this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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Fuck your spy cameras. If speeding was really an issue they have the technology to prevent it. Every day I hear dumber and dumber ideas and thoughts and I just want to move out of this country.
There are obviously alternatives, I don't deny that. But as good as infrastructure and cultural improvements can be, it doesn't change the fact that speeding cameras have proven themselves to be immensely effective, and don't require massive infrastructure projects, much more costly spending, and long-time cultural shifts. That's just the unfortunate reality of the situation.
I'm a big digital rights and privacy advocate, and I don't advocate for "spy cameras." I advocate for privacy-preserving systems that improve society when they can exist in such a way.
A camera that only sends your plate to a police system when you speed, and automatically sends you a ticket for endangering other people is not a surveillance system. It's a public safety measure, with justifiable, minimum data transmission requirements to operate effectively. A system that tracks every location your plate was seen is a surveillance system. That is not what non-"smart" traffic cameras are.
Speeding cameras are the first system, unless integrated with an ALPR system, in which case they become a surveillance system. I am advocating for the former, not the latter.
Or, why not just build roads that inhibit speeding? It's safer, or doesn't allow anyone to track people, and you're not advocating for a surveillance state.
Whether you like it or not, the second that "Speeding Camera" goes online, it becomes a surveillance device. The only thing stopping bad actors are laws which like speeding, are constantly broken. You're fucked if your government is the bad actor.
Advocate for designing streets that reduce speed, not adding surveillance cameras and pretending that the safety reduction is worth the invasion of your privacy.
Anybody can hack a camera, no one can hack an already built road. You're pretending like these cameras aren't easy as fuck to access.
You can build infrastructure that encourages reasonable people to drive slower (an example I'm thinking of - you can remove priority rules at a junction and force drivers to negotiate it on a more ad hoc basis, which requires a lower speed to see what everyone is doing). You can't build infrastructure which does this for everyone. Joe Twatface will just speed through that junction and let everyone else slam their brakes on.
A lot of features that discourage dangerous driving also prevent emergency vehicles from going at high speed.
On faster roads, these traffic-calming measures are generally undesirable also.
So: the methods are limited and have disadvantages. Traffic cameras can fill in the gaps.
If your traffic cameras are accessible to private companies who can misuse that data, that's a problem that needs to be addressed in legislation. If your traffic cameras are accessible to police who are fundamentally compromised as part of a proto-fascist state apparatus, it'd be good to link your protests against cameras (which exist all around the world) to their use by proto-fascists (which haven't co-opted the government all around the world, yet). And there are probably more effective ways of disrupting them.