April 20, 2005

More on Traffic Cameras

Jakester sent along a link to a story on the use of traffic cameras:

Even with their impact on safety still up for debate, the ticketing shutterbugs can be attractive "revenue generators" for local governments and the private companies that make, sell, and maintain them. And though constitutionally sound, the cameras raise privacy concerns among Americans who are already wary of the government riding shotgun.

"The opposition to red-light cameras isn't that they're not useful, but the problem is they're too useful," says Neil Richards, a constitutional law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. "This is part of a trend where [lawmakers] are seeing there's a political advantage to not living in a police state."

When a bill came up before the New Hampshire legislature to allow traffic cameras, they laughed at the notion of the government photographing its citizens. Why can't more state legislatures be like New Hampshire?

Read the entire article...lots of good stuff there.

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