A thief used a Waymo device to steal yoga clothes in San Francisco, then got away with it

A thief used a Waymo device while stealing yoga clothes in San Francisco last January, and police have yet to catch him.

This may seem counterintuitive given the widespread concern that Waymo and other robotaxis are rolling surveillance machines. But this bizarre case, reported by the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday, sheds some new light on how Waymo handles footage captured by its cars.

While Waymo does capture and store flight footage, it is unknown how long this data is stored. What is certain, according to the report, is that he was gone “by the time the search warrant was served in April.” Even more interesting is the detail that police were unable to identify the thief from the external camera footage because it was “blurred for privacy reasons.”

Waymo account data also doesn’t seem to help. The thief took the Waymo ride to a yoga studio called Hot 8 Yoga, where they entered, took clothes and returned to the robo-taxi, according to the company’s security footage. But the account information Waymo turned over to police as part of the search warrant “did not lead police to the suspect,” according to the Chronicle.