I live in Phoenix and you're right, some of these cameras are set up to photo every license plate that passes regardless of whether the box detected a traffic violation. It's billed as an Amber Alert mechanism so when authorities identify a suspect they plug in his license plate and every camera sniffs every vehicle. The problem is the organizations involved have been very dodgy about revealing the scope and logging details. So we're left to wonder if in addition to catching bad guys Big Brother is tracking innocent non-suspects. I'm not convinced they are and it's not necessarily bad if they did but given the track record of our government the past 8 years we should probably demand transparency.

Originally we were told all these boxes did was equitably enforce speed and red-light laws efficiently at a great profit over human officers. But now it's turning into "Oh and by the way we'll be photographing the innocent non-violators too." Maybe we need an outside group of hackers to act in an oversight capacity. Or maybe we should just design that license plate switching feature from Knight Rider so if you do speed you're giving someone else a ticket. (Note to Sherriff Joe: I'm just kidding.)

I am reminded of that scene in the movie Brazil when a bug literally falls into a government computer, the suspect's name gets misspelled and an innocent person is punished for what another (innocent) person did. I just hope the two Phoenix based companies working on this camera technology, Redflex and American Traffic Systems, operate on a higher set of principles than GoDaddy headquarters which is just down the street and given its turnover possibly a significant source of traffic company employees.

Oh man, the traffic cameras in Phoenix are horrible!