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A woman drives with both hands on the wheel. Her phone sits face-down on her lap. No officer pulls her over. No lights flash. Weeks later, a $1,251 ticket arrives in the mail. The evidence: a single frame from a Camera surveillance app. The charge: phone use while driving.

Automated camera companies market their devices as automated license plate readers — tools for catching stolen cars, flagging warrants, and aiding serious investigations.

Sold as a Crime Tool. Used as a Fine Machine.

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[-] Sunflier@lemmy.world 18 points 19 hours ago

Article:

Georgia law (OCGA 17-4-23) generally requires a traffic offense occur in the presence of an officer for a citation to be valid — raising direct legal questions about mail-in AI camera tickets.

Washington State caps automated camera fines at $145 under RCW 46.63.220 — far below what you might be paying too much when the viral ticket hits $1,251.

Five Albany, Georgia officers were criminally charged for misusing Flock plate-reader data for personal reasons, according to USA Today.

[-] Evotech@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

This was in Australia though

Find a flock employee and place its favorite pet around its house.

[-] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 5 points 15 hours ago

This has nothing to do with Flock, these cameras catch people who are breaking a law and don't store/index footage otherwise, Flock is purely survailance tech, even if you do nothing wrong the point of flock is to survail.

[-] cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

and don't store/index footage otherwise

How do they manage that, with the current surveillance regime? Is all the image processing on device? What's it sampling against? How does it send the tickets? One-way infrared flashes?

[-] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I could be wrong but pre-Flock and letting the tech-Bros actually build a survailance state, most traffic cameras were designed to only flash when they caught someone breaking the law and so only send data off the device when needed.

How do they manage that

For speed/red light cameras it's trivial, for something like this it's pretty easy to process on device to detect a phone in your hand/lap, but probably does need someone to check for false positives.

Is all the image processing on device?

It should be, this is simple to do on device (unless it's outsourced to Palantir & frens)

How does it send the tickets

Obviously when it triggers it uploads data.

it uploads data

... So. To the internet?

simple to do on device

Image recognition is not computationally cheap. There are more and less expensive ways to do it, but the absolute floor of it turns your phone into a hot plate. So whatever's in there would need to be at least a phone chip.

someone needs to check

So it is kept and stored.

pre all-this-shit

Red light/speed cams, triggered on motion sensor boolean when light red or radar speed reading>x.

You don't know what the hell you're talking about, which is fine, but why are you speaking confidently and assuming such good will about proven constant brazen liars saying they're not doing the shit they literally always do?

[-] CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

One I got a $125 ticket for driving 27 near a school on a Saturday in Washington, so no system is perfect…

this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2026
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