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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
I think this is fair. It’s reasonable to require a stowed phone, and we don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy while driving our cars. No essential liberty is being violated.
Spoken like a true fascist. Government mass surveillance and AI consolidation is tyranny.
Harsh
You don’t think an anarchist society would have any mechanism to stop people from driving dangerously?
Traffic cams violate our constitutional right to face our accuser in court.
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
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?
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.
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
One I got a $125 ticket for driving 27 near a school on a Saturday in Washington, so no system is perfect…
Hey, they could connect the car ‘driver attention camera’ thing, the OBD car speed stuff, and the in-car GPS to the municipality, the insurance company, and your credit card or bank account.
That way, the minute you look away, go a little over the speed limit, or check your phone message, they just gouge some cash out of your bank account. After three of these, your insurance rate goes up. After the tenth time, your health insurance and employer will be notified.
Fun times! 🎉
Edit: every damn step of this is now available via APIs or Agentic MCPs. There is zero technical barrier for this happening. Sleep tight y’all.
So glad that I choose to drive, I love having a depreciating asset that costs 25% of my income when it’s running properly to drive nearly an hour to work every day (and almost get murdered several times).
There is zero technical barrier for this happening.
I guess we’ll have to make a disincentivization barrier instead.
I don’t know what town it is exactly (Kirkland or Kenmore, WA), and they had a speed limit posted as 30mph., but gave my friend a ticket for going over 28 in a 25 zone. They grayed out the speed limit in the photo they sent that was approved by a cop. My friend would’ve had to go and get a picture of the sign to prove what assholes they were. I remember the sign and know for a fact that it said 30. Not enough to fight it, but enough to stay the fuck away from that town.
Some towns literally just exist to extract money from nonlocals who don’t know to not go through there. There’s one near where I grew up that transitions from a 60 mph to a 30 mph zone at the bottom of a hill, so if you aren’t riding your brakes the whole way down you’re speeding. And of course the cops love to sit there and pop people with tickets for it.
Emporia, Virginia is another notorious one, right on heavily traveled I-95 as well as US-58. Virginia has front license plates, so the cars that don’t have front plates definitely aren’t from Virginia and if there’s a group of cars all going the same speed it’s the easy way to pick out the non-local. Saw it happen when I was a passenger.
Same sort of speed traps used to be along the only route to a casino I went to a few times. My first time driving to the casino, they were laying in wait. I got caught on the way back.
Pigs sure do love to jam people up. Bonus points if they ruin the life of a minority! There certainly are no such thing as quotas, right?
That happened to my dad too, he was going “one over the limit.” It’s infuriating because it’s fraud and stealing.
Wouldn’t they have to prove it was a phone and not some black address book or something
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.
Like I said on a similar thread - we already lost our feedom. They’re just installing the shackles now.
Per the article this was not a Flock cam. FYI.
Not allowed to keep her phone on her lap when driving. Let’s be honest, she used it, and put it down quickly
Here in Australia a cop busted me using my phone once (not defendable, but I was at a red light).
I have no problem with that. I also have no problem with mobile phone detection either still despite getting pulled over
If you don’t want to follow the traffic laws don’t drive or change country (but don’t complain if you get hit by a oncoming car)
The only problem I have is with the camera doing the police work. Like getting a speeding ticket for 26 in a 25 from a speed trap camera – a cop may or may not pull you over in that instance, because a cop can look at the whole scenario/variables and decide if that extra one mile really was a danger to others.
Yeah, this moron was probably using the phone. And every asshole using their phone at a red light means fewer cars get through that red light because they’re too busy looking at their phone to notice that the light has changed or the car in front of them has moved. But let’s have a person making this decision to issue a ticket – a phone at a red light at 3am is much different than a phone at a red light at 515pm.
Police have better shit to do than mobile phone enforcement
And, in what circumstance should they be speeding? That makes no sense. If there was a valid reason, you can contest the ticket anyway
There sure as fuck is no valid reason for them whatsoever to have their mobile on their lap
Fuck that everyine should instantly have a ticket assesed for going one mph over the speed limit but we’re all a bunch of fucking savages who like having vehicular homicide legalized
