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French City To Use CCTV For Parking Fines
horza writes "The city of Nice, France is rolling out 626 CCTV cameras throughout town, giving it one of the highest levels of surveillance in the world (1.8 cameras per 1000 inhabitants). The usual rhetoric was given — that they will be used solely for reducing violent crime — but the city will now begin sending out parking tickets solely based on the CCTV video evidence."
It is worse than living in East Germany under the Stazi.
Rule of thumb: if parking tickets are a big grievance for you then your life isn't as bad as living in East Germany under the Stasi.
hehe you're going to hate me, but......
I used to dislike red-light cameras because they are used as revenue machines for the city, etc. Then I realized, wow, if they weren't using them as revenue machines, then I would have to pay higher taxes. So hey, I don't mind having my taxes subsidized by those people who are too stupid to figure out how to navigate a red light. If that's you, sorry about that, and thanks. And I think there must be a lot of people who feel like me, otherwise there would be no red-light cameras.
Now if they are catching people when they aren't actually breaking laws, that's another story. I'm against that. But that's not what you're complaining about.
Qxe4
There was a recent scandal here in Spain because the picture that comes with the fine showed the car passing in yellow, not red. Nobody was found responsible and nothing happened.
There's also been known cases of shortened yellow lights in the US that give the victims no time to stop before getting caught in camera.
Speed cameras are easier to use as bait, though, because as soon as the revenue goes down the "authorities" just set a lower speed limit, even far below the safe limit.
Parking where-ever you please and hoping a traffic cop doesn't pass by isn't a privilege. Because YOU want to run around and break laws does not make CCTV evil, it just means your easier to catch. Freedom getting away with criminal behavior(no matter how small and insignificant the "crime")
Your argument is "well, if you're not breaking the law then why do you care?"
Let's extrapolate:
Why can't we put a camera in your house? I mean, you're not breaking the law, so why should you care? Obviously you don't want cameras in your house because you just want to break laws.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
A camera in a house turns it from private space into public space where common morality demands different behaviour. CCTV in public spaces has significantly less impact.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Rule of thumb: if parking tickets are a big grievance for you then your life isn't as bad as living in East Germany under the Stasi.
This is obviously true. No one will be executed, tortured, or held in secret prisons in Nice for parking violations. However, the GP's point isn't totally trivial either. Certainly a surveillance apparatus is being implemented that is vastly greater than anything envisioned by the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, and it is being aimed at punishing citizens who generally are trying to live their lives without harming others. Yes, people are breaking laws (usually, though there's plenty of stories of systems implemented in such a way that they catch even law abiders), but we all have occasions where we need to stop in a bus zone for a minute to drop something off, or realize that we left our change in our other pants and can't pay the meter. The notion of having eyes on us at all times, watching for us to make the smallest mistake and pouncing on it, does contribute to a sense of alienation, a feeling that government is working against us, rather than for us. Working for the citizens, rather than against them, is supposed to be the very essence of what separates liberal democracies from totalitarian autocracies. Just because a government demonstrates its hostility through annoyance, rather than brutality, doesn't mean it's not a disturbing attitude.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
A better analogy would be to say every citizen now has to have a personal overseer follow them 24/7 and observe all their movements and actions within public spaces - any law-abiding citizens have no grounds for complaint, therefore if you do complain you must be a criminal. That's tantamount what this law plus GGP post are saying. Most people don't mind being observed in public, but they would mind their entire day being observed by one set of people - this technology enables such observation and its justification is the sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut excuse of preventing illegal parking. Here's an idea - deputise the public to report illegal parking and give them a percentage of the fee for every ticket issued based on their information, that way you raise public awareness, make efficient use of your limited pool of wardens (since they're responding to specific information not just wandering at random) and everyone else gets to hang onto the last shreds of their privacy.
but we all have occasions where we need to stop in a bus zone for a minute to drop something off
No, we don't. Unless you live in a village, your "one minute" stop is influencing hundreds of cars, creating a collective loss much greater than "one minute" that you're imposing on the society for egotistic reasons.
The one and only effect I'd enjoy of camera traffic control (being completely against it) is that it would reduce the dozens of "one minute quick stops just to drop something" that make me lose hours per year.
Well said.
That, however, is worse than cameras (which does not diminish how bad cameras are). It's well known (from the examples of WWII Germany and so on) that states which encourage citizens to report each other become very nasty places to be.
Yes, but only if we are bus drivers, fuckwit.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You may say that the system will only be used to control criminals, and you have nothing to hide.
What you are forgetting is that the system can also be ABUSED or laws can be changed.
When the system is in place, the next crazy dictator will be able to use it for to find and control jews, arabs, christians, geeks. Whatever they hate.
Always keep in mind that even Hitler was chosen in a public election.
It WILL happend again. We need to build society with safeguards so we can survive.
Tell your friends about xenu.net
Let's extrapolate: Why can't we put a camera in your house? I mean, you're not breaking the law, so why should you care? Obviously you don't want cameras in your house because you just want to break laws.
Let's extrapolate further then. Why can't we put a cop in your house? I mean, if you're not breaking any law, so why should you care? Therefore, if you don't want any cops in your home, cops should not be allowed on the street.
But seriously, almost everyone agrees you need some level of police presence, or at least police need to be able travel freely about, but almost no one thinks they should be able to just willy nilly go into anyone's residence. Private space is private, public space is public. I believe there are both practical and civil liberty problems related to constant public surveillance, but I don't think that it follows that just because an activity is permitted in public spaces it should be allowed in private spaces, or vice versa.
You are suffering from the failed logic that government actually acts rational.
In fact, the revenue streams won't decrease your tax burden, instead they just give raises to employees, elected officials, find a way to work bonuses or more/better benefits into the public sector, and end up spending more.
You need to take off your teabagger hat. I work in the public sector, and I tell you that the last thing an elected official will do is give public employees a raise. We advertised for a traffic engineer; even in this horrendous job market it took 3 months to get 4 qualified applicants. Public sector pay is, for the most part, crap. I get about 75 cents on the dollar compared to private sector work. Most public service employees I know have some sort of side income - rentals, side business, etc - that increase their take home pay.
Government is funny that way, they think once the money is in their hands, they have to spend it.
You're right there, but the money is spent on pet projects, pie in the sky dreams, and stuff like that. They spend the money on what gets them re-elected, what YOU demand they provide YOU. They don't spend a dime on their own employees unless they have to. Any politician that would champion raises to staff, either as pay increases or better benefits, would not be re-elected next time around.
Once the economy improves, there will be a huge exodus of qualified public sector employees into the private sector, to the detriment of public service. Heck, I'm on my way out.
What happens is that once all the good people leave for better paying jobs, leaving mostly the lazy, indolent, and stupid, and a handful of people truly dedicated to service to the public. Then the politicians notice, run around in a panic, give everyone raises, thus rewarding the unqualified for their inability to find a better job.