New speed cameras trap motorists from space (telegraph.co.uk)

Man, I can't believe you beat me to the punch! I just read this story and headed over here to post it. Scary use of surveillance technology, isn't it?

There is a reason to fear Big Brother. He's alive & doing well, apparently.

Fred

How many tickets will they have to write to pay for the cost of a satellite???

That must be a damn good system to cut through heavy cloud, and fog, never mind sheet rain.

If they CAN do this, it's scary indeed.

I think aircraft and helicopters will be more useful for quite some time into the future.

That's the wrong attitude. In the U.S. we should insist that legal safeguards be enacted along with the introdution of any technology that has the potential to diminish privacy and/or the expectation of privacy.

It wasn't long ago that warrantless eavesdropping of emails and VOIP communications was occurring domestically. The lawyers argued that the 4th Amendment didn't apply nor did wiretapping laws need be observed. This was partially due to the nature of the technology used in communications.

They just can't help themselves....

A few hundred million probably... this is absurd. We don't have better use for the technology??

Heck, all they're doing is reading license plates when you pass a camera at one point and then, when you pass another camera later, knowing how many miles of road there is and what the limits are they can pretty much determine whether you were speeding or not. Since no one can maintain the maximum speed over the distance, should your time between the points be less than some percentage of the minimum legal time one could take to get between the points you are presumed (and that is the key) to have been speeding.

The plate and location information is sent to a central database that then determines if you passed by another camera at a time that made it reasonable to assume you were speeding between the ones in question; They simply need to maintain a table of minimum times for travel between any two cameras in the network for this to work.

Once your plate has been read, they can expire the reading once enough time has elapsed that there was no chance you were exceeding the limit. This is a very simple application, once you have the plate captured.

More insidious is that they will have a record of where you car was and when it was there . . . . I see the potential for some serious civil liberty/big brother issues.

Now, the satellite element is quite simple; They use a GPS receiver to synchronise the clocks at the camera points.

The article is a typical case of an ignorant reporter sensationalising some very pedestrian technology.

However it isn't going to stop the determined speeders from breaking the law - and if you know where the cameras are it isn't going to be hard to simply go around them if you think you might have been speeding.

Another cash grab . . . . ho hum.

Will it fly (so to speak)? I don't know. Maybe not on this side of the pond. And I'm certain that they'll start burning even more of the stupid cameras in the UK if this takes root there.

I'm not sure just how 'legal' it is to send a ticket for a presumed offense.

It'll make it tough to keep up on the Red Light Camera POI file won't it?

I think sadly, if we knew what could be done, it would be very scary indeed...

When I read stories like this, I have to wonder how the people in Great Britain put up with these cameras? They need to be banned.

I heard of speeding tickets being issued on some USA toll roads, where the elapse time between check booths showed the person was speeding. Just about the same Big Bro. Anyone confirm this?