There is an accusation being made here that I am not alright with.
For me the big deal is that these are not being deployed by your local police and they aren’t being deployed for traffic control. These are being put out by the DEA. The only way to make them useful is in tracking the comings and goings of people. it allows them to create a database of where your car goes and when. They can then use this data to target specific individuals for further investigation based upon travel patterns, locations, and time rather than specific, clear, and articulable reason for investigation beyond behavior patterning.
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Whoa, cool! 16 millimeter or Super 8? Don’t tell me they’re using 35 millimeter. Wait, who changes the film canisters? Isn’t development expensive these days?
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IE: It’s surveillance for the sake of it, only after the fact that they might find useful information they’ll go back and connect the dots. This has been shown to be illegal surveillance and also largely ineffective.
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“Filmed” is my personal “m.o.i.s.t”.
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My first thought was a can of black spray paint in the dead of night.
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Well this just might deter me from seeing these things and trying to set the high score.
are burning gas soaked tires and speed cameras still a thing?
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Here is (yet another) cause for concern: many/most municipalities contract the supply and management of these and particularly “red light cameras” to private companies for a cut of the ticket revenue. (“oh you’re just making that up!” oh i wish i were. Seattle does this and admits to it) So, [thinks company] “How can we optimize our take?” well there are a number of ways, one of the most obvious is to effectively shorten up the yellow light length. “But yellow light length is controlled by the DOT and required to be of at least X seconds!” ah, but the amount of time between the yellow light and the red light coming on and camera taking the license plate is under the company’s control. This is all tedious stuff i know, but really ought to recommend against privatizing one’s police functions.
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It’s right up there with “video taping”.
Yeah, you really never want to create a system that depends on someone having the incentive to maximize the number of people caught breaking a law. Doesn’t align well with reducing the number of people who actually break the law.
Towns could have done red light cameras a different way. They could negotiate contracts where payment depends on accident rates instead of number of tickets. But no.
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No, that’s not the question. When the law is at issue, the Constitution trumps everything, including your longing for safety.
Or black paintball gun, for that spooky action at a distance.
I don’t think I fully understand what you mean. Traffic safety of course can be done in accordance with the constitution. I don’t see why that would be difficult to do. My point is that the solutions to traffic safety issues need to be practical. Red Light cameras don’t really seem to be all that practical, and in fact like I wrote earlier, municipalities have been abusing the cameras for revenue. The city of Chicago was caught gaming the warning lights to increase tickets issued. Thankfully though a bunch of states have banned red light cameras just this year.
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It would be cause for alarm even if that weren’t true. The digital panopticon is nothing short of a model for a prison state.
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May have to get a pair of those retroflective glasses frames Cory hocks from time to time.
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The 4th admendment, once upon a time.
at least in the states.
It’s an alarming thing because of the scale and scope.
If the police suspect someone and want to follow them around in public all day as part of an investigation, fine. Somebody in the chain of command has to make a decision to spend those limited resources (officer time). They’ll never have enough resources to follow large numbers of people simultaneously, so the police will have to prioritize.
When it becomes extremely cheap to follow almost everyone almost all the time and figure out who the suspects are later, you’re getting into territory the Supreme Court has said violates the Fourth Amendment. For example, police now have to get a judge to sign a warrant to hide a GPS device on a suspect’s car or to request a “tower dump” from a wireless provider. Automated data collection of the public comings and goings of huge swaths of the population has been considered unconstitutional.
