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Cameras To Watch Cameras In Maryland
Cornwallis writes in with a story reminding cameras everywhere that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't watching you. "Many people find speed cameras frustrating, and some in the region are taking their rage out on the cameras themselves.
But now there's a new solution: cameras to watch the cameras. One is already in place, and Prince George's County Police Maj. Robert V. Liberati hopes to have up to a dozen more before the end of the year.
'It's not worth going to jail over a $40 ticket or an arson or destruction of property charge,' says Liberati."
That's a race condition if I ever saw one...
Who watches the cameras that watches cameras?
This is obviously the right way for our society to go.
expandfairuse.org
There's no possible way someone would think of destroying the camera-observing-camera BEFORE the speed camera.
Then you end up with TWO broken cameras, and didn't accomplish anything.
Doesn't a simple strobe light work?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Simply burn them. Here are burnt Gatsos in the UK: http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm
sudo mod me up
...camera watches camera!
In the United States, it's the other way around.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Common sense would say, "Put each camera in the other camera's field of view."
Palm trees and 8
If anyone sees you destroying the thing you're going to get in trouble anyway, so we are assuming the people are doing it when no one is around. In which case, wear a mask, park where the thing cant see your car, and walk right on up to it lol.
...and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No."
The camera watching cameras are an easy target, and I don't think people really buy the safety crap anymore. Its a money making teacher and we all know it
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Take a tip from the Aussies. They know how properly sabotage these illegitimate revenue stealers.
Hang a old tire on the offending big brother's eye, add a little accelerate like gasoline, kerosene, or cyclohexane(charcoal lighter fluid). The shape of the tire provides a channel to hold the liquid. Add a match and walk away. Once the rubber ignites nothing will put it out, and the heat is intense enough to cook those nice expensive speed cameras and permanently foul the equally expensive enclosures that keep the cameras from being stolen. (Or from less effective means of sabotage)
Like any truly effective means of civil disobedience, it's cheap and easy and done with things readily found laying around. Everyone has something flammable laying around in their garage and you can't walk 100 yards on a country road without finding a an abandoned tire or two.
Now, you just have to put something over your face to hide you from the eyes that watch the eyes.
getting rid of revenue cameras would be easier instead of watching Americans like paranoid communists.
Paintball.
Silly humans. Always doing what they want, rather than what they should...
While I can't say I'm a fan of speed cameras, and in fact the thought of vandalizing them has crossed my mind on occasion, the two I encounter routinely in Baltimore County are right out in front of elementary schools with lots of cute little pedestrians around them. So, it's hard for me to be entirely critical of the effort - at least because it does what it's supposed to - it reminds me to slow down before I run over some kid. If instead they were everywhere, I would be much more in opposition to them.
May 8th is National DISRUPT A CAMERA day.
Hey slashdot, lets make this happen.
The internet is about joint-effort.
Who is with me?
I am dead serious.
I propose May 8th when the first patent was issued.
Patent link
The Department of Redundancy Department.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Someone put some super bright IR LEDs in a baseball cap. That way normal people wont see it but if hes in front of a camera the light will drown out the image around his face.
This is why they make sniper rifles, high power lasers, and explosives with remote detonators. I would have added artillery and other sundry indirect-fire ordnance, but I'm not a big fan of collateral damage, meatsack or otherwise.
The issue is the cameras are not perfect and here in my city you could not argue them in court.
So people were getting tickets for speeding or going through red lights even though it was allowed and it was the camera that was inaccurate. (Motion sensor would commonly go off when making a right hand turn which is 100% legal)
Just mount a mirror so each camera sees itself. Then it will know when it's about to get smacked.
Or even better, a real-time monitor so it can see itself seeing itself....
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
from the "UK-would-be-proud" department.
It's September. I'm sure the local REI has ski-masks in stock. Or better yet, the Halloween store for some Obama, Guy Fawkes, Joe Stalin, etc. masks.
But then the spy-camera sales rep probably didn't bring that up when he and the town council went to that luxury resort for the weekend to discuss the camera contract.
The companies lobbying for speed cameras now are using the revenue from earlier speed camera income to do so. That's a fundamental flaw in how our government is structured, the ultimate cause of many problems. If you allow a company to profit from shady activities, then they can use those profits to hire lobbyists supporting even more of their shady activities, that is a sound business model. You can't expect regular people to out-lobby them; where does their money come from? Me the anti-camera guy, I have no effective lobbyist voice available to me, unless I raise money to do so. That's why companies profiting from the voters will out-lobby voters every time.
There is no solution here that doesn't make corporate funded lobbyists illegal. The concept of the paid lobbyist who influences our lawmakers makes a travesty of the idea that voters matter.
but two wrongs don't make a right
But I was told that double negative is positive...
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
The law is the law, and if the speed limit is 55 or 60 inside Baltimore City then that's what the drivers should be doing. If they find that objectionable rather than destroy the cameras, they should be lobbying to have the speed increased to 65.
Except that my observation is that almost everyone wants to drive above the speed limit. If almost everyone wants to do something, should it be illegal? Perhaps yes, but I think it's a good question to ask.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Speeding tickets here are as low as $15.
"Court costs" are a total BS $130 or so, though. As if the cost of disposing of my case in 2 minutes actually costs that.
Except when enforcing the law you break the law. http://www.wtop.com/41/2802160/Md-court-of-appeals-to-hear-speed-camera-lawsuit .
Glad I don't live in Maryland, in Missouri you are still entitled to due process of law and jury trial for moving violitions.
In Missouri we also have the Handcock Admenment.
Good video of lawyer getting owned by citizen , about half way through the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFwaX2QRvW4
Someone put some super bright IR LEDs in a baseball cap. That way normal people wont see it but if hes in front of a camera the light will drown out the image around his face.
Hmm, like the idea, but I don't always wear a hat...
How bright do you think the LEDs would have to be to obscure my face, if I embedded them in my lapels?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
What is the threshold needed to trip the camera? If you go 56 on a 55 do you get a ticket?
You blame the lobbyists. Why don't you blame the lawmakers?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The speed limit laws are not as important as privacy here. Ultimately, the loss of privacy will prove far more harmful to society than some speeders.
If the speed cameras were only designed to catch speeders and it was impossible to gather mass information that violates citizens privacy I would readily agree with you. However, it is not. They are recording license plates and amassing a database that has only one purpose. Violate citizens privacy.
The whole thing is a farce. If the true purpose of speeding tickets was to modify people's behavior to make society safer, than tickets would not be used. They only serve to increase revenue for the municipalities they exist in. Nothing more.
If you gave each and every person 10 hours of community service for every 1 mph over the limit, you would see speed violations plummet .
No. I'll continue to come up with ways to destroy, or otherwise inhibit the functions of the cameras, without collateral damage. We don't need to increase the speed limits. What needs to change is the punishment. Good luck doing that since nobody ever wants to give up revenue, ever.
Then you have cities modifying how long the orange light is to increase revenue from red light cameras too. The government does not even play fair either.
No, No, No.
The correct move is to deny them the technology with civil disobedience if required.
In the implementation of stoplight cameras in my town, there are always two cameras diagonally across the intersection from each other, and each camera is in the other's field of view. I don't *know* whether they're rigged to provide security for each other, but were I designing it, that's the way I would do it. I also suspect that the image isn't actually stored in the camera housing. I have a security system at home, and when it's triggered, the images are stored locally and automatically duplicated on a server 15 miles from the house. I suspect they've got something similar.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
From the article,
Liberati says the cameras aren't a case of Big Brother nor a cash grab, police are simply trying to keep the public safe from reckless drivers.
That's a hard sell; speeding tickets (et al) pay police/transit dept budgets. This makes it hard for the public to understand that the police are there to help. The problem with speeding is that it can be done safely, and there are plenty of people who regularly speed without risk of accidents. I've encountered more near-accidents created by Highway Patrol than by speeders (which is in part a public stupidity item -- the radar gun already clocked your speed well before you slammed on the breaks and forced the guy behind you to do likewise).
I'm a stats guy. I would support these cameras if they were used for statistical purposes, and I do not support them due to the current money flow. Here is my modest proposal:
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I didn't blame the lobbyists; I pointed out their role in a system that has blame all over it. Corrupt lawmakers, slimy lobbyists, and the way voters have allowed themselves to become almost irrelevant to how our laws are made; everyone shares blame here.
That's a race condition if I ever saw one...
Sounds more like an infinite recursion, if you ask me:
installMonitoringCamera(Camera cameraToMonitor) {
Camera monitoringCamera = new Camera(cameraToMonitor);
monitoringCamera.monitor();
if(monitoringCamera.observesSomeAssholeSettingFireToMonitoredCamera())
installMonitoringCamera(monitoringCamera);
}
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
In some construction zones, it's 12 mph. So you wouldn't get a ticket in a 55 until you did more than 67 mph. I have no idea if there's an MD law requiring the 12mph pad, or if it's set zone by zone.
I didn't say anything about your right to lobby. What I said was that the way Apple and Ford (to use your examples; Coke doesn't lobby to the scale it matters) use large amounts of money to lobby the government currently makes your personal lobbying irrelevant in scope. Effective lobbying takes either personal time or money. Right now the money side of things is so large the personal one is drowned by its scale. Your rights to have your voice heard have effectively already been shit on, past tense, by how loud the corporate shouting is.
Many police officers find civil liberties frustrating, and some officers take out their rage on citizens. But now there's a new solution: cameras to watch the police.
I always had a problem with speeding tickets because of this imaginary "threshold." If I'm driving 70MPH and everyone else is doing 67MPH in a 65MPH zone... how is it that I am the only one ticketed? Isn't the immediate consensus of everyone else on the road at that time that the speed limit is unjust or improper? Shouldn't it be a requirement that all offenders be ticketed and not just the one picked out of the herd?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
In Maryland, it's 12 mph over when you get a ticket. It's worth noting that the cameras are only in school zones and construction zones "for safety." I'm all for safety, but with the school zones especially, "safety" apparently means people doing 50 mph in a 30 mph zone until they get right next to the camera, then slamming on their brakes to get to 20 mph, then flooring it a few seconds later once they're out of the reach of the camera. Or weaving in and out of traffic that is following the 30 mph rule. Somehow, this is SAFER. I would love to ask our city council for the before-and-after statistics on accidents - how much safer are we, really? How much would you bet that there is no information?
If it's really about safety as they claim, then they should donate all of the profit to some third-party cause...fallen police officers fund or something like that.
A Ruger 10/22 with a 10x40x scope.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
What about an autonomous (or remotely piloted if necessary) 'copter drone that can be programmed to fly to the vicinity, identify a camera, and spray its lens with a blast of paint? That would be pretty unstoppable.
So stay in the driving lane, doing the limit. People who want to go faster can use the passing lane, that's what it's for. :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The law is the law, and if the speed limit is 55 or 60 inside Baltimore City then that's what the drivers should be doing. If they find that objectionable rather than destroy the cameras, they should be lobbying to have the speed increased to 65.
Top end speed limits are controlled by the federal government and are based on such things as population density. Local governments can lower them but cannot raise them above the federal limits.
Lobbying tiny local governments is hard enough, lobbying the federal government is pretty much impossible unless your group has very deep pockets.
Any person who actually has a conscience would easily understand where you're coming from, but it's still really not a good excuse for the cameras. Already, I know I'm afraid to drive past a school because the "school zones" have such drastically reduced speed limits (and high probabilities of officers lurking in the parking lot or a nearby driveway), PLUS doubled or tripled fines for speeding, it's easy to get dinged with a really high dollar ticket for going any faster than a crawl through that whole area.
I really don't need the camera there to remind me I better slow down.
Destroying the speed cameras might not be the "recommended" way to address the problem, but quite frankly? It sends a stronger message and does so more quickly than lobbying for a speed limit change.
The fact is, these things are ALL about revenue generation. If you turn them into a big EXPENSE to maintain, the revenue stops looking as attractive. It's that simple.
Ask yourself this: Would technologies costing a similar amount to implement be considered if there was no way for the police dept. and local govt. to receive profits from them? I think you and I both know the answer to that one... All their cries about the cameras being there for "safety" are just attempts to get acceptance for the automated ticket issuing system.
Lobbying for a higher speed limit is problematic because you're up against established groups in government who would lose money if it's changed. They've probably got more resources than you to push their side of the issue.
I'm not saying it can't be done (and often, it SHOULD be), but I have little sympathy for the police or local govt. when they complain about the expenses they're incurring when these cameras wind up damaged. Maybe they should have bought insurance on them? That's what they always force ME to do by law with my motor vehicle.
Much of the threshold is due to state law. To prevent local governments from creating "1mph over" speed traps that are within the margin of error, states prohibit local cops from writing speeding tickets for anything less that something like 10 mph over the limit. (Sometimes this only applies to state roads.)
Some of the threshold is also due to the legacy reasons - speedometers and detection equipment in the past were considered more innacurate in the past so a 10 mph margin has become the norm.
Also, sometimes law enforcement does pull over entire groups of cars. Florida used to be well known for this.
I'm so glad I moved away from Maryland over a decade ago...
The state acts like a police state.
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It's worth noting that the cameras are only in school zones and construction zones "for safety."
This is not accurate. That may have been the intent, but I know of three locations that are not in school zones (unless they've been expanded beyond all reason), or in perpetual construction zones, that have speed cameras in them. These are the newer portable ones, not the permanently mounted ones, so they may have different rules regarding where they are used.
I suggested making corporate funded lobbyists illegal. I didn't say anything about you and a couple of hundred others lobbying in another structure. A non-profit organization might be a good choice. Even a Political action committee might be appropriate. As bad as those are, they're still downright transparent compared to how corporate lobbyists and lawmakers interact. At best we get these lame lobbyist activity reports, often only after the laws they're involved in are passed.
We've made corporations into people, and letting them dump unlimited funds into lobbyists makes that pseudo-person able to influence our laws to their benefit too. This is not a theory in regards to the topic here, it's documented fact in several places now. Here in Maryland where today's article focuses on, we had Speed Camera Lobbyist charged with Ethics Violations. Chicago has Mayor's speed cameras would help political ally. And the speed camera lobbyists were well represented on the first half of the year's busiest lobbyist reports.
My comments on how these laws are advancing were not speculation; I was commenting on exactly how things have happened in Maryland. A deeper bit of fact checking only suggests I didn't hit all the sources that funded the speed camera lobbying though. Rather than completely bootstrapping itself legally, speed camera lobbying has also been funded by revenue made from red light cameras, another area where for-profit companies lobby in ridiculous ways. Note the comment there on how the red light camera companies have even managed to bypass standard law enforcement rules in some places.
I had a friend who had a job working for a speed camera company that was contracted by Howard County (just west of Baltimore). He was paid to drive a speed trap van to a site (often near on and off ramps of Rt 70 outside of Baltimore), setup the laser radar equipment and then monitor the computers. It was a boring job which had him sitting in a van with little to no climate controls for up to 6 hours a day. He would call me every now and then to stave off boredom and all you could hear in the background was the windows ding every fraction of a second. That ding was played every time a car was going 10-12 MPH over the limit. Each ticket was something like $150 and from what he guessed he would catch anywhere from 200 to 500+ speeders a day. That coupled with the fact that the county had ten such vans deployed at any given time. Each van grossed upward of 100,000 a day. I bet the contractor made a pretty penny (and paid their workers shit) but the county made out like bandits. They easily pulled in a million a week. So they can cry me a fucking river.
Now it looks like they cut out the middle man and bought the actual equipment. I bet it paid for itself within a week.
I mean if I go by this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year I'd notice that the total number of traffic deaths is right about 35k. (Sorry, no stats for 2011 yet) So basically you're arguing every traffic death was because of speeding. Note - depending on who you read between 2 and 30% of accidents are caused by speeding.(Not the same thing but does imply that deaths due to speeding is no where near 35k)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
You're so cute, thinking laws are in place to protect people.
Do you know how speed limits are set? Do you know how or where to lobby for increasing the speed limit in your locality?
I'll give you a hint; it is NOT the legislature.
In my city, speed limits on the main highways are 45-50 MPH. Normal traffic flow is 68-85 MPH. These are divided, 3-5 lane highways.
If you are "doing the limit," that means you are going 50 MPH while everyone else on the road is doing 75 MPH. That makes you a moron, and an obstruction, and it's damn dangerous. I'm sorry, but you are a fool if you think the solution is to obey the law when everyone around is breaking it, in this case. You have a moral responsibility not to put other drivers at risk.
By the description it sounds like that camera got me about a week before it was burned down. Robbed by the Police on my way to get a new motorcycle tire. As I recall it's a two lane highway, with a 30 MPH speed limit. Seems to me I was doing 43. Should be 50 along there. However if they did that, they wouldn't be issuing any tickets. So they use the fact that there is a school nearby, lower the speed limit to put up this camera. I didn't even know it was there until I got the ticket. Lucky it wasn't on my daily drive. I think that was $40.
Need to stop the maddness. Ban those cameras. They don't increase safety, they compromise it. I've seen people lock tires up through an intersection - obviously a victim of a red light camera in the past. Others have lost control trying to stop in the rain. All so the government can collect another illegal highway use tax. Maybe some smart lawyer out there can do a class action suit against governments and get the government officials locked up.
...cameras to watch the cameras that are watching the cameras? And then we'll need cameras to watch those cameras. By the time we're done, we'll have the most thoroughly watched security system in the world. If anyone does anything, we'll feel much better knowing that they'll be caught on camera on camera on camera on camera. Take that, criminals! Big Brother has nothing on us!
In Missouri we also have the Handcock Admenment.
Dr. Sobel: "Oedipus was a Greek king who killed his father and married his mother."
Paul Vitti: (Sighs.) "Fuckin' Greeks!"