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Using Speed Cameras To Send Tickets To Your Enemies

Posted by kdawson on from the ticket-me-elmo dept.

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.

11 of 898 comments (clear)

  1. without any humans ever having been involved by similar_name · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've often thought if I got one of these tickets I would take it to court and ask for the right to see my accuser.

    1. Re:without any humans ever having been involved by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's a perversion of justice for the profit of the state, but right now the judges let it pass constitutional muster.

      That's just because nobody bothered to do the the same trick with the correct government or state official plates.

    2. Re:without any humans ever having been involved by Pichu0102 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      sounds like a dare

      I don't think anyone's really stupid enough to piss off someone who has the ability to ruin your life, or, if they're really corrupt, make you disappear.

    3. Re:without any humans ever having been involved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Karl Marx actually proposed a way improved form of democracy where the workers united in neighborhood committees will decide their own neighborhood policies, their city, their state, their country and the world's policies, all through direct debate and vote, with EVERYBODY being part of the decision and policy elaboration process.
      That is way much more democratic than we have anywhere in the world in the world these days, and specially in the US, where if you don't have a billion dollar to waste away you cannot run for president.
      So, forget a little bit about pr0n and WoW and go read, or at least google a bit, before you make pathetic loser jokes about things you don't know.

    4. Re:without any humans ever having been involved by wall0159 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Just to be a devil's advocate - if they're not generating profit, then people aren't running those lights, and the cameras aren't necessary...

    5. Re:without any humans ever having been involved by RealEditer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Someone here in Texas is suing a couple of red-light camera operators, saying that they don't have private investigator licenses and thus don't have legal right to gather information for prosecutions. So far he's gotten one judge to agree.

    6. Re:without any humans ever having been involved by arminw · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ...It's a perversion of justice...

      No it is not, but just an extra road tax. Justice isn't involved in any way shape or form. If it a speeding ticket, you basically get taxed extra for the privilege or fun of driving fast.

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      All theory is gray
    7. Re:without any humans ever having been involved by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Unless of course I missed the part where people don't get to vote, must work at a state owned business and are not allowed to make most of the important decisions in their day to day life.

      I see you accept the US government official definition of "free country", with the cold war era anti-red addendum and everything. Voting is meaningless if only a small range of "mainstream" candidates have a chance. Free enterprise only matters when the market isn't rigged.

      Ask yourself this: Is China a free country? What *practical* freedoms do Americans have that someone in China does not? There are some examples, and those are important, but there are less than you might think.

      It's specious to say that we're less free because the federal government got those rights rather than the state government. One can still leave the nation if one chooses and if enough people become unhappy with the nation, they can still secede, I'm not sure where in the constitution the right to secede was.

      You touch upon the counter argument to your first sentence in your second. How many people does it take to make a policy change in a US state? At the federal level? Even organizations the size of the NRA and the Sierra club manage to accomplish surprisingly little at the federal level. Moving a policy from the states to the federal government results in a very practical decrease in the democratic control of that policy.

      This is just one of those whack job libertarian ideas that because I can't Jay walk or use drugs that suddenly I'm some sort of a slave.

      There's nothing "whack job" about libertarian ideas. Like any ideas, it's reasonable to disagree with them once you clearly understand them (and, necessarily, their historical and philosophical background), but simply dismissing them as crazy marks you as willfully ignorant. And there's nothing worse than being willfully ignorant (and proudly admitting to it).

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      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    8. Re:without any humans ever having been involved by TWX · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In the UK some are taking tires, hanging them on the speed cameras, filling the inside with gasoline, and lighting it. The gasoline burns long enough to get the tire burning, and as the tire burns, the steel belts keep it from burning itself off of the camera housing before it's been there for a considerable amount of time.

      I wouldn't advocate doing this with tires that you bought new if you registered the warranty on them, but tires on wheels can sometimes be bought for $8.00 on half-price day at the junk yard, and dismounting them isn't that difficult if they're not those low-profile or large rim types. I'd imagine that you'd put the gasoline into the tire while it's on the ground, then lift it up and on, then toss a match or two into it.

      Not that I'd advocate such a simple, destructive, and highly self-contained method of destroying speed cameras, but here are some results: http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm

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      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  2. Henry Mencken disagrees by bledri · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't think anyone's really stupid enough to ...

    Henry Mencken disagrees:
    "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." -- Henry Mencken

    I know, he was talking about profit, but I think the sentiment applies more broadly.

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    Some privacy policy Slashdot.
  3. Re:All well and good, except... by mccoma · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Well, I wouldn't be too trusting of those reviews. I was told Illinois also reviews tickets on their toll roads and they made the following errors when trying to ticket me:
    1. Misidentified the state the plate was issued from
    2. vehicle on photo was white, my car is black
    3. vehicle on photo is a semi truck, my car is a chevy cavalier