![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
happy constitution day!
Sep. 17th, 2012 10:27 pmthe constitution is 225 years old today! in celebration, we should join the nice people of prince george's county, maryland in their unique form of remembering the the 4th amendment: shooting up government cameras in public places frequently enough that the silly PG county government has provided them with more target practice.
i actually like red-light cameras, since it's not hard to rig them to catch only the guilty, and running red lights is, IMHO, a significant threat to life and limb. speed cameras, as can be inferred from the arguments made in US v. Jones, essentially provide the police with probable cause to stop and search all but the slowest and most consistent drivers at any time¹. this strikes me as defeating the unreasonable search and seizure clause, and thus bad.
1: the example in Jones concerned GPS tracking gear placed on a vehicle without warrant, but the fundamental point remains: a technology which permits the police to constantly monitor vehicles' speeds gives them to power to stop and search them pretty much at their leisure.
i actually like red-light cameras, since it's not hard to rig them to catch only the guilty, and running red lights is, IMHO, a significant threat to life and limb. speed cameras, as can be inferred from the arguments made in US v. Jones, essentially provide the police with probable cause to stop and search all but the slowest and most consistent drivers at any time¹. this strikes me as defeating the unreasonable search and seizure clause, and thus bad.
1: the example in Jones concerned GPS tracking gear placed on a vehicle without warrant, but the fundamental point remains: a technology which permits the police to constantly monitor vehicles' speeds gives them to power to stop and search them pretty much at their leisure.