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Aussie Speed Cameras in Doubt Because of MD5
An anonymous reader writes "A speeding case has been thrown out in Australia after the Roads and Traffic Authority admitted that it could not prove the integrity of speed-camera photos. 'The case revolved around the integrity of a mathematical MD5 algorithm published on each picture and used as a security measure to prove pictures have not been doctored after they have been taken.'" I wonder if Australian police are as (radar gun) trigger happy as they are in certain parts of the U.S.
This will make for a nice backlog in the courts. Although an interesting defence none the less. :-)
American traffic magistrates (at least in WA) would not even understand what an "algorithm" is. They will just see another glib speeder trying to scam the county out of $162.
(Warning for visitors: WA has one of the most zealous state highway patrol forces in the nation. Just don't exceed 10 over the limit here.)
In Norway they have done something even more extreme. They have a camera taking your picture at one place, then several kilometers further down they take a new picture and calculate how fast you have driven between the two cameras, basically, your speed on average must meet the speed limit on average over quite a distance... They are testing this solution right now and it most likely will be legal to set it up.
I submitted and got rejected, and I thought if this wasn't a /. story nothing was.
My question is how long before this sort of defence gets used against evidence in the form of video surveilence in general? How long before a bank robber can argue that the bank's security camera footage isn't secure? Or is this simply a classic case of a judge that does not understand, and a roads and traffic authority too apathetic and sure of itself to provide what's needed for the correct judgement?
I have no love of the RTA. In NSW it's now 3 points off your license for going over the speed limit by a single kilometer/hour, and 6 points for the same if it's a long weekend or holiday period. So basically you can now lose your license for doing 1 kilometer over the limit twice over a 3 year period.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Speed cameras in Perth (West Coast for the punters) are a real bitch. I hear these contraptions pay for themselves within a week of indiscriminately snapping drivers going just 4-5km/h over the speed limit. That probably sounds reasonable in built up areas where you the speed limit is 40km/h (during school hours), but on the open road where 110km/h is legal, you're better off flicking on the cruise control to avoid the boys in blue. Pre-cameras, the cops used to book you for in excess of 9km/h in the country - at least then there was some logical wiggle room, not to mention it wasn't some impersonal surprise money earner turning up in your mail one day.
The extraordinary thing is that around the burbs, often I have to put my foot on the brake going down small hills just to ensure I don't edge over the limit. Perhaps sales of brake pads and cruise control equipment have increased substantially since the introduction of these fuckers. Both my parents have received speeding fines in the last few years, having gone for over forty years with a clean record.
As an aside, a few years back, one chap was flashed by the camera as he drove by and promptly responded by swerving into the offending machine, taking it out all together. Unfortunately, these cameras have a bunch of wire connected to a nearby van, which stores all the data. The cops simply lifted the last photo taken and arrested the guy. Though a tad rash in his response, I still consider him a legend.
hat advice really helps when I'm trying to pass an 18-wheeler whose driver is nodding off.
Perhaps you should hang way back of the driver so that if he does anything unexpected you have a larger time to assess the risk and react.
Or when I'm in heavy traffic, and an ambulance comes up behind me and there's no clearance to pull to a different lane.
I recently saw this happen just yesterday! But it was a fire-truck. I did have enough room to move into the next lane, but the car behind me didn't. So the car behind me sped along, right past a police-car. The police-car could have reacted, and didn't. So I'm guessing that you are allowed to speed up, to get out of the way for them. Having said that, there is a reason you can challenge speeding fines. I've seen people do so, and not have to pay it (the reason they got off was because the camera didn't take into account the context of the situation, and the judge felt the context allowed the person to do the speed he was). But systems shouldn't be devised around exceptional circumstances like the one you suggested. That's why they have the check put in place, in allowing you to challenge a speeding ticket (and representing yourself so you don't have to pay for a lawyer).
Or when I'm minding my business on a one-lane highway, doing somewhere around the speed limit, and some drunk moron comes flying up behind me leaving me nowhere to go but forward in order to avoid being hit.
When this happens you must report it to the police immediately. In the best case scenario, you provide enough information for the drunk-driver to be charged. Worst-case scenario, you've laid down the foundation for a defence in speeding (and then challenge the ticket, if the American system is anything like the Australian one, you'll be given the benefit of the doubt).
Speeding cameras DO stop people from speeding (it's stopped me in any case). But they aren't fool-proof, which is why the system does have checks and balances. Take advantage of them!
And most of them are really well sign posted with (normally at least 2) big signs before them saying "Speed camera ahead" and afterwards a big sign pointing out that your speed was just checked.
So if you get caught speeding by one of those cameras then you're an idiot.
Actually, I kind of like the idea that enforcement of the law can be, in some circumstances at least, automated. There would be very few cases where speeding can be justified and, assuming that all equipment is working properly, it's a binary test: either you were over the speed limit or you weren't. There's not a lot of grey area there. I know a lot of people complain about them with arguments about revenue raising, but I have no problems with them whatsoever.
This is a catch-22. Nobody wants to be killed by a speeder, but nobody wants to pay to stop that from happening. The closest to a solution to this that the police departments have is to use cameras - they're cheap enough that they can afford them.
And when the police ARE funded to semi-reasonable levels, they get complaints that it has become a Police State and that it's impossible to do anything without a cop being around.
Hey, I do understand the need to be able to converse with an accuser. It should be absolutely fundamental to any legal system that NO evidence can be admitted into a court without being questioned or even questionable. There's way too much room for abuse, otherwise.
I also understand that the Government is taking a lot of money as it is, and that a lot of people would prefer a SMALLER Government and Civil Service. That's fine, I don't have a problem with people believing what they like.
Here's the catch, though. If you reduce the size of the Civil Service and reduce the money they can spend, how are they going to get all these police they'd need to monitor the streets to any reasonable level?
Personally, I think they should shift a few billion off the military and put it into domestic programs. A few billion into social security, five or six billion into education, maybe the same into emergency services, perhaps another ten or fifteen billion into science programs. The military would likely not notice that much and probably wouldn't need as much if the domestic infrastructure were taken care of.
In the end, though, we're all wanting something out but not willing to put what it takes in. Whether that's in policing or anything else. Fix the attitudes and the problems will take care of themselves. (A fundamental lesson demonstrated by Open Source, interestingly enough.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A "Current Affair" can be more accurately described as a "That guy's a welfare cheat, therefore all people on welfare are cheats"-type of infotainment show. I am more concerned at the lack of action from the RTA than the possibility that a precedent has or has not been set. Oh - The ABC reports on the issue, it must be true. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s14344 78.htm
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I haven't been caught by a speed camera since I sold my car.
You get the above nonsense from whingers every time this issue comes up. You only have to make a casual observation of the roads to realize that there are a substantial number of people driving too fast in *inexcusable* situations.
Just two weeks ago I was first on the scene when a dickhead drove his BMW into a telephone poll. It was in a residential street street on a sharp corner and he was driving like it was the Le Manns. I was just about to walk down that street with some friends when a telephone call held us up. We heard him speeding down the road and then the screech of tires as he lost it on the corner. Lucky for him his airbag saved his life. However he wiped out 50m of sidewalk ( lucky nobody was walking there), crossed to the wrong side of the rode before crashing ( lucky there was no oncoming traffic ) Destroyed a wooden fence ( lucky there was nobody behind it ).
The first thing I felt like doing after I saw he was ok was hauling him out of the car and kicking his arse or possibly putting his head in the door and slamming it shut a few times.
Please people, get some perspective before you all start shitting yourself with this libertarian nonsense.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
Apparently, including the lawyer.
And perhaps not including the judge.
The designers probably just included the MD5 just to scare the defendant. Whether or not that was their intent, they've proven themselves unqualified to be building these.
The red herring of the vulnerabilities aside, the only way you could really make a non-reputable speed camera work is to have the speedometer constantly broadcast the speed and a public key permanently assigned to the car (or perhaps the driver or the license plate?), and the camera would have to record the radar speed and the license plate (and the car, just to be sure) and hash all of it with the camera's private key, and hash it all again with the defendant's public key.
But that kind of gives the lie to the whole project, because the defendant would have to produce his private key to prove that the photos are not faked.
Ergo, this is requiring the defendant to testify against himself.
I had an interesting happenstance once. I was in the military, taking a fellow soldier to his boy scout troop for their weekly meeting. I came upon a 4 way stop with 5 cars stopped ahead of me. I stopped also. Some nut went by us all, ran the stop sign and sped on. Guess who got the ticket for speeding? The MPs were on a hill, a 1/4 mile away taking those radar shots from the side. None of this works as such nor is it accurate. I got the book throwed at me by the commander who was convinced I needed to be made an example. Eye witness or no, nothing was allowed in my defense. Fortunately for me, the first sargent talked the the eye witness. I was put on special duty somewhere out of sight for two weeks. When I came back, the commander had been transferred, my fines, reduction of rank, and all paperwork was mysteriously lost. To this day I have no faith in radar, as it is up to the officer as to just how honest radar is.
Bingo - it annoys the hell out of me that a Pakistani friend of mine was shot at on the highway shortly after 9/11, with bullets passing within inches of his 4-year old daughter and causing a fair bit of damage to his car, but the Orange County Sheriff's Office (FL) could not/would not bring the assailant to justice even though my friend was able to provide them with a plate number and they were able to determine that the vehicle was registered to a local business, and wasn't stolen. They sure can write up those speeding tickets for people going safely with the flow of traffic though, and the sheriff just got a budget increase so he could hire more officers, which brings his total to $153 million for a county of barely a million people. If I still lived in Orange County, I certainly wouldn't feel like I got $150 worth of police protection per year, especially when they can't seem to get attempted murderers off the street after being handed all the information they need.
It probably wouldn't bother me so much if they would take those officers running speed traps and put them someplace genuinely useful, like busy intersections where people die all the time because asshats are always running the stop lights.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
The fixed cameras in NSW will book you when you are doing 10% + 2kmp/h over the limit.
:) But they are essentially a PC running windows.
They are basically a little PC in a box. They have a camera attached and the sensors on the road which hook up to the serial port with a ISDN link to send the photo.
There is a bunch of other stuff in the box like thermometer and shock detectors so the box can raise an alarm if it thinks it's being bashed or stolen
The issue with revenue raising is actually bigger than you think. Once allowed to make serious money off tickets the entire mood of the department changes. The state patrol here got in trouble because they where not allowed to leave once they had pulled somebody over until a ticket had been issued. So if somebody 300 yards down the road started shooting they would get introuble if they didn't ticket the offender.
Add to that the "vauge" traffic laws and often people being ticketed just didn't have a clue what the law was at that time. In Salt Lake City it is common to only have one or two speed limit signs over a streach of a mile or two. Whats worse is that often the speed limit changes and no sign is put up. Where Fourth South turns into Foothill the speed limit changes and there is no sign. Where Foothill becomes I214 the speed goes from 40 to 65 with a minimum of 45. There is no sign for almost an 1/8 of a mile to notify drivers of this.
The worst abuse of "revinue collecting" is the highway cities in Idaho. The speed limit goes from 55 to 25 anytime you enter city limits and they make it a point to put bushes infront of the signs. Instand $130 ticket right there. Worst case is the sign going into Cascade. It got knocked over a few years back and it took a year and a half to fix.
This is hardly comforting when someone is trying to break into your home and the police are "too busy" to respond to your 911 call...and yet they always seem to have an overabundance of traffic cops eagerly cracking down on those nasty speeders.
I don't, and have never, lived in what you'd call a 'bad' neighborhood. And yet on three separate occasions, at three separate homes (one I was housesitting for a friend), I had some incredibly stupid burglars attempt to break in while I was home, and up, and the lights were on. On all three occasions I called 911 while the attempted break-in was in progress; two times the cops failed to respond because all available units were busy doing something else (what? cracking down on noise complaints? eating donuts?), and the third time they showed up TWO HOURS after the call. In all of these cases I ended up running off the crooks myself (once with hilarious results, when I scared the crap out of a would-be burglar and he charged straight into a woodpile).
Incidents like these tend to make me irritable. I can't get a cop when a break-in is happening right then and there, but the city seems to have plenty of money to pay for cops who...bust speeders. Yeah, got their priorities real straight, they do.
Perhaps I'd be somewhat mollified if the traffic cops went around handing out tickets to aging Boomers who drive their minivans/SUVs like they were tanks, or to those fucking idiots who talk on their cell phones while weaving back and forth across lanes/blasting through stop signs/etc., but these people seem to get a free pass....
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
On Massachusetts highways, I find that if I drive less than 75mph, I don't keep up with the flow of traffic. Somehow the traffic flow finds its own safe speed, which is definitely not 55 (or 65).
It helps that the police don't enforce the limit too strictly; I drove 80mph past troopers chilling in speed traps many times, and they just didn't care. I hope they are waiting for the assholes that tailgate and weave at 110mph.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Well, duh. It's Florida, you're supposed to enforce justice yourself by shooting back.
No, that's not quite how self-defense law works down here, and the sheriff's office most definitely could prosecute the assailant for firing into an occupied vehicle, discharging a firearm within city limits, and a host of other offenses. They did have an eyewitness to the shooting, plus there is going to be evidence inside the vehicle that a firearm was discharged.
I also like the comment "so long as America keeps passing dumb laws like that" - as if Washington D.C.'s Draconian gun laws have made the first bit of difference there.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Some friends and I were in Townsville a few years ago.. One of them rented a car and drove to Cairns for a couple of days to do some diving. Later he mentioned how nobody seems to speed, and he had been flying past all of them. He also mentioned seeing yellow boxes all over the place on the side of the road. He just assumed they were emergency telephones or something. A couple of months later, a bill from the rental company showed up on his credit card for $3,000US. He called the rental company to ask them about it, and they said the car had been issued 35 speeding tickets on the weekend he had rented the car. It was then that he realized that the yellow boxes were cameras. Expensive lesson.
There are some circumstances where speeding is simply not acceptable, such as residential areas. However, most interstate highways (in the US anyway) are easily traversable at speeds in excess of 100, with a few exceptions. Driving fast is not, in and of itself, a cause of crashes. In Germany, for example, traffic fatalities in 2004 were 7.1 per 100,000. Meanwhile, with our "life saving" speed limits in the US, our traffic fatalities in 2003 (most recent data) were more than double that at 14.66 per 100,000. Clearly it's possible for people to drive fast without a higher number of fatalities.
Driving is an inherently risky activity, and it's impossible to remove all human error without removing humans. I just don't believe that speed limits are much more than an inconvenience and a cycle of tickets funding enforcement and government. If there are more accidents when people are speeding, I believe it's because they haven't had proper training; speed limits don't generally let anyone come close to approaching the limits of their vehicles' abilities, and it gives people the illusion that they can make any turn at any speed and stop on a dime. Furthermore, people tend to focus more when driving faster because they don't get lulled by the relaxing pace of 55MPH. People who are reckless will be reckless regardless of the law; it's just an inconvenience for the rest of us. But that's just my opinion.
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