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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.
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.
Duplicate plates? When I was in school, we used to actually swap the plates themselves lol.
Kids and technology these days.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
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!
If we're lucky.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
the cameras send the picture to an office where the clerks look at the registered drivers license face photo to see if it corresponds with the face of the guy on the photo.
This is not failsafe of course, since you can always take your wifes car and drive past the cameras in high speed, or a rental car, or wear a mask - but at least you get no false positives.
...when they usually pay through the nose or get jailtime for counterfeiting an official document (which a license plate is).
It's interesting though that penalties are apparently tied to the car in the us, not the driver. I still remember the police showing up regularly at the door showing me a (usually bad) picture of my father and asking if I knew the person. Thank god^M^M^M the constitution for family privilege.
Fleur de Sel
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.
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.
The Monty Python folks referred to this as, "the other, other operation."
Profit?
Driving and politics . . . sounds like a deadly mix to me.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Looks like a few public officials need to have their plates "cloned" in this way. The only way for them to see the idiocy of this sytesm is for them to be clubbed repeatedly around the head with it.
I have no idea whether or not this information is actually accurate, but I found it interesting none-the-less.
While watching an episode of Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson was in Japan driving a car, he mentioned that photographs taken by speed cameras were only valid if your face could be identified from the picture. He had a paper cutout of another person's face that he would hold over his own whenever passing by a camera so that he could not be given a ticket.
I'm sure that this was mostly for comedic effect, but if true, doesn't something like this make speed cameras completely pointless?
I've also read a few stories where those who especially hate speed cameras will obscure its vision in some manner so that it cannot take accurate pictures or any pictures at all. Assuming that the rate of this mischief is high enough and there are enough other methods available to circumvent the accuracy of these cameras, is it really worthwhile to use them?
Is that not illegal? Oh well; I personally find it pathetic that students are engaging in such obscene debauchery! If you really need to get revenge on a fellow student or teacher, there are obviously much more legal and embarassing ways to do so IN SCHOOL.
THough, if actual humans were used in this process, perhaps more jobs could be created? And the situation could be partially allievated? It should not be that hard to differentiate between glossy paper and painted metal if you can read the plate on camera.
Incediantally, My first response, in keeping with the quote at the bottom of the page, was, 'No, that'd be silly.'
In Arizona, all tickets are reviewed by
the police or local municipality of which
the ticket was issued.
ie, if the car doesn't match the ticket,
no ticket gets sent. If the driver is
one sex and the vehicle is registered
to the opposite sex, a notice is sent,
not a ticket. I can drive my wife's
vehicle and speed all I want, she gets
a notice that says, "Do you know this
person".
I can't see any instance where this would
work except same vehicle, same sex driving.
So... Fail.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
This entirely new type of crime can only come about because of speed cameras! If we didn't try to punish people breaking the law this kind of thing would never happen!
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.
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.
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.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Get ready for mandatory RFID license plates, and all the privacy and security problems that come with them.
Texas private investigator legislation is causing problems for robo-cop traffic enforcement. A Texas judge said the company running a red-light camera was acting illegally because it did not have a private investigator license. On the basis of this ruling, motorists are challenging traffic tickets. The problem started when the legislature said computer forensics experts needed to be licensed like private eyes. See deails: http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2008/12/e-discovery-forensics-private-investigator-license-for-computer-data-collection-and-assessment.html --Ben
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
Be excellent to each other.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Here in Norway (nearly?) all speed trap cameras use roadbed sensors which detect each vehicle axle as the car/truck passes over it.
There are two such sensors a few meters apart, and the speed trap logic will calculate both the speed the car must have had between the two sensors, and the distance between the vehicle axles.
The gear is supposedly sensitive/accurate enough that the axle distance can be measured within a cm or so.
This still leaves a lot of possible car models, but it is used as a first-order check of the license plate OCR sw.
When the ticket is mailed to the (assumed) owner of the car, it includes a copy of the photo, so the owner can verify that it is indeed the correct car and driver.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
At least if you look at how things were actually done during the Cultural Revolution, or even today in Cuba and North Korea. Local party members inform on those whose political purity is questioned.
And what does the government do a little girl opens a lemonade stand and tries to keep the profits? Little handcuffs and off to the gulag!
There's a very scary scene depicting what these local committees were like in the movie The Red Violin. Go rent that and see how local government worked under Mao.
Of course, these elections never actually happened anyway, or any elections for that matter, local or national, under any Marxist regimes. Or a single, fixed election, like in Venezuela.
Sorry brother, but when I hear "Marx," I don't think "democracy."
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Here in Arizona, we have a little trick that works quite well. You just drive a car that is registered to someone else. They can't ticket you because they don't know who you are, and the person to whom the car is registered is not liable because he is not the one who broke the law. My younger brother has gotten out of two tickets already by driving the parents' car. So, if you have a family member or friend whom you trust, just swap cars and ignore cameras to your heart's intent.
The other option you have is to just challenge every ticket that they send you. They have lawyers here who chargea flat $35 and basically take you through the process of challenging a ticket. It's really easy to get off, because by the time it's all said and done, it costs them more to get a judge to force you to pay it than the ticket is actually worth.
The technology is already there, it's just waiting for someone to abuse it.
Using video tracking, from a legal standpoint, someone can argue that these kids are impersonating a license plate--i.e. stoeln license plates and that's a real offense and the video will just do some data mining on the cars in question to find out make, model and eventually who did it. It's bound to happen and these kids, while being smart are just going to spoil it for then rest of us.
.
Sure, the red light cameras are useless and may cause more harm, but disrespect for these stupid laws by being unlawful just gives more incentives to the gov't wonks to make stupider laws.
I'm not interested in electing someone clever.
I'm interested in electing someone who really believes in laissez-faire.
In the US, the federal government is supposed to maintain the roads & borders.
I'm very unhappy that my tax dollars are going to support an industry strangled by union thugs.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
Wait 'till your neighbor paints his house purple. Or has 100 cats.
My neighbor has the right to paint his house any color he wishes, including purple. I welcome his creativity, and no I don't care if it devalues my home. My right to make a profit in my investment ends at his property.
As far as having 100 cats, as long as those cats are not coming into my property, not being mistreated, and as long as it's not violating any municipal/city/state/federal health codes, it's none of my business either.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
that Marxists always say about failed, despotic Marxist-Leninist regimes: "They just didn't do it right."
I'm sorry, but when every single example of a Marxist-Leninist-based regime leads to vast human suffering, corruption, and human rights atrocities, maybe it's time to just admit that Marxist-Leninist governments do not work, as they ignore human nature and the nature of capital.
But leftists always let their dogma run over their karma, and want to try it again and again. If only you had so much patience with capitalism!
Capitalism, regardless of what you think of its fairness, just works. You don't need dictatorships, mind control through force, secret police, informants, or re-education camps. Just let people do their thing, and it goes. Now which system is consistent with human nature? Which one is free and which one requires compulsion?
Marxism must be instituted and kept pure by force. Because no matter what, sooner or later, that little girl is going to want to open a lemonade stand. And what are you going to do then?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Not trying to be a smart-arse (for a change), but doesn't your neighbour's painting his house purple and thereby devaluing your house therefore extend onto your property?
Things people do affect me all the time, but I don't have a right to tell them not to do it unless they actually physically do it with my stuff (or to me). For example, day traders dumping a stock I own is devaluing my property, but they're doing it by exercising a right to their property (their stock).
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.