, and both judges and ordinary Americans were
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what this new space exactly was.
Speaker 1: So the way that ordinary Americans experienced their cars was
Speaker 1: kind of like an extension of their homes. They saw
Speaker 1: the car as a parlor or their boudoir. Right, Young
Speaker 1: people moved from the parlor to the car to date
Speaker 1: and to get to know each other? Are those euphemisms?
Speaker 1: I mean, wasn't there also, just in prior generations to ours?
Speaker 1: Wasn't there just a lot of sex in cars at
Speaker 1: a time when people lived with their parents and they
Speaker 1: didn't have other places to go? I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: notion of parking, wasn't I mean, it's nice to say
Speaker 1: that the people are getting to know each other, but
Speaker 1: that's not all they were doing. Right, So, actually, on
Speaker 1: that there's one of the first hit songs about cars
Speaker 1: was composed nineteen oh five where the lyrics ask Lucille
Speaker 1: to come away with me in my marry oldsmobile. You
Speaker 1: can go as far as you like with me in
Speaker 1: my Mary Oldsmobile. You can far you life with me
Speaker 1: my maring. So definitely there is a lot of sexual
Speaker 1: innuendos in that nineteen o five song, dating couples could
Speaker 1: escape the prying eyes of their parents and their homes
Speaker 1: and the parlors and go off for a Sunday drive
Speaker 1: and do whatever they like as far as they want
Speaker 1: to go, And so that there is a notion of privacy,
Speaker 1: sexual privacy, the privacy of the family going on Sunday
Speaker 1: drives together, bringing the family together. Advertisements actually marketed the
Speaker 1: car as an extension of the home, as the domestic
Speaker 1: hearth where the family got together. But the way that
Speaker 1: government officials, judges, and leaders thought of the car was
Speaker 1: a bit more complex or complicated. If you go back
Speaker 1: to the moment when cars first rolled off assembly lines.
Speaker 1: The assembly line and standardization really allowed a lot of
Speaker 1: cars to be produced and to be able to be
Speaker 1: sold for a very affordable price. So this is the
Speaker 1: story of forward in the Model T and suddenly there
Speaker 1: really are cars everywhere exactly. And so this is what
Speaker 1: was so unprecedented about the mass production of cars is
Speaker 1: that so many individuals were able to own their own
Speaker 1: form of transportation. They could know they no longer had
Speaker 1: to rely on public transportation or walk. And so what
Speaker 1: happened was that all of a sudden, there were hundreds
Speaker 1: and thousands of cars on streets that were really intended
Speaker 1: for a few carriages or the trolley and mostly pedestrians.
Speaker 1: And so it created mass chaos on public streets. And
Speaker 1: when there's public danger to all, then that allows the
Speaker 1: government to exercise our powers to legislate for the public
Speaker 1: safety and welfare. And so the way that lawyers and
Speaker 1: government officials thought about cars was they pose a threat
Speaker 1: to public safety, and so we need to regulate the
Speaker 1: use of motor vehicles, and we need to increase our
Speaker 1: powers to make sure that we cut down the accident rate,
Speaker 1: that everybody drives in a coordinative fashion so that traffic
Speaker 1: can move. And so they were seeing this as something
Speaker 1: that needed to be regulated. And so when you have
Speaker 1: government regulation that starts interfering with individual privacy, so you
Speaker 1: were saying that the advertisers said, Hey, your car is
Speaker 1: an extension of your home, and certainly after dark courting
Speaker 1: couple used their cars as a kind of extension of
Speaker 1: the home. But you also pointed out that because of
Speaker 1: traffic regulation, then that meant that cars came under the
Speaker 1: regulation of the government in a way that the inside
Speaker 1: of the home might not or might not in the
Speaker 1: same way. When are the first times that the courts
Speaker 1: start grappling with the question of whether when a policeman
Speaker 1: pulls you over for a traffic violation, the police officer
Speaker 1: is authorized to use force to either look inside your
Speaker 1: car or to pull you out of your car right away.
Speaker 1: So what happened was that the mass production of cars
Speaker 1: coincided with prohibition. So states were outlawing liquor starting from
Speaker 1: the mid nineteenth century through the late nineteenth century, and
Speaker 1: then we had the National prohibition that was ratified in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, and so really those two things happened at
Speaker 1: the same time, and so more law enforcement age agencies
Speaker 1: wanted to stop and search cars for liquor, and so
Speaker 1: the issue of how much power law enforcement officers had
Speaker 1: to stop and search a car because they suspected that
Speaker 1: there was liquor inside. That was contested from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: And how did the courts first begin to rule on that.
Speaker 1: Was there a trend at the beginning that then changed
Speaker 1: or was it pretty consistent from the start. It was
Speaker 1: pretty consistent from the start. So I distinguished how courts
Speaker 1: treat a probition cases from the way they treated car cases,
Speaker 1: because prohibition was contested from the very beginning. Right, people
Speaker 1: thought that they had a natural right to drink alcohol,
Speaker 1: even Jesus. Even Jesus turned water into wine. Robinson Cristoe
Speaker 1: had wine to drink too. It was natural. And so
Speaker 1: courts were starting to change their Fourth Amendment Jews prudence
Speaker 1: and fourth and then then governs the police's search and
Speaker 1: seizure powers, and they were starting to provide more protections
Speaker 1: to individuals in prohibition cases. And then you have the
Speaker 1: coincidence of mass production of cars and national prohibition, and
Speaker 1: so those cases were coming together, and that's when you
Speaker 1: start having the government argue, this is really not about liquor.
Speaker 1: These cases are really about a fighting crime. Because cars
Speaker 1: changed the entire calculus on crime commission and criminal law enforcement.
Speaker 1: And that's when you have courts uniformly decide that they
Speaker 1: need to increase the police's power to stop and search cars.
Speaker 1: So the outcome, in other words, is from the start
Speaker 1: that the cops have significant discretion to stop the car
Speaker 1: and see what's inside exactly. Now, certainly there were vocal
Speaker 1: descents people who thought a car as private property, and
Speaker 1: the Fourth Amendment protects private property from warrantless searches and seizures,
Speaker 1: and cars fit under that protection. So there were decents,
Speaker 1: but uniformly throughout the country, and I looked at state
Speaker 1: court cases and federal court cases, uniformly, they all decided
Speaker 1: that the police needed the power to stop in search
Speaker 1: a car without warrants. And did the police have to
Speaker 1: show that they had any reasonable suspicion to do that
Speaker 1: or was it enough for them to say, we don't
Speaker 1: like the look of you. So that's a really interesting
Speaker 1: question because courts have held that cops need reasonable or
Speaker 1: probable cause to believe that there was something illegal inside
Speaker 1: the car. Now, from the very beginning, commentators criticized that
Speaker 1: rule because when you say that a cop needs reasonable
Speaker 1: or probable cause, that's not a standard of certainty, right,
Speaker 1: And so if you allow for reasonable probable cause. You're
Speaker 1: also allowing for instances where the cop could be wrong
Speaker 1: because they don't have to be certain about it. And
Speaker 1: if a cop can be wrong, if a standard allows
Speaker 1: a cop to be wrong, then it sort of allows
Speaker 1: a cop to make things up a little bit. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened in fourth Medagers Price. There's a
Speaker 1: reasonable or probable cause standard that allows a lot of
Speaker 1: leeway to the police to bolster their case that they
Speaker 1: had reasonable or probable cause. So fill that in a
Speaker 1: little bit, because now we're getting very close to the
Speaker 1: meat of you know, the the archetypal scene of the
Speaker 1: cops pull somebody over, probably a young African American mail
Speaker 1: in our archetype, and the question arises of whether the
Speaker 1: cop has probable cause to search the car. Fill it
Speaker 1: in a little bit. What counted historically and what counts
Speaker 1: in the law today as probable cause, and how has
Speaker 1: that changed. Well, So the first thing I should say
Speaker 1: about what probable cause is is that we don't really know.
Speaker 1: The courts have refused to put a number on what
Speaker 1: probable causes. So if you think about knowledge or the
Speaker 1: standards of proof that the state has to have before
Speaker 1: they take action. We can start from zero. They have
Speaker 1: nothing on us to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, right,
Speaker 1: and the proof beyond reasonable doubt is the necessary standard
Speaker 1: to convict someone of a crime. Now, probable causes somewhere
Speaker 1: below that, and courts have refused to put a number
Speaker 1: on what that amount of certainty is. The best way
Speaker 1: that they've described it is it's a matter of probabilities
Speaker 1: more likely than not. But Sarah, isn't that Let me
Speaker 1: just ask you about that. I mean, when I hear
Speaker 1: probable cause, I hear more probable than not, and I
Speaker 1: hear fifty percent plus a smidge in am I hearing
Speaker 1: that the wrong way? That's one way to look at it,
Speaker 1: except that the courts have refused to say that it's
Speaker 1: a smidge and more than fifty percent. And here's the
Speaker 1: reason why all of this matters is because Fourth amend
Speaker 1: and challenge lenges. A challenge to a police search of
Speaker 1: a car, for instance, only happens when the person is
Speaker 1: guilty when the police found something in the car. And
Speaker 1: so when a Fourth Amendment challenge is made, a judge
Speaker 1: is looking at a guilty person who was caught red handed.
Speaker 1: And of course, when you're faced with that scenario, it's
Speaker 1: just much easier to say the police had probable cause
Speaker 1: because obviously they found someone with alcohol in their cars
Speaker 1: or now today drugs in their cars, and so the
Speaker 1: whole calculus is biased towards a finding probable cause because
Speaker 1: judges aren't looking at the cases where an innocent person
Speaker 1: has been searched or their car has been searched. Well,
Speaker 1: we sometimes are right, I mean we sometimes are. I
Speaker 1: mean the Sandra Bland case is an example of how
Speaker 1: in a certain outlying cases we do look at an
Speaker 1: instance where somebody has been stopped, and then when something
Speaker 1: terrible happens, we say, oh, my goodness, you know, you
Speaker 1: should never have stopped this person in the first place.
Speaker 1: Or those moments of our history where we focus on
Speaker 1: racial profiling or other illegitimate means of stops, then we
Speaker 1: take a deep breath and we say, well, wait a second,
Speaker 1: you know, should these stops have been allowed in the
Speaker 1: first instance. I mean, I completely agree with you that
Speaker 1: in an ordinary judicial situation, if the cops searches your
Speaker 1: car there's nothing in your car, they'll let you go
Speaker 1: so it doesn't come to court. So I get your point.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very powerful and important point. But
Speaker 1: there are moments, aren't there where we do engage in
Speaker 1: the question of what should be sufficient cause for a
Speaker 1: stop in a search. No, I don't think we do.
Speaker 1: And fascinating and let me try to explain why I
Speaker 1: feel that way. So Sandra Bland to remind the listeners
Speaker 1: of that tragic incident. She was arrested and she died
Speaker 1: in her jail cell three days later, and she was
Speaker 1: pulled over for a minor traffic violation. Nobody challenged that.
Speaker 1: And this is something that I cover my book from
Speaker 1: the very beginning of mass production of cars, cities, towns,
Speaker 1: past volumes and volumes of traffic laws governing everything from
Speaker 1: necessary traffic equipment to when a car can make a
Speaker 1: right turn, and a violation of any one of those
Speaker 1: traffic laws allows a place to stop that car. But
Speaker 1: I feel like there is a real debate out there
Speaker 1: in the world today about whether it's okay for police
Speaker 1: departments to use theoretically neutral rules like you know, you
Speaker 1: made a turn without signaling, which is I think the
Speaker 1: case the claim in the Sandra Bland case, and if
Speaker 1: cops are using those but they're applying them in a
Speaker 1: discriminatory fashion. They're applying them so that the people who
Speaker 1: get pulled over are disproportionately African Americans, let's say, or Latino. Then,
Speaker 1: you know, I do have the feeling that people do
Speaker 1: think in the world, that many people think that there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with that, that maybe having a broken tail
Speaker 1: light shouldn't be grounds to be potentially arrested. I think
Speaker 1: many people, and I can include myself, and that agree
Speaker 1: with you. But that's not where the law is. Right.
Speaker 1: The law still assumes that if you've committed even the
Speaker 1: most minor traffic violation, it's legally justifiable to stop you
Speaker 1: and potentially but what would it be potentially permissible to
Speaker 1: search your car under those circumstances. So let me back up.
Speaker 1: The court has said in nineteen ninety six in the
Speaker 1: case ren versus United States, that if a cop pulls
Speaker 1: over somebody based on pretext so the cop thinks that
Speaker 1: the driver has drugs in the car but doesn't have
Speaker 1: probable cause, then the cop can't stop that car right
Speaker 1: because probable cause is the necessary requirement. But the cop
Speaker 1: can use a minor traffic violation to pull that car over.
Speaker 1: That kind of pretextual car stop is aoka according the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. So the cop pulls over a car for
Speaker 1: a minor traffic violation, then the next question is can
Speaker 1: the cop start searching the car for the drugs that
Speaker 1: he or she suspects? And this is where we get
Speaker 1: to the fuzziness of the probable cost standard. It is
Speaker 1: really easy to fight facts that support probable cause. I
Speaker 1: looked at one of the best selling police textbooks on
Speaker 1: what they call criminal Patrol, how to do drug busts
Speaker 1: using Traffic law enforcement, and they say, probable cause is
Speaker 1: actually a very capacious standard. A lot of things you
Speaker 1: can think of to meet that standard, like suspicious odors. Right,
Speaker 1: I smelled marijuana. How are you going to prove that
Speaker 1: in court? It's the officer's testimony, right, And if the
Speaker 1: officer finds a marijuana butt, then yeah, it sounds right
Speaker 1: that the officer smelled it. And so it's really easy
Speaker 1: to meet the standards for a warrantless car search because
Speaker 1: of the volumes of traffic laws that everybody violates. At
Speaker 1: some point, I get what you're saying, but you're also describing,
Speaker 1: aren't you a potential distortion? The possibility which always exists
Speaker 1: of police distorting the truth or were lying in some
Speaker 1: other way, right, I mean, yeah, as as you know,
Speaker 1: as the art type. I keep on thinking of the
Speaker 1: jay Z song Yeah, and which he's he's replicating the
Speaker 1: structure of a pullover, and he says, you know, do
Speaker 1: you think that because my hat's real low, that you
Speaker 1: know you can search me? You can't? I know my
Speaker 1: constitutional rights. I mean, I'm paraphrasing now without anything like
Speaker 1: jay Z's flow, but the basic idea is that the
Speaker 1: cops don't have the constitutional right to search. And jay
Speaker 1: Z wants you, the listener of the song, to know that,
Speaker 1: you know, I teach that song when I teach criminal procedure.
Speaker 1: And we go over verse two. Verse two is a
Speaker 1: car stop that actually happened in real life to jay Z.
Speaker 1: So he sings a version of that in the song
Speaker 1: you don't want because I'm young and I'm black in
Speaker 1: my head's real low, do one look like a modest sir?
Speaker 1: And we and I go over what he gets wrong
Speaker 1: about the Fourth Amendment? Can you share that with us?
Speaker 1: So he's right that there is racial profiling that goes on,
Speaker 1: especially at the time when he experienced it for himself.
Speaker 1: There was a drug courier profile with traits that were
Speaker 1: associated with black men that highway patrollers were instructed to
Speaker 1: look for when they pull over in their drug interdiction programs.
Speaker 1: And so he's right as a matter of social reality
Speaker 1: that they were profiled. As a matter of law, that's
Speaker 1: okay under the rent case that I just mentioned. The
Speaker 1: other thing that he gets really wrong, he seems that
Speaker 1: the cop needs to go get a warrant to search
Speaker 1: his car, and that is absolutely not true. The cops
Speaker 1: do not need a warrant. They don't if they need,
Speaker 1: if they have probable cause, If they have a probable cause,
Speaker 1: they don't need to actually go and get a warrant
Speaker 1: for that probable cause exactly. But according to the textbook,
Speaker 1: the Police Textbook on Criminal Patrol, getting probable cause for
Speaker 1: a warrantless car search is super easy, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the textbook says the Fourth Amendment is your tool in
Speaker 1: criminal patrol. The cop or the highway patroller who it
Speaker 1: does a good job, doesn't see the Fourth Amendment as
Speaker 1: an impediment. They see the Fourth Amendment as opportunities. And
Speaker 1: that's actually one of the main arguments of your book
Speaker 1: as I read it, that especially lawyers like to tell,
Speaker 1: maybe especially law professors, we like to tell heroic stories
Speaker 1: about how the law protects people. But in fact, the
Speaker 1: law that regulates search is as much a law that
Speaker 1: enables the cops to search as it is a law
Speaker 1: that limits those searches. I think that's a hugely important point.
Speaker 1: But it has a kind of complex interaction with the car,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. I mean, the car has never really in
Speaker 1: a true sanctuary. It's always an in between space that
Speaker 1: subject to a fair amount of police surveillance and governmental regulation.
Speaker 1: Isn't that a fair description exactly? And that's one of
Speaker 1: the tensions that animates my book is that in American
Speaker 1: culture we celebrate the car as a freedom machine, but
Speaker 1: when we look at the legal history the law's treatment
Speaker 1: of cars, it's heavily regulated and heavily pleased. And you
Speaker 1: bring in You mentioned the conventional story that we've told
Speaker 1: about constitutional law, about the Fourth Amendment, and that was
Speaker 1: one of the questions that I had when I first
Speaker 1: started this project, is that the conventional story that I've
Speaker 1: always learned as a law school student is that the
Speaker 1: court has been the protector of our individual liberties, especially
Speaker 1: the Warren Court, the Warren Court was considered one of
Speaker 1: the most liberal courts in our history. That's the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court under the under the Chief justiceship of Rural Warren
Speaker 1: in the nine fifties, sixties, and into the very early seventies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right. And the war On Court started what we
Speaker 1: now refer to as a due process revolution revolution right,
Speaker 1: a revolution to give individuals more rights under the Constitution.
Speaker 1: And this was a progressive triumphal story that I've always learned,
Speaker 1: starting in law school through grad school. But I was
Speaker 1: always confused because I was starting to also read about
Speaker 1: problems with the criminal justice system, a mass incarceration that
Speaker 1: disproportionately affects minorities and the poor. And I was so
Speaker 1: confused because the Warren Courts due process revolution was supposed
Speaker 1: to help those groups. But a generation after the due
Speaker 1: process Revolution, those groups are the ones who are disproportionately
Speaker 1: affected in the criminal justice system. And so what happened?
Speaker 1: And that was one of the questions that I had
Speaker 1: when I started this project. And I've realized our conventional
Speaker 1: story history that I've been told we only looked at
Speaker 1: certain landmark cases. We only looked at the cases that
Speaker 1: dealt with invasions to the home. We never looked at
Speaker 1: the cases that involved the police's power to stop and
Speaker 1: search cars. And so if we look at those cases,
Speaker 1: we see courts from state courts to district trial courts
Speaker 1: all the way up to the US Supreme Court, they've
Speaker 1: always reliably granted the police more power, more discretionary power.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you for a final question, Sarah,
Speaker 1: just to put on your futuristic goggles and picture the
Speaker 1: driverless cars or the self driving cars that you may
Speaker 1: not be right around the corner, but are they're on
Speaker 1: the way, And imagine writing you after your book becomes
Speaker 1: a bestseller and wins all the prizes, they ask you
Speaker 1: to publish an updated edition in fifteen or twenty years
Speaker 1: with a new chapter on driverless cars in the law.
Speaker 1: What do you imagine the big issues are going to
Speaker 1: become for regulation in a world where I'm not actually
Speaker 1: controlling the car anymore. Well, it's going to really change
Speaker 1: Fourth Amendment practice, not necessarily the law, but practice. Because
Speaker 1: much of criminal law investigation, the investigation of drug laws
Speaker 1: specifically happens with a minor traffic violation. And if autonomous
Speaker 1: driving cars, our program never to violate the traffic laws.
Speaker 1: I sure hope they will be programmed for Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: me too. Then that means that the police will need
Speaker 1: probable cause of some sort of violation other than the
Speaker 1: violation of a traffic law. They will need probable cause
Speaker 1: that the car contains contraband or other illegal substances. If
Speaker 1: I want to if I want to buy drugs in
Speaker 1: Florida and drive them up the five Card or to
Speaker 1: the northeast, what I should do right away is buy
Speaker 1: myself at Tesla exactly. That never violates the traffic violations
Speaker 1: because the police need probable cause that you have drugs
Speaker 1: in it, And how will they know unless they saw
Speaker 1: you actually putting drugs into the car. That's really the
Speaker 1: only situation that I can think of that amounts to
Speaker 1: probable cause. And so the whole criminal patrol that's based
Speaker 1: on a minor traffic vlation that will cease. But the
Speaker 1: privacy intrusions can come in in really unexpected places, right,
Speaker 1: and so I imagine these autonomous cars will be outfitted
Speaker 1: with GPS devices and all sorts of the Internet of Things. Right,
Speaker 1: they'll have to talk to all the other cars. I mean,
Speaker 1: it won't work unless these cars talk to each other,
Speaker 1: right exactly, and all of that talking to other cars,
Speaker 1: interacting with a greater network that's connected through the Internet
Speaker 1: and cloud and all of that. And you know cars
Speaker 1: basically have new cars today basically have computers installed in them,
Speaker 1: right that are connected to the Internet. All of that
Speaker 1: is connecting to the to the greater public right. And
Speaker 1: so the way that courts are dealing with questions about
Speaker 1: what is public and private that I talk about in
Speaker 1: the history of cars, they are struggling with that still
Speaker 1: today when it comes to smartphones, the cloud, and the
Speaker 1: Internet and all of that will be bundled with autonomous
Speaker 1: driving cars too, so it's going to be an issue
Speaker 1: that will have a second version. So there could be
Speaker 1: a volume too. There you go. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: reading it. Sarah. Thank you so much for this really
Speaker 1: fascinating conversation, for your really thought provoking and terrific book.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Talking to Sarah really brings into focus how
Speaker 1: absolutely central the automobile has been, not just to every
Speaker 1: aspect of our lives, but to the question of our
Speaker 1: freedoms in the United States, to the question of privacy,
Speaker 1: to race, to almost all of the most fundamental issues
Speaker 1: that we struggle with when it comes to the definition
Speaker 1: of our rights. Going forward, it seems the technology of
Speaker 1: cars will both be always the same and ever changing.
Speaker 1: It's always the same in the sense that just has
Speaker 1: been the case for more than a century. Our roads,
Speaker 1: our spaces are defined by cars. We spend time in cars,
Speaker 1: and the police will continue to observe and regulate our
Speaker 1: actions while we're in cars. But slowly and gradually, as
Speaker 1: our cars become self driving, the technology is going to
Speaker 1: change the way that our government and our police interact
Speaker 1: with us in cars. Our privacy may gradually return, our
Speaker 1: violation of traffic laws will almost certainly decline, and the
Speaker 1: government will have to come up with new ways of
Speaker 1: thinking about how it regulates us, and we will have
Speaker 1: to come up with new ways of exploring our freedom.
Speaker 1: Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Lydia Gene Coott, with engineering by Jason Gambrel
Speaker 1: and Jason Roskowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme
Speaker 1: music is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to the
Speaker 1: Pushkin Brass Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg and Mia Lobel. I'm
Speaker 1: Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at Noah
Speaker 1: R Feldman. This is Deep Background. A last note Today,
Speaker 1: Deep Background is taking a holiday break. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with a new season in the new year.