Billy Brown wrote:
>
> Ross A. Finlayson wrote:
> > One problem here is that it is hard to determine who to target as
> perpetrator of
> > these kinds of erosions of freedom.
> >
> > For example, in this red-light camera situation, it is obvious that
> Lockheed
> > Martin, privately making money off some kind of law enforcement, is
> somewhat to
> > blame for advancing this violation not only of privacy but of the
> Consitution
> > which states quite bluntly that citizens are innocent by default.
>
> How, exactly, is putting up a camera at an intersection a violation of
> Constitutional rights? The presumption of innocence does not imply that the
> State can't watch you to see if you do something illegal - if it did, police
> would not be able to patrol the streets giving out traffic tickets. So long
> as the normal standards of evidence are observed in court (i.e. they have to
> show that it was you, not just someone with your license plate number), no
> rights have been violated.
Yet how many people are willing to go through the trouble of making the
argument in court, insisting on a trial, etc.? The financial burden put
on the accused in lost work time (you have to be at court in the
morning, and they take hourse or all day to hear your case) is a heavy
incentive to just pay the fine. This is not justice, its extortion.
>
> Likewise, there is no general right to privacy in public places. In practice
> such a 'right' would be both nonsensical and coercive, since it would amount
> to a demand that no one be able to look at you when you walk down the
> street.
Observation in person is one thing, automated pattern recognition by a
computer and issuance of tickets by computer is another ball of wax
entirely. Unless they man every camera with a human being, this is in
fact unconstitutional, because it violates your right to confront your
accuser. You can't confront a computer, it is not a person.
> > Anyways, I say this before, it seems quite obvious, any automated
> > law-enforcement like a red-light runner camera is a violation of every
> citizen
> > who passes through that intersection's right to presupposed innocence
> under the
> > Constitution.
>
> In theory there is no legal difference between automated and non-automated
> law enforcement. If a cop can sit at an intersection and watch for traffic
> violations (a perfectly reasonable activity), he can put up a camera to do
> it for him. In practice the automated systems are actually held to a higher
> standard than human police - if a traffic cop says he saw you break the law
> the courts will usually take his word for it, but an automated system has to
> collect enough evidence to convince the court that there is no reasonable
> possibility of error (usually your picture, a picture of your license plate,
> and an instrument reading showing your violation, all time stamped and
> recorded by a tamper-resistant system).
Any means of gathering evidence not under immediate human supervision
and control is mere hearsay evidence, no matter how accurate or well
time stamped it is.
Mike Lorrey
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:10:29 MDT