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Using Speed Cameras To Send Tickets To Your Enemies
High school students in Maryland are using speed cameras to get back at their perceived enemies, and even teachers. The students duplicate the victim's license plate on glossy paper using a laser printer, tape it over their own plate, then speed past a newly installed speed camera. The victim gets a $40 ticket in the mail days later, without any humans ever having been involved in the ticketing process. A blog dedicated to driving and politics adds that a similar, if darker, practice has taken hold in England, where bad guys cruise the streets looking for a car similar to their own. They then duplicate its plates in a more durable form, and thereafter drive around with little fear of trouble from the police.
This is the inevitable result of the 'panopticon' model of legal harmony. A car does not positively identify a person, nor does a license plate or a blurry photo.
The authorities can cast a wider net by being lazy, but this is the real reason we shouldn't tolerate it: it's almost laughably exploitable.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Wow, so you personally commit fraud and forgery to get your "enemy" a $40 speeding ticket?
sounds like a great idea until the first time a cop is on scene to pull you over.
I hope those kids like jail time!
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
...they could create a website listing the make, model and licenses of cars belonging to police and other public officials; with convenient license plate templates or maybe a PDF license plate generator. Don't host it the US or UK though.
But that would be wrong.
This just shows again the problems with applying a digital measure to our analog world. Speeding is by no means a crime. A crime implies harm, and having an instantaneous velocity over a certain point on a road hardly qualifies as a crime. Here we have a case of the computer being judge, jury, and executioner. This means that gone are the *very* valid justification that "that's the speed limit because driving any slower was dangerous."
Before, real-life situations could trump an engineer's arbitrary classification of a road. Which is good, because in real life, the situation *is* more important than the simulation. Now, instead of a judge who makes an informed decision that can be understood and formally disagreed with, we have a contractor, who is completely removed from the job. No one to get mad at, and, most importantly, no one to feel guilty. Every person in the chain has no responsibility and no reason to feel bad.
No matter the efficiency advantages of doing otherwise, every penalty applied to a human should be applied by a human.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Do you look at your license plate every morning? Would you notice if the letters and numbers suddenly changed?
if you fill your own paintballs and fill them with glue instead of paint so the entire front glass has to be replaced it will work faster.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The real problem, imho, is that speed limits are artificially low. In the US anyway, the only reason to follow the speed limit is to avoid fines. The numbers are unnecessarily conservative for most driving.
In fact, i can drive past a cop at the speed limit in the rain and not get a ticket though clearly I have a much lower margin of safety going 65 in the rain than I do going 65 on dry pavement.
Similarly, one is allowed to go the same speed at night as during the day even though visibility is definitely impaired.
(Yes, I know the limit is set as an upper limit and that cops can ticket you for going an unsafe speed for the conditions, etc, etc. but in practice it doesn't happen for up to moderate levels of inclement levels. And in fog or a downpour or blizzard, well most people slow down well below the speed limit anyway.)
I do like the "advised speed" that's attached to signs signaling curves ahead. That actually provides useful information about the road rather than info about the revenue generation and/or paranoia of the local residents.
What should we think of a government that tries to find new ways to make our highways safe.
However, red light cameras do not make it safer. In most places, red light cameras INCREASE the occurrence of rear-end accidents because people are afraid they might get a ticket and stop short. And in my area, those tickets are nearly $200. On top of that, the camera companies get a cut in the profits from the tickets. So there is an incentive to ticket people. And it has been proven in certain cities that the governments are shortening the yellow-light times to catch people off guard. So even people who are not trying to "run" the light get caught in it. And speed cameras on on-ramps are just friggin stupid. There are enough people out there who dont know how to merge into freeway traffic. THEY are the ones who cause congestion.
Get ready for mandatory RFID license plates, and all the privacy and security problems that come with them.
Good point. A lot easier just to copy another plate as described in TFA.
Tell that to the US citizens who were served National Security Letters under the auspices of the PATRIOT Act. Oh wait, you can't, because those people are legally prohibited from disclosure, so there's no way to identify who they are.
The problem, of course, is not the validity of your statement. It's absolutely correct. But as we can clearly see, there really isn't such a thing as a truly free society, only those that call themselves "free."
Be excellent to each other.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Those are called HOA and they suck. http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/real-estate/HOA-horrors1.asp
If you live in that much fear of government officials, then you have bigger problems than speed cameras. In a free society, the fear, if any, goes the other way.
Hell, It's not like some sick government Fsck could have you kidnapped right of the street and have you taken to a middle-eastern country to be tortured, in spite of the fact you were perfectly innocent...
I'm sorry, excuse me for just a moment... Oh, really?... Hmmmm...
Never mind.
Tell me if you spot one of these "free societies."
America hasn't been one for about 150 years, and the decay has been getting worse for the last 60 or so.
Learn about Photography Basics.
whoa there! You mean there's something wrong with the citizens "cheating" if automated cameras aren't recording enough violations... heaven forbid most people obey the law!!! What a concept..
That's why this kind of "infractions for profit" are such a bad idea because somebody in the chain needs to keep their margin.. not improve safety or obey the laws.
The best way is to make the intersection designs controlled by insurance companies. It is in their best interest not to ever pay out, so the interesections that they can reduce accidents in will be made as safe as possible.
Admittedly rear ending is up a bit, but you have to draw a line somewhere
This usually happends because the yellow is too short for the speed limit there. Here's one guide (there are others more official but this one is simple and to the point.) Some people blame malice on the part of the local government in wanting camera revenue but they're more likely just ignorant. Time some lights in your area and bring this up at the next public town coucil meeting.
Notice that the too-short yellow is probably why the light was being run too often in the first place. Now that the camera is there, the too-short yellow requires slamming on the brakes to stop in time rather than a normal stop. That in turn causes rear-endings.
The "150 years ago" part was a generalization. Yes, the Civil War was the beginning of broadening the power of the federal government, but more importantly it was the era where corruption began to be visible in American politics. This is the era when first began to lose sight of the "of the people, by the people, for the people" ideals that we were founded upon.
60 years ago was the beginnings of the Cold War. This is where the American people began to see large-scale prosperity, and lost sight entirely of the individualist spirit of our Founders. Once the beast of government got a taste of the power it could obtain by maintaining a state of constant war (or plausible threat of war), we have been in one ever since. First was the Cold War. Then the intensification of the "War on Drugs". In the 90s, it was on "militias" and "extremists". Now its "terrorism" and "fundamentalism".
America today is little related to the country we once were. Of course there were injustices, and we have grown much as a people since then - but we have lost the basis that made us great in the process. In our rush to see everyone equal, we've created classes and division based on gender, race, and who we prefer to sleep with. Alongside the heady excitement of prosperity in the 80s and 90s was the greatest degradation of civil right we have seen as a country.
As an example, in 1986 the NFA registry was closed, by unfunding a program. This created a de facto ban on an entire class of firearms. This may not mean much to you, or you may be entirely opposed to civilian ownership of weapons - but by God, it means something to me. It means that the government founded over 200 years ago by my ancestors, based on the idea that government rules at the behest of the citizens, no longer trust its citizens. That is a scary thought, at it will lead to conflict, eventually, whether violent, economic, or ideologic.
Regardless of whether or not the name lives on, or if this country remains a world power - make no mistake, we are living through the death throes of this once great nation. How much will survive is yet to be seen, but the idea of Liberty is already lost on my fellow citizens.
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