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Comment by showerst | Hacker News Reader

I hope this tech catches on, we have a ton people who like to tear around my neighborhood at 4AM in cars with exhaust mods.

A few times it’s been loud enough to wake up my infant, at which point I’d probably vote to upgrade it a capital crime…

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A police or bylaw officer could also do their job and enforce the rules. It doesn't need some kind of automated enforcement to solve it, and doesn't come with the same dystopian automated surveillance and ticketing.

The automated solution is objective (versus the well known subjective application of law enforcement) and efficient (no breaks, no sleep, no pensions). No law breaking, no ticket.

Our law enforcement system was not designed to be automated. It works (because of how it has evolved, not by explicit design) on the threat of enforcement. So people "breaking the law" - and I'm thinking here of traffic laws and other minor offenses - are basically free to weigh their own risk tolerance for the penalty against the chances of being caught. This has flaws, but it preserves some notion of freedom while generally pushing people in the "right" direction to control behaviors society doesn't want. Laws and penalties are commensurate with that, ie there are countless traffic laws all drivers break every day, because they are there to guide and penalties are rare.

That is much different than mandatory automated enforcement that would or could penalize everyone every time they broke a law. If we went there, all laws would have to be revisited to understand what is an appropriate threshold and penalty so that we could preserve some kind of personal autonomy. But what would happen in practice is that everyone would get the fines.

Then there is the whole question of discretion and personalization.

For most people here, I'm sure this falls on deaf ears, but I hope you see my point. I don't believe in technocracy and a world where our behavior is enforced that way is horrifying. Anyone who likes that idea could move to China or Singapore to try it out

I agree with your point in general it would be borderline tyrannical to track and punish every harmless violation of traffic laws, but in the case of vehicle modifications its not a momentary behavior, its a choice to permanently install something. I love motorsports and high power bikes and cars but would love to see these annoying loud exhausts off the public streets.

Automated solutions are only objective on the surface. There are often baked-in-biases born from ignorance, privilege, or history. The classic recent example is facial recognition that functions poorly with people of color.

Somewhere in the nuance of programming this system will be the (known or unknown) subjective values of the programmer or those that are directing them.

Noise is quite objective. And these systems don’t just instantly hand out a fine. They usually mean you have to bring your vehicle in for inspection. If hoons have to constantly swap out the exhaust on their vehicles it would likely be enough to get the to stop doing it. Or to avoid all areas with automated detection.

What happens if four motorcyclists with legal 75db motorcycles travel together and create 81db of noise?

It's not the bike that's a public nuisance, it's the noise produced by the bike. Making the noise as a collaborative effort doesn't make it any less of a nuisance.

Then they won't have to switch their exhaust system back to something legal before getting inspected.

Death penalty.

I don't see the problem. Are you opposed to automation more generally?

The police in San Francisco have had multiple major discrimination scandals. How is automatic enforcement and ticketing more dystopian than letting those jokers continue to decide which laws to enforce on which populations?

The second we did anything based on race, positive or negative, it was a bad idea.

I actually find automated ticketing, such as speed cameras, less intrusive than police. But they have to be visible. I've only dealt with them in Europe where everyone knows where they are. And I find them effective.

Unlike always-on cameras I like that they're not recording unless you break the law, and I like that they're objective unlike a police officer might be.

I hope you're joking. because otherwise, neo-surveillance fascism here we come.

I’m pretty sure there is no stopping it at this point. People give up the rights not just for security but for a minor increase in comfort at this point.

What right is being given up? They're already committing a crime in a public area, this is just enforcing it.

What about the citizens of a neighbourhoods right to quiet enjoyment of their property?

>What right is being given up?

Any reasonable expectation of privacy. Not all cars are committing a crime when driving past, but every car driving-by will be logged. At least that is already a status quo in most of Europe, unfortunately.

ALPR is a completely different technology that exists completely separately than traffic enforcement cameras. It’s completely possible to ban widespread ALPR usage and maintain automatic enforcement with speed / noise cameras.

There is no expectation of privacy in public in the US.

I mean, yeah, but having your movement constantly tracked by government is still unsettling.

I feel the right way to handle that(and traffic infractions in general) is through culture, not surveillance.

> I feel the right way to handle that(and traffic infractions in general) is through culture, not surveillance.

We’re well past a polite society as a solution. Regulation and governance around collected data, with accountability for transgressions, is the path to success.

So, like Chinese social credit system? Thanks, but no thanks, I'd like to avoid living in a literal dystopia for as long as I possibly can.

> We’re well past a polite society as a solution.

Isn't that a bit fatalist? Perhaps our society has degenerated, but who's to say things can't get better? Things have gotten better before. Society used to be very rude and brutish, but then got better. It could get better again, without having to build a techno-surveillance authoritarian monster with capabilities the Stasi could only dream of...

> Isn't that a bit fatalist?

I call it like I see it. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Hoping people will be better does not make it so, in my experience. Some encouragement is occasionally required.

I agree the correct way to handle this would be to change our culture to be less selfish and obnoxious.

That doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.

The richest man in the world is currently an emotional infant that makes 69/420 jokes every other day and everyone applauds.

We are living in a Troll society. The result is policies like this to try to put some kind of a lid on it.

There’s literally no expectation, promise, or protection of privacy in public. That’s why I’m more than entitled to hang a camera on my front door and record everyone walking down the street, or for that matter take a photograph in public that might capture other people. There are literally no rights infringed, and if police were stationed and handing out tickets manually it would be entirely equivalent. The only difference is the automated solution never tires and doesn’t give tickets to people of color only.

There has never been any expectation of privacy on a public motorway in my lifetime. Cops could always literally pull you over and peer into your vehicle with a flashlight on the vague grounds of being suspicious. Nowadays there's the rising popularity of things like dash cams.

Public roads are an area where safety absolutely pummelled privacy in the war between the two values.

These are “rights” I and many will be glad to give up, just as I’m glad to surrender my “right” to park in public parks, my “right” to pee in a public pool, and so forth. The airspace/sound space is a common good and should be protected.

It will be worth it. I would also accept banning internal combustion engines instead.

I’m absolutely joking about the death penalty.

I’m not at all joking about the auto ticket. If we won’t enforce it why make it illegal? And with a nuisance violation, what’s the difference between sticking a cop there and a camera?

I’m not in favor of camera tickets for anything serious or judgement based, but sounds like a nice minor deterrent for nuisance.

because it’s the same path to speed cameras and a bunch of other stuff watching you all the time. why not just give out “average speed” tickets like the uk does? it’s illegal to go over the speed limit. if we won’t enforce it, why make it illegal?

Honestly "average speed" tickets are a great idea, and I'm not sure why you speak as if it's bad. These "bunches of stuff" aren't watching you "all the time," they're watching you when you are on a public road, paid for by other taxpayers.

If anyone's upset that the government is enforcing traffic rules, they're free to build or rent a private circuit and drive there in whatever way they please. Capitalism for the win.

The only thing that makes the vast landscape of laws palatable is that they are not all enforced, all the time, without fail.

I seriously doubt you’d be able to get through a single day without breaking the law.

While I’d prefer to have fewer laws on the books, I’ll settle for having limited enforcement.

Not everything that’s illegal is immoral, unsafe, or harmful to others. The context and specifics of a situation often matters.

Your dystopian authoritarian ideals admit no room for autonomy — individual or otherwise — to apply situational context.

You're conflating "all laws" with "one specific, concrete, obviously meaningful law with tons of research behind it and for which violations can be almost perfectly reliably classified."

Situational context doesn’t matter for average speed?

This safety-culture driven need to build a surveillance state demonstrates a disturbingly ignorant view of history.

Not really, no. If you're being chased by a dragon that is obeying the speed limit and you need to go slightly faster to outrun the flames, you can make that case in court.

Why would average speed be a bad way to enforce a law? We already have red light cameras. We already have armed government personnel taking speedgun readings and pulling you over. Enforcing that if you travel between two toll booths and average more than 5 mph over the speed limit, you were consistently speeding. And it's very unambiguous and non-intrusive measurement as compared to light guns.

Especially since there’s no potential for automatic tickets to escalate into physical altercations or gender/race discrimination. If there’s a black and white law that you’re breaking, you’ll get a ticket. It’s much less likely to “slide to fascism” than trusting the police famous for scandal after scandal to enforce.

So speed cameras are fascist?

They make lots of mistakes that hurt innocent people, and you have to go to court and prove your innocence. Also they don't consider any situational context. Sounds pretty fascist to me.

At least in most jurisdictions they're required to send you the photo now, so when it's clearly not you driving it's a lot easier to get them thrown out by the judge. Still pretty shitty to have to take time off to go to court for something you didn't do.

I’m not sure you’re using fascism appropriately here. I think you’re meaning “bad and I disagree with it,” but fascism does have an actual political meaning. Sorry to nitpick, but over using fascism as a word dilutes the actual meaning which is limited, an actual movement, and very scary stuff.

> fascism does have an actual political meaning

Is it anything like "tracks my plate and toll RFID chip all around town without any suspicion of crime"?

>Sounds pretty fascist to me.

Dude, "fascist" does not mean "something I think is bad."

> when it's clearly not you driving

In this case, don't you just tell the police who is driving? "This is my wife/son/carsharing-app-renter"

That is the case in the UK, anyway. You must either confirm you were driving, or say who else was driving.

(Example: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6298333/spee... )

They might be fascist if there was private company running them writing the tickets and then the state enforcing and taking part of the fine... Otherwise not so much.

What kind of problems are you predicting? Have they appeared in England, which is a fairly similar country to the US, but is much more open to using mass CCTV infrastructure?

I can’t have an open trash fire in my yard either, we need rules about pollution when we live together

We're already on camera all the time in public. There will only be more cameras in the future.

Given that, I see no reason to not use the cameras for something good.

I think it would be neat if we place these at each street corner and fine every dog owner whose dog barks louder than the sound limit at the time.

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