Will Robots Need Passports?

​One day, maybe a century from now, maybe a couple years from now, a robot will step off a plane or drive itself over an international border or stand in a customs line waiting for someone—maybe another robot!—to ask for its passport.

It might not go exactly like that, but the questions of where a robot has come from, where it's going, and what it's doing, are ones that are already being explored in much more mundane-seeming ways.

Anupam Chander, director of the California International Law Center and a professor at the UC Davis school of law, just put​ out a white paper in which he writes that, for modern economies, companies, and electronics to function, the free flow of information, which he explains using the metaphor of robots, is utterly crucial.

It's metaphorical, at least, in the world we live in today. But what about the world we're heading toward?

"Robots are crossing borders all the time—they might be crossing them specifically or they might be doing it 'mentally' with information—will they need passports for either? That's kind of the important question," Chander said. "Because if you need a passport, it means your passport might be denied."

So it's likely, maybe inevitable, that a country is going to attempt to ban specific types of robots as a means to protect its citizens' privacy, give an advantage to a domestic company over an international one, or maybe a little of both.

This is not even a far-future proposition. Driverless cars are already being tested in many countries—is it cool for them to take a road trip to another? And do you want to buy a driverless car if, say, you live along an international border?

Taking it a step further, it's easy to imagine a country banning certain types of robots that can automate human jobs.

"The most dramatic kind of thing you might see is the banning of killer robots, but let's put them aside," Chander said. "You might also see certain kinds of robots banned in specific countries because some powerful labor groups might say they're illegal because they jeopardize the workers in an industry or because they know too much or process too much information."

So, that's how it'd work with robots. But what about with our data? Information from our electronics already flows back and forth between countries constantly—that's how the NSA managed to scoop up so much information about nearly everyone on Earth. And countries have already started banning companies that they perceive to be NSA-friendly.

Last year, the Chinese government temporarily banned its federal agencies from buying iPads and MacBooks, citing security concerns. At the time, Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo saw its stock prices rise.

After seeing what that move did for a domestic company, it's understandable that a country might try to ban or discourage the use of certain products. In a sense, that's what China has already done with Facebook and Twitter: By blocking American products, it has allowed the China-based microblogging platform Weibo to prosper. Weibo, by extension, is easier to censor than an American company would be.

We've also seen countries like Turkey and Pakistan threaten Facebook and Twitter with bans in order to force them to pull down content. China has already banned some of the largest American network suppliers from government contracts, citing security concerns. The German government barred its employees from using Windows 8 soon after the Edward Snowden NSA leaks. The US government banned Huawei, a Chinese company, from bidding on American government contracts. What, exactly, is stopping one country from banning all the technology that comes from another?

Might we see luddite, robot-free countries? Might we see international trade deals that hinge on whether or not people who have hacked themselves with machines can travel to specific countries? And, ultimately, what does that mean for the development and deployment of these technologies?

Goodbye, Meatbags is a series on Motherboard about the waning relevance of the human physical form. Follow along here.