A woman drives with both hands on the wheel. Her phone sits face-down on her lap. No officer pulls her over. No lights flash. Weeks later, a $1,251 ticket arrives in the mail. The evidence: a single frame from a Camera surveillance app. The charge: phone use while driving.
Automated camera companies market their devices as automated license plate readers — tools for catching stolen cars, flagging warrants, and aiding serious investigations.
Sold as a Crime Tool. Used as a Fine Machine.
For your safety.™
Great. Let me make sure my phone sits somewhere that hides it from view overhead when im not using it.
Ive been leaving my phone home more and more when I go places. I can’t wait until I get a citation for not having a phone.
Wow, it sure must take a lot of processing power to go through that much surveillance data.
Would be funny if it was a more modern vehicle, with a massive ipad that’s nearly bolted to your forehead and has displays on the back of every headrest.
An example of what people in positions of authority think is perfectly acceptable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District
School authorities surreptitiously and remotely activated webcams embedded in school-issued laptops the students were using at home. After the suit was brought, the school district, of which the two high schools are part, revealed that it had secretly taken more than 66,000 images.
A lawsuit wasn’t enough, the administrators should be branded as sex offenders and the parents should have taken them out behind the school and beat the crap out of them.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Attorney’s Office, and Montgomery County District Attorney all initiated criminal investigations of the matter, which they combined and then closed because they did not find evidence “that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that anyone involved had criminal intent”.
If I don’t have intent to commit a crime but I break the law, it’s not an excuse that a cop or judge will buy. Holy fuck.
I seem to recall something about a story where, like, a kids mom didnt know the camera was remotely turned on and walked through the room naked, after having just gotten out of the shower, and there was some kind of CPS investigation about it?
or is my brain mixing up several different school district voyeur stories together?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District
The school took 66,000 pictures of students in their bedrooms. School administrators should be listed as sex offenders but that doesn’t happen in the U.S. Case in point - our child rapist in chief.
Nope, that happened. If the institution spying on you in your home sees you naked, in your own home where you foolishly expect privacy, you’re a criminal.
Why did they even have the ability to do that in the first place? Holy fuck dude
Traffic cams violate our constitutional right to face our accuser in court.
Have you ever fought a traffic ticket? You’re not on trial. You’re not pleading guilty/not-guilty. It’s an administrative/civil thing.
Every traffic ticket in the US I’ve seen requires you to check a box to plead before you pay it (assuming you aren’t fighting it). When you pay it, you are either pleading guilty or no contest. If you go to your court date instead you get asked to enter a plea and it can be not guilty.
Granted, I haven’t been ticketed in all 50 states… yet.
Edit: Apparently the click-bait headline is referencing a person from Australia, despite the rest of the article talking about US law… No idea how traffic tickets work there…
#lifegoals
To be clear I live in Texas so maybe we do things differently wherever you live. We definitely go to court and plead for traffic violations.
MA. Tickets have “I’d like to pay” or “I’d like a hearing”. No mention of guilt.
Hearings are civil, not criminal, and you represent yourself in front of a magistrate (baby judge). If you tried to represent yourself in a criminal case, the judge would give you a very hard time about that choice. Either way, you don’t call witnesses, there’s no cross examination, and no discovery.
I don’t get where people are going full Law&Order, demanding to see their accuser.
Wouldn’t you just need a police officer to go to court and say they are accusing you based on said evidence and then you still face the accuser
The huge invasions of privacy seem like a much bigger issue but I am also not a legal expert
The police officer didn’t witness the crime. They’re making that Judgement based on evidence provided by a third party.
If my house were broken into, and I managed to capture video of the incident, I can’t just hand that to the police and call it a day. The accused has a constitutionally protected right to face me in court, not just the video or the officer I gave the video to, so that their defense can interrogate it fully. What if there is additional context that undermines the narrative presented by this single piece of evidence? If I know the accused and had a reason to see them convicted (such as getting a kickback from any fine they pay), now my clear evidence becomes a little more suspect. Now there’s a very clear motive for me to skew, misinterpret, or completely fabricate the video.
That’s what OP is referring to. If a company is going to install cameras and claim their cameras caught me doing something I shouldn’t have, I have a right to ask that company for more details regarding their claim. Ideally in a public court, with a representative of the company under oath.
Or more concisely: the government should never contract out law enforcement to private companies.
Traffic violations are rarely criminal cases.
It doesn’t violate constitutional rights as long as whatever the camera can detect/see would be the same as a police officer. If it has a license plate reader and face detection or whatever it’s unconstitutional because an officer probably wouldn’t have been able to issue a ticket if it were a person there instead of a camera. If it’s something like an obviously missing seatbelt or phone use seen through the window at a reasonable angle it’s constitutional.
I don’t understand the “face an accuser in court” argument. It’s a photo. You argue about the photo with the judge. The photo is your accuser.
No
The company sending the letter is the acccuser.
They need to explain how they interpreted the photo
Did you ever have a misunderstanding with someone that simply explaining it to each other cleared it up? How can a camera explain what it saw. The police officer wasn’t there and isn’t a witness. Also these cameras are not owned by the police. It’s a third party company that has a lease with them. So someone with no authority to make traffic stops is taking pictures of you and sending the bad stuff to police for money. Doesn’t that sound like a conflict of interest?
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Since the article appears to be mostly a weird collection of badly referenced random cases, let me give you the primary source on the case in the headline:
https://www.tiktok.com/@kristakampz/video/7640403411845877012
Edit and also to save you having to go to tiktok, here’s a frame extracted from the video:
Note, this was in Alexandra Headland in Queensland in Australia. So no idea why the article cites Georgia law…
Also this is relevant: https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/safety/road-safety/mobile-phones
Illegal mobile phone use while driving includes:
- holding it in your hand
- resting on any part of your body (eg. your lap or shoulder)
If you hold your phone or have it on your body, you will be fined even if you’re not operating the phone, or it’s turned off.
So no idea why the article cites Georgia law…
Because there was another case in Georgia in December that they were citing as well. In fact they cite several cases in different parts of the country. The article is making a case for a supreme court challenge to these Constitution violating cameras and fines. The Australian cases just a viral opener for the topic.
Can’t be that viral if the tiktok is already two months old. I think they are just too bad at journalism to check their sources.
Does a phone in the pocket count as resting on any part of the body?
Why is it illegal to have a phone in your lap? That doesn’t make sense. That’s bizarre.
Edit:
Really? This is a hot take? WTF!
Why is it illegal to have a phone in your lap?
Likely to make the law in any way practical to enforce. Many people will use their phone in the car by keeping it between their legs like a middle schooler hiding their phone use from their teacher. They can read messages or watch videos while keeping it out of their hands, but it’s still just as distracting.
You could just ban looking at a phone in your lap while driving, but then you have the nightmare of proving that someone who glanced down was actually looking at their phone, rather than just randomly glancing down for some other innocent reason. And they would have to glance down at their phone at the exact moment a camera or police officer saw them.
Phone use is actually very hard to enforce because of the nature of its use. People using their phone while driving don’t tend to continuously look at the phone the whole time they drive - they would be completely incapable of driving if they did so. Instead, they use it intermittently, such as while stopped at a traffic light or while cruising down the highway. That use is still enough to degrade their driving performance to the level of a drunk driver, but it’s not continuous. To make enforcement practical, you need to write the law so that it doesn’t require a lucky coincidence to enforce.
For an older comparable example, consider open container laws. You might reasonably ask, “wait, as long as I’m not drinking from it, why can’t I have an open beer in the car? Maybe I just want to take my half-finished beer home from the bar and finish it at home!” And while that would be a perfectly innocuous reason to have an open container of alcohol in the car, it would also make drunk driving laws much more difficult to enforce. You could only ticket someone for drinking in the car if they happen to take a sip right when you’re watching. Instead of trying to outlaw the infrequent action, you instead outlaw the necessary but continuous action. It’s not practical to only ban drinking in vehicles. Instead you ban having an open container, as “possessing an open container” is something a drunk driver will be doing for a protracted period of time.
It’s not a perfect approach to writing laws; you do end up criminalizing some innocuous behavior. But trade offs have to be made. Yes, it’s unfortunate that open container laws also make it so you can’t bring your half-finished drink home from the bar. And yes, it’s unfortunate that banning cell phone use while driving also requires banning just having a phone in your lap.
But if you’ve ever worked in a classroom, you’ll know that this is the only way to actually ban cell phone use while driving. Teachers learn very quickly they can’t just ban students from using their phones, they have to completely ban them from having them out at all. Relying on lucky coincidences to enforce laws is not a practical solution.
Yes it does. Your phone is in your lap so you can look at it. Keep it away. I know everyone is addicted to them but just drive without looking st it.
I don’t own a car. I ride a bicycle and take Ubers and Lyfts for long distance travel, and smart phones are like the spice mélange to those drivers. They seem to need them to navigate the Universe. So this law just seems terribly ill-conceived. The lap is just an oddly specific place to focus on. So you can set them on the dashboard, center console, or anywhere else, but the lap is the danger zone?
My main phone is a dumb phone. I hate smart phones and only got one specifically for Ubder and Lyfts, so I’m not addicted. So I’m standing outside looking in and it’s a bizarre law. Sure, we don’t want people playing Angry Birds while driving, but I don’t think this is a well thought out solution that does anything at all except cause more chaos and suffering.
If you write enough laws in a manner that makes it easy to violate them accidentally, then anyone can be prosecuted at any time and civil liberties can be removed via technicalities.
Vague / broad laws that allow anyone to be arrested or fined for anything are a distinguishing feature of police states, and solid basis for blanket opposition-to or at least skepticism-of laws in general (e.g. “illegal strike” are we slaves?).
I’m not opposed to law itself; however, I struggle to respect laws from non-democratic governments. Unfortunately, that’s all governments right now. I’m not aware of any electoral democracy at any level of government. Electoral Democracy has four required mechanism: Ranked Voting, Lottery Option, Recall Mechanism, Randomized Districting. That’s what it takes to acquire consent of the governed. That’s what it takes for legitimacy. Most governments are electoral oligarchies that function like weak police states for the lower classes.
This is a tragedy, but we can start installing the mechanisms required for electoral democracy at a local level and in private organizations to slowly entrench democracy and establish norms / standards before we slide farther into the oligachic police state we’re currently facing.
If you slam on the brakes or maybe brake too sudden and it flies off and onto the floor, then it could potentially slide under a pedal (like the brakes), hindering its function.
Is it likely? Probably not, but it is a dangerous hazard waiting to happen.
I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the logic of this law and this was one of the things I considered they must be worried about. It’s not so much people using them, it’s just they don’t want them in the lap. Because Uber and Lyft drivers have to use them for work in the US. Here they have they often have a mount on the dash board to hold their phone and they’re constantly taking calls and checking maps.
As you say though it’s like a one in a million event freak accident if it flies off the lap and gets stuck under the pedal. It would be weird to pass a law for some off the wall scenario like that.
The only reason to have a phone in your lap while driving is if you intend to use said phone while driving.
Your phone fell off the dashboard phone stand, you caught it and set it in your lap.
Or you are currently using it and trying to be sneaky about it
That logic can be applied to anywhere in the car that the driver can reach. Is the Australian government suffering a collective stroke? Should we send help?
I honestly throw mine wherever without thinking about it. Def has been on lap or in crotch a few times.
A law that specified you were actively using the phone would be hard to enforce. Simmiliar to how it is usually illegal to have open alcohol within reach of the driver. The officer doesn’t have to actually see you drinking it.
How would it be hard to enforce? You can see it next their head.
Ever since video playback is possible. You no longer need to put your phone on your head to use it.
These are cargo cult laws. They don’t understand what the original laws were about. They just know “use phone in car bad” but they don’t know why. Used to you had to hold the phone to your head and block half of your vision.
“Take cops out of the equation for traffic enforcement.”
“NO, not like that!!!”
Correct… Not like that
“Law enforcement should be conducted specifically in the way that I imagine, not in the way that people vote for.”
- Someone speaking unironically, believe it or not.
ACAB. This isn’t the place to try to garner sympathy for your threats against society from the ruling class, traitor.
I’m just glad the Lemmy devs didn’t set a maximum block limit so I don’t have to pick and choose which bad-faith attackers like yourself I block.
Alternate viewpoint, it’s not about doing it a specific person’s “way” but more about not doing it the objectively stupid way.
One person’s opinion is another person’s “objectively stupid.”
I have yet to see a reasonable proposition on how to do traffic enforcement that seems to sit right with the vast majority of people.
My point in making the above joke(s) is that this is the alternative that many people cried out for. It feels like goal-post moving when every way to enforce the law is “but not this way, a different way.”
My guess at the common denominator that cannot possibly be objectively confirmed is that people simply don’t want to be met with consequences for breaking the law, and no matter how that’s done it will be rejected.
In other words, every way to enforce traffic has downsides - every single one. This is the one that does not involve cops. As you see, this is the downside. It’s laughably easy to “THIS IS BAD” at it while proposing no alternatives, and very amusing when an alternative (like this one) is eventually picked apart for being “objectively stupid” when its downsides inevitably crop up.
I dunno man you come off as pretty objectively stupid, but whatever
Nice cop-out!
If it makes you feel better I feel the same way about you, given you appear to be in love with ad hominem.
3/3 of your comments were intellectually lazy, 2/3 were ad hominem. Do you ever contribute anything meaningful or am I good to block you?
Edit:
Wait, why wait for your answer? Someone doing an ad hominem multiple times in a row is obviously not worth chatting with further. Seeya!
It wasn’t even in her hands or at the very least distracting her and they still send a ticket? Lmao
I misread this at first and thought her head was down looking at her phone and I was like, “yeah she deserves a ticket but that doesn’t make the surveillance state good” but you’re right: she wasn’t even looking at her phone! This is fucking dystopian
The moments I had my phone, face down and on my lap or between my legs, were the moments I had used it on traffic while at a stop light and had to go before I was done.
I see this as a valid charge.
The amount is a little bit extreme but still valid.
I would be mad af but couldnt argue against it.
Let’s be sure to name and shame, for anyone who missed it: Georgia and Florida.
Company is - you guessed it -
Flock.(Mention of Flock in the article has been removed with a correction.)Flock is shit, but apparently not the one who did this. Ig they could be lying?
Flock Safety reached out to us to clarify that our information was wrong. Flock cameras were not involved with the woman driving with her phone story. Alexandra Parade, where the incident took place, is a well traveled coastal highway with systems operated by state revenue programs. We have corrected that and removed any mention of Flock being involved with that story.
When I first heard of the amputee story (a bodycam video/audio of the initial encounter) it sounded to me like this was good old-fashioned police work, followed up with a typical harassment citation to send the citizen they didn’t like’s attitude to court if they wanted a chance to prove that they weren’t holding a phone in their amputated hand.
I think people are rightfully referring to mass surveillance system cameras as Flock cameras.
Even if the company folds, the cameras will still be operated. It doesnt matter what the brand is that makes em.
It matters people know what they are.
Queensland, Australia.
Two states?
Washington is mentioned, but not with enough context to determine that Washington uses the cameras.
Which is weird, and other comments mention the whole article may be AI slop, rehashed from somewhere else. :(
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That’s the law here. Phone has to be securely stowed. Driving with it on your lap gets you a distracted driving ticket. Even if you weren’t planning on looking at it. A sudden traffic move means its falling on the floor and driver is going to try to reach for it.
Yup. I’m not surprised at Americans being opposed to it, but here in Australia we have cameras that detect phone usage while driving. The fine itself is issued after a person verifies the photo. And I am fully supportive of it. Driving a motor vehicle is an insanely fucking dangerous task. If your full attention isn’t on it, you deserve to receive a fine. Keep the phone stowed securely in a holder, or away in your pocket.
The freedom of me to be able to make my trip on foot or bike—or even in my own car—without being killed by you far outweighs any idea of freedom you might have to be able to have your phone on your lap.
Australians and Canadians have some pretty bad entitlement when it comes to driving. But neither of us are anywhere near as entitled as Americans. Discussions like the one in this thread make that very clear. !fuckcars@lemmy.world
Americans don’t love freedom, they love being special. If we apply the law evenly, we can’t selectively apply it againsts Blacks, Minorities and Poors. The law is there to keep me comfortable and them in line. If we start applying the laws like I’m not special, it’ll just be anarchy.
Why do you think SovCit nonsense got so big there? Gotta be special, I learned the secret Naval codes that unlock free travel.
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Americans don’t love freedom, they love being special.
Yeah, we love our own freedom, not freedom for other people.
I am not a fan of the all-seeing panopticon, personally. That said, I personally feel much more entitled to good public transit and walkable neighborhoods than to a car.
I have heard bad things about how Flock works in particular with respect to tracking people, abuse of police powers, etc. But it was not involved in the event in this article, and it is not the only way of doing mobile phone detection.
My state uses a company called Acusensus, which only captures images for long enough to run the AI over them and then deletes all those without even being seen by a human if no offence is detected, among other privacy safeguards. The humans who do review the ones that AI detects as an offence don’t even get to see where or when the alleged offence took place.
I’m not surprised at Americans being opposed to it, but here in Australia we have cameras that detect phone usage while driving.
They’re also against all their movements being recorded, ID requirements for websites, etc. Crazy people, who would ever want to not be tracked every second of their waking lives?
Sure, and I’ll agree with them on those points.
But Americans tend to be the most likely to take things a step too far. Opposing speeding cameras, red light cameras, and phone use cameras is not the same as those things. These are all dangerous but normalised behaviours that should be cracked down on for genuine public safety.
I’m not American myself, but phone use cameras can’t work without being constantly on. Speeding cameras flash when speeding is detected, red light cameras too. Phone detection requires AI so it’s gonna be a constant video stream. Everyone’s going to be recorded 24/7 and it doesn’t matter if you’re driving, cycling or walking. Who says how long the data is being kept and where it’s going?
I tend to think that having speeding cameras in crucial spots is necessary (in some places they straight up exist to collect funds though) and a busy or dangerous intersection absolutely merits a red light camera… But I don’t want phone detection cameras purely because of how invasive it is.
Who says how long the data is being kept and where it’s going?
The government says. They’re the ones operating the cameras. Absolutely, they should not be used for any other purpose than their stated one. No video saved, only still frames kept long enough for the AI to make a determination, and kept longer if that determination is that there was a phone detected, so the photo can be used as evidence.
But in that situation, where the government is operating it in accordance with security and privacy best practice, the safety benefits far outweigh any theoretical downsides. This is not some theoretical. Over 1000 people die every year in Australia on our roads. Approximately 16% of serious car crashes are linked to mobile phone use.
We need to stop treating driving like a sacred right, and start treating it like what it is: an incredibly dangerous activity in need of heavy regulation.
Uh why do you think that the private companies running the service are just going to do what they’re told? For that matter, what makes you think the government itself wants a privacy-first solution? It’s better to keep data indefinitely in case you need it in the future.
The law. It’s a legal requirement. I don’t have an insane paranoia.
They alreayd have all that information, you’re just saying you want people to be able to drive while on the phone
“They already have all that information” should not be the same as “I’m OK with them constantly surveilling me”. That kind of thinking is exactly why they can continue to double down on all the crazy surveillance and privacy invasion. You’re normalizing not having any privacy.
No i dont have any privacy when driving on a public road, idk how else it could be. You want privacy then stay in your home.
If we have to have cameras on every corner for “public safety” we’ve gone wrong somewhere our set up of society. Do I think people should be on their phone while driving? No – I don’t even think people should be talking or listening to music while driving. The question is where do we draw the line? Do I get to decide where the line is drawn? Do you get to? Let’s not pretend things were decided democratically or for the public good when they obviously weren’t – because there are no democracies (yet) and cops wouldn’t need to lobby or propagandize so hard if it were actually for the public good. The world is setting up surveillance states and eventually those states will make laws that go too far. It’s a lot more sensible to leave people alone until they interfere with someone else.
Fees and surveillance like this isn’t even a preventative measure. If you actually want to prevent harm, use public information campaigns. Or decrease the need for cars in the first place with public transport…
Or decrease the need for cars in the first place with public transport
And road diets, and modal filters, and bike infrastructure that is wide, separated, given priority at intersections, and ubiquitous. All great ideas I fully support. But even given immense political will those will take decades to fully deliver.
Meanwhile in a country a 10th the population of America 100s of people die every year because of drivers on phones. For a measure to be effective as a preventative, people need to believe there’s a high chance they will actually get caught. That’s the most effective predictor. These should not be secretly installed, but accompanied with a public campaign making it clear that they are being installed and that being caught is very likely.
And people who are caught, more than just a fine, need to face a real chance of losing their licence. Not to be punitive, but because that is what they have demonstrated is necessary for genuine public safety because they are dangerous if they’re allowed to drive.
Well, I don’t think you have to threaten people to make them behave. I think most people are decent and responsible, and can be convinced if they understand the dangers. I’m not convinced threatening the ones who couldn’t be convinced will actually be helpful. I am fairly hostile to anyone threatening me even to agreeable ends. Regardless of whether I’m right about all that, it kinda misses the point: the means are unacceptable. These systems will creep and overstep while empowering stalkers and tyrants at multiple level of government. They will antagonize both people who’ve done nothing wrong and those who have but would prefer to quietly reform.
It doesn’t really matter how just your ends are when your means enable horrific outcomes.
I know of at least 1 study on human behaviour, where an image of an eye was added to a bathroom and increased the number of people who washed their hands after using the facilities, that suggests people do in fact need the “threat” of feeling they’re being watched to behave responsibly.
Ultimately, when you’re in control of something with the potential destructiveness of a car, you do need to be monitored for everyone’s safety. The only way to have a society without that level of monitoring is to have one without general access to cars.
here in Australia we have cameras that detect phone usage while driving. The fine itself is issued after a person verifies the photo.
The case in the headline was actually in Queensland, but gadgetreview.com seems to be a terrible site that doesn’t give a shit what it’s even reporting on.
Holy shit that’s bad. The headline actually made me suspect that, because that’s exactly the cost of the fine here in Qld and I knew it was at least very close. But I clicked the article and it seemed to say it was about somewhere in America. I actually read the article and came away less informed than I started.
Especially nowadays, there’s no reason to have your phone out. Bluetooth connection to infotainment system. Blue tooth add on to old soundsystem. Retro fit systems, or a single one touch ear bud etc.
Idk apparently we really the need the freedom to drive recklessly fuck this dogshit country lmao
I think this is common everywhere, but especially in the US there is the belief that there are “bad drivers” and “good. drivers” and so when speed cameras or anti-phone device catching someone that looks like them, it’s obvious “collateral damage”.
In my experience there are no good drivers, everyone gets distracted sometimes, and the myth of some uniquely “bad drivers” out there allows people to self justify their distracted driving because they aren’t one of the out-group.
Exactly, everyone tailgates everyone handles their turns like shit, everyone speeds. The only good drivers are the ones sticking to the speed limit in the right lane everyone else drives like they want to die in a fiery crash. Oh but everyone slows down to rubber neck someone on the shoulder.
My uncle once wrapped his car around a telephone pole because an orange fell off the seat and he was trying to pick it up.
I feel like there’s a clever fruit/apple/iphone joke in there somewhere but I can’t find it and I give up.
A coworker hit a parked car that way. Turning a RH corner he hooked his arm through the steering wheel to get to the passenger side, then popped up to see himself rear ending a car
Unconstitutional. Get that stupid ass shit dismissed in court.
Get it dismissed, and then sue the department that sent the fine.
Good luck with that.
Plenty of lawyers that work on contingencies if they think you have a worthy case.
Might have more luck suing the company running the camera software which flagged it.
Fuck it, sue them too.
YOU get a lawsuit! And YOU get a lawsuit!
EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THIS STUPIDITY GETS A LAWSUIT!!!
Too bad they’ll all be thrown out of court after the company pays off the judge…Ya know, it used to be when I’d say things like that, which I knew were always true, that people would say I’m crazy. That businesses can’t just BUY their way out of a lawsuit.
And now, the corruption is just out there. Everyone can see it now. Which kind of validates me, but also it means that things have gotten so much worse though out there. Now they feel no fear in basically telling the public “We run this shit, not you.”
Now for the next thing people will think I’m crazy for. Once they have it well established that they have bought and own the government, they’ll begin taking things away. I’m not talking about healthcare, or important things. That’s already started. They’re in the process right now of gutting programs like SNAP, and Medicaid. They began that about a year ago.
What I’m talking about is, right now you have no reason to believe that you can’t go down to your local ice cream parlor and get an ice cream cone. Nothing wrong with that. No reason to believe you’ll be denied. Give it time. There will come a day where you go to get ice cream, and they’ll tell you no. You’re not part of the in group. You’re not allowed to have ice cream.
And I’m not saying this about just ice cream. That’s just one example of something that is an affordable luxury, that has zero importance in life but it makes you feel good. It brings you joy.
Those are the types of things you’ll start being denied as they take more and more for themselves. They’ll want movie theaters to no longer allow the common man. They’ll want public pools closed, and renovated into private pools with private entry. They’ll want everything for them, and for you to beg to get common luxuries.
For them, it’s not about having vs not having. It’s about power. The ability to lick an ice cream cone, as they watch you go without, and laugh. They want the status of being able to tell you what to do. They want the world for themselves. That’s where this whole epstein’s island comes from. Some of them might actually be attracted to young kids, but really the thrill for them is to be able to take your sons and daughters dignity. They want what society says they can’t have, and is wrong for anyone to have. They want that. They want the taboo. They want the power to say they can have it anytime they want. Regardless of how wrong it is. To them it’s a show of power, and that’s all they’ve ever cared about.
Call me crazy, but in 20 years, when there’s an entire generation who’s never tasted ice cream in their lives, maybe you’ll remember this post. Probably not, but I will. Just like if I knew where my 1st grade teacher, Mrs Huey was, I’d go tell her the conversation we had 30+ years ago. The one in which she claimed that I’d grow up, and stop playing video games. I told her that on my death bed, I’d be playing video games no matter how old I got. I’m 42 now, and I’d ask her “At what point am I going to grow out of video games? When does the growing up happen? I’m older today, than you were the day you said that.” And she, in turn, I assume would tell me it’s not important, and that it was 30 years ago. Which is frustrating because 30 years ago she wouldn’t believe me, and now, she won’t care. Anything to avoid saying you were wrong I suppose. Which is weird to me. I have no issue when I’m wrong. Happens quite a bit. When I was 8, I thought I’d grow up to be one of the ninja turtles. Which, just conceptually makes no sense. The turtles became the turtles because they were already regular turtles, and then mutated when they got covered in toxic waste. If anything, I’d just be a really big mutated human. Think about it. The turtles were little regular pet store turtles. Maybe 7 inches tall if held upright. Then they get splashed with ooze, and they’re like 7 feet tall. So as a kid, I was probably 4 feet tall…so I’d be like 30 feet tall I guess? I mean, that would still be cool, but also, we’re ignoring the medical problems of being mutated. I’d probably get cancer again.
What was I talking about again?
I read this entire comment and I don’t regret it.
I have no idea, but username checks out
Yes, but the process is also a punishment.
What’s unconstitutional about it? Genuinely asking.
The Constitution guarantees the right to confront your accuser in court, which you can’t do with an automated camera. It used to be a guaranteed win if you showed up at all because the camera itself couldn’t hire a lawyer and present an argument.
It doesn’t have to. They send a representative from the camera company whose job it is to show up in court and rationalize their bullshit at the judge. I know this because I actually had to go through this process once, many years ago, to fight a clearly fraudulent ticket from one of these damn fool things in our local downtown.
Do you happen to live in the area the company is headquartered? Because I can’t imagine them flying a representative out for every ticket being contested.
These guys know how it works. They don’t “fly” anyone anywhere. They have low paid lackeys available in any and all of the areas they operate whose job it is specifically to hang around in courthouses and defend their tickets. It’s not like they drop everything and bundle an executive on a plane to go to Podunk, Missouri or whatever to argue about a one-off ticket.
In my case this outfit only operates in our state, to my knowledge. They wouldn’t have to go far.
That’s an insane interpretation of the law. I don’t know or even care what prior jurisprudence says on the matter, it’s fucking dumb if it’s been interpreted that way.
If the camera took the photo and automatically issued the fine, then sure, I agree. But the camera should be taking the photo and passing it to a human to decide if a fine is warranted or not. And in that case, the human (or more to the point, the organisation the human works for) is the accuser. And the fine should stand, unless a defence explaining how the photo misrepresented the situation can be successfully mounted (similar to how a defence could be mounted explaining that the speed camera was incorrectly calibrated).
This seems trivially defeatable by having an officer use the camera footage as evidence when they issue a fine. Then there’s an accuser to be confronted in court - the officer
Not sure why you’re being downvoted.
It’s the sixth amendent.
For of such a short document it is ridiculous for any American not to know their rights. Unfortunately the internet has been taken over by the ignorant.
I mean, we should certainly take the time to learn our rights, but I wouldn’t say that it’s ridiculous to not remember everything contained in 40+ pages.
When traffic cameras are found to be unconstitutional it’s generally under the fourth amendment (unreasonable searches and seizures, requires probable cause for a search warrant). I don’t know if that’s how this case would shake out, but a ticket issued by a robot for having a phone in your lap face down is dumb as hell even if it’s not unconstitutional.
4th Amendment violation
That surely fails the Katz test
Article:
Georgia law (OCGA 17-4-23) generally requires a traffic offense occur in the presence of an officer for a citation to be valid — raising direct legal questions about mail-in AI camera tickets.
Washington State caps automated camera fines at $145 under RCW 46.63.220 — far below what you might be paying too much when the viral ticket hits $1,251.
Five Albany, Georgia officers were criminally charged for misusing Flock plate-reader data for personal reasons, according to USA Today.
This was in Australia though
Find a flock employee and place its favorite pet around its house.
This has nothing to do with Flock, these cameras catch people who are breaking a law and don’t store/index footage otherwise, Flock is purely survailance tech, even if you do nothing wrong the point of flock is to survail.
and don’t store/index footage otherwise
How do they manage that, with the current surveillance regime? Is all the image processing on device? What’s it sampling against? How does it send the tickets? One-way infrared flashes?
I could be wrong but pre-Flock and letting the tech-Bros actually build a survailance state, most traffic cameras were designed to only flash when they caught someone breaking the law and so only send data off the device when needed.
How do they manage that
For speed/red light cameras it’s trivial, for something like this it’s pretty easy to process on device to detect a phone in your hand/lap, but probably does need someone to check for false positives.
Is all the image processing on device?
It should be, this is simple to do on device (unless it’s outsourced to Palantir & frens)
How does it send the tickets
Obviously when it triggers it uploads data.
it uploads data
… So. To the internet?
simple to do on device
Image recognition is not computationally cheap. There are more and less expensive ways to do it, but the absolute floor of it turns your phone into a hot plate. So whatever’s in there would need to be at least a phone chip.
someone needs to check
So it is kept and stored.
pre all-this-shit
Red light/speed cams, triggered on motion sensor boolean when light red or radar speed reading>x.
You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, which is fine, but why are you speaking confidently and assuming such good will about proven constant brazen liars saying they’re not doing the shit they literally always do?
You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about
Lmao.
You can literally detect phones with a raspberryPi the idea that you need to upload it to a server is ridiculous.
You can ‘detect phones’ via anything with WiFi. Are you trolling? Do you not understand the difference between image processing and simpler more computer readable signals?
You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. How are so many people so rabidly and confidently ignorant?
One I got a $125 ticket for driving 27 near a school on a Saturday in Washington, so no system is perfect…
I remember the NSA massive surveillance machine during the George W. Bush administration and Obama administration that tracked phone metadata and internet traffic that left or entered the US (which was used to justify a lot of surveillance of US citizens). Even after the Snowden disclosures of 2013 we were promised that the system was only meant to track foreign terrorists.
Then we learned that DEA had full access to it, and that NSA was sending hints to law enforcement about large amounts of cash in transit so it could be intercepted for purposes of asset forfeiture, what is nothing short of robbery of civilians by law enforcement officers.
This is an example of mission creep, in this case how it affects the surveillance state. Once we allow a method or technology to be used for major crime (like terrorism), it will eventually be used even for minor crime (like drug possession or distracted driving).
It’s very common for courts to forgive a violation of fourth amendment protections against unreasonable search when the violation presents evidence for a major crime, but then that case will be used as precedent when the same violation occurs and discovers a minor infraction.
This is how, during the aughts and 2010s, the Fourth Amendment was gutted by a long run of carve-outs. Now, a police officer or state agent can violate your privacy without a warrant via a whole range of exceptions:
~ If the crime they discover is significant (SCOTUS suggested controlled substance possession as an example)
~ Using specialized technology, say long-range multi-spectrum cameras, or using a drone.
~ If probable cause can be established. A favorite is a detection dog that signals on anything and has a 90%+ false positive rate.¹ (This is a particular beef of mine, since fake detection dogs are now more common than actual detection dogs, and dogs are losing their presumption of regularity as a result.)
~ If the police officer was acting in good faith, which is obtusely defined and is very hard to disprove.
~ If the suspect is non-white or otherwise suspicious due prejudice. Really, in a lot of counties, law enforcement are allowed to operate on hunches, or have a suspicious activity parameter list that is so encompassing (and often contradictory) that it’s impossible to not be suspicious.If you want to know how we got here these were already problems during the Obama administration when we had allegedly reasonable people in elected offices. And while they discussed the risk of too much power falling into the wrong hands, they felt compelled to keep it.
Whether the One Ring, or the Ring of Gyges, power without consequence is too seductive.
¹ A similar issue is the $2 roadside drug test which reacts to a lot of substances that aren’t controlled, such as glazed sugar off a donut. These were originally supposed to be then verified later in a lab, but instead were used to establish probable cause, and eventually were used as evidence in court.
This is wildly whack:
https://www.propublica.org/article/common-roadside-drug-test-routinely-produces-false-positives
The system must do everything in its power to drive false convictions down to absolute zero.
Blackstone would agree with you.
Many, many people, in law enforcement and the judiciary would disagree…
…especially when it comes to minorities.
