Not OP and can't speak to constitutionality, but red light cameras drive some perverse incentives. There have been a number of verified reports[0] that cities with red light cameras shorten the length of the yellow light in order to get more tickets, and therefore revenue.
To be clear, their constitutionality status is a matter of opinion.
In my opinion, they should be deemed unconstitutional via a violation of rights against search and seizure, and rights for a proper trial. It's impossible to face your accuser in court, it's impossible to actually check the software used to identify whether you were speeding, and asymmetrically automating enforcement of something where it's in the enforcer's interest to find violations is a perverse incentive we should not allow in our legal system.
Take two pictures then maybe, one from the front, one from the back.
But also, unless the vehicle was stolen, why not put the burden of proof on the owner. Don't people know who they're giving their car to? I think that's how it works in many European countries. If the car is stolen, just file a report.
In the U. S., I'm innocent until proven guilty: prove it was me. No, I'm not telling you who was driving, because my lawyer said something something 5th amendment. But that's the theory, as this not-a-lawyer understands it. In practice, you'll just pay the ticket because the future of civil rights law does not rest on determining who was driving the car that day, and you know it was you anyway.
The argument is not that a photo-enforcement mechanism couldn't be structured to abide by US law. The issue is that, thus far, the only attempts have run afoul of foundational elements of our legal structure because the towns/counties who have tried have tied the photo-enforcement tickets to the existing criminal statutes about driving.
If it were a civil infraction, with no license points, they'd have a better standing, but nobody has bothered to take that path.
Right to trial, I could see the issue there. Right to inspect the evidence used against you, sure.
But where on earth do you get an expectation of privacy in deafening sounds you blast in public, which people can't ignore even if they want to? And audible inside others' private areas?
> But where on earth do you get an expectation of privacy in deafening sounds you blast in public, which people can't ignore even if they want to? And audible inside others' private areas?
Nowhere, because I never said anything about that.
>>In my opinion, they should be deemed unconstitutional via a violation of rights against search and seizure
The only things searched are that very same deafening noises that everyone has to hear without any effort on their part. If you're saying that's a violation of search and seizure, you're saying there's some expectation of privacy around the violation being prosecuted.
If not, what are you saying was being searched/seized that violated privacy?
You could have said so the first time you posted, or in your last reply, but elected instead to have plausible deniability of any specific argument.
I feel like you're trying to force a very specific wording, "expectation of privacy", that doesn't fit very well with what I'm trying to describe, because in different contexts there can be different definitions/interpretations/kinds of "privacy".
For example, if one is driving down a public street, obviously one does not have an expectation of "privacy" in the traditional sense.
If everyone driving down a public street is checked, without probable cause, to make sure they aren't violating any laws, I think that should be an unconstitutional search.
Obviously that isn't an unconstitutional search under current interpretations of laws, but I think it ought to be.
>I feel like you're trying to force a very specific wording, "expectation of privacy", that doesn't fit very well with what I'm trying to describe
You referred to constitutional search and seizure, referencing the 4th amendment. The things protected by the 4th amendment are generally referred to as the things you have an "expectation of privacy" in; I was just using the relevant jargon for the situation.
>Obviously that isn't an unconstitutional search under current interpretations of laws, but I think it ought to be.
Yeah, I got where you're coming from. It's just ... very dubious, for exactly the reason I gave, and which you had a chance to reply to, but elected to nitpick my (appropriate) jargon instead.
Yes, privacy is a thing that should be respected. But in no reasonable interpretation does privacy apply to something that you force a large number of indiscriminate, unconsenting people to observe, through no effort of their own. Whatever privacy applies to -- and there's plenty of room for disagreement otherwise -- it can't reasonably apply to that.
The "search" in question happened by passively observing the very same thing that the huge number of indiscriminate people were forced to observe anyway, only with quantifiable numbers for consistency. That can't have an expectation or pr-- er, can't count as an unreasonable search. They did not touch the vehicle. They did not look inside it. They simply received the very conspicuous observables that it threw off into its environs, for the purpose of enforcing the law against throwing that specific observable, that time.
There are many issues you can come up related to prosecuting that. "But you searched my private space" is not one of them.
It's easy to use a camera as evidence in, say, a robbery. The camera will show you actually committing the crime.
If you're speeding, something's measuring your speed based on camera images. The method used to determine speed is not described in detail, just "trust us, they were going the speed we say". It's not generally the city who is doing this, but a third-party private company which sometimes is paid per ticket issued.
You can face the city in court, and the city will just say "Our contractor says you did this." The contractor will say "we totally think you did this. No, we will not show you our proprietary software that says you did it." In my opinion, that last statement violates the rights of the accused.
There have been numerous cases in the last decade of red light and speed camera companies issuing hundreds of illegitimate tickets. The system is ripe for abuse, and gets abused all the times. Happy to pull up some examples of this if you're curious.
I can definitely see these systems being used illegitimately, but this has nothing to do with whether you can face your accuser. A software company telling you that you cannot validate the methodology of their measurement instrument is definitely troubling, but it is not fundamentally dissimilar to the police using speed guns whose internals you cannot inspect to convict you of speeding. Even more problematic than either of these technologies is the fact that the cops jail motorists for DUI on the basis of their own subjective interpretation of those motorists' performances on sobriety field tests.
The use of opaque technology by law enforcement raises significant issues in a free society. But so does the use of opaque non-technological judgement by police officers. Since there are significant benefits to automated enforcement, we should be pushing to improve transparency, rather than pursuing a chimera where we can only be prosecuted on the basis of transparent and reproduceable forensic analysis.
> there are significant benefits to automated enforcement
Could you elaborate on what you think the benefits are?
I'm of the opinion that systems that indiscriminately check whether all people nearby are currently committing a crime should not be things we should be building in our society. I would prefer there be a reason to suspect a person of a crime, and pursue on a targeted basis, rather than simply have panopticons charging people with crimes.
For example- with the system in this article, I would prefer if a person were required to call in and complain "there was a too-noisy car at this location at this time", and then a person reviewed footage from that location at that time and determined whether to send a ticket out or not.
Regarding your points about transparency, I completely agree with you.
> Could you elaborate on what you think the benefits are?
Very simply, I don't want people driving around New York with blown-out mufflers. I have to deal with these people all the time. They are a constant, low-level annoyance that lowers quality of life for everyone in the city. Presently, there are presently no consequences for this sort of selfish behavior, and I'd like that to change by ticketing the perpetrators.
I don't understand what the added value is in making ordinary New Yorkers call the police with a time and cross-street as a precondition for a summons. What are we gaining here? Are we trying to validate the existence of a victim? Of course there is a victim -- there is hardly a block of the city where a loud motorist will not be negatively impacting a resident's life. This place is incredibly crowded. People live almost everywhere. Are we assuming that a manual reviewer is going to be more effective than an automated system? How? At the end of the day, they're going to have to base their judgment on a decibel reading anyways.
You have no ability to question your accuser, because your accuser is a machine. The source code is proprietary. The data chain is secret. You have no ability to meaningfully audit it to see if it actually works or is making a lot of false positives.
What shitty red light cameras are these where the data is all secret? In my city, tickets from red light cameras include a video of the incident, which clearly shows the car and traffic light.
Is that really how it works elsewhere, they just send you a ticket saying "we caught you running a red light, please pay fine"? What happens if you show up to court to contest, can't you just point out they have literally no evidence?
I'm not aware of governments just asking one to pay a fine. The thing that really bothers me is that it allows the state to perform legal action at scale. If a city, let's say Chicago, just started sending people ticket how many would just pay it? From what I've seen [0], my guess would be a lot.
I agree red light cameras are problematic for other reasons, but parent's claim specifically was that they were unconstitutional because the evidence can't be inspected.
If they actually did it at scale they would run into conflicting dashcam footage very quickly, and the whole conspiracy would go belly up before bearing any fruit.
If you think data is meaningless we should also remove police cruisers' dashcams and stop the rollout of body cams, I guess? Those aren't conspiracy-proof either.
You can face your accuser (the traffic cop) and you can challenge the calibration/accuracy of their radar/lidar gun.
If you challenge the accuracy they have to prove it was tuned recently (usually 6 months~) prior to issuing the ticket and tested the day of (usually).
There IS an audit trail for of certificates and logs of tuning for radar guns so they can prove it in court if challenged.
There is NOT an audit trail for traffic cams because the companies don't expose enough information to audit.
If you challenge a traffic ticket from a red light camera, you will usually win because they can't prove you guilty.
The legality of them is largely in the implementation. For example, many red-light/speeding cameras don't prove who was driving the vehicle. There have also been issues with shady companies operating them and cities deliberately timing lights to increase ticket revenue.
They arguably violate the right to confront one's accuser in court. Not sure if I buy that argument personally, since there's probably a technician who operates the camera system who could show up to court.
