The government is watching–Rockwell’s video song wasn’t wrong–with the new rollout of LA speed cameras. But if public opinion seems to be against Flock cameras, how come there isn’t a loud opposition to speed cameras?
Los Angeles has rolled out its first 20 speed cameras, with 125 planned citywide. We published a list of their locations--click here. The city calls it pedestrian safety. Critics might call it government surveillance. The cameras photograph license plates and eventually will generate fines of up to $500.
The program comes with a price tag of as much as 38-and-a-half million dollars. And here’s the irony. Automated license-plate readers operated by Flock have generated fierce criticism over privacy and government surveillance. But somehow, government-operated speed cameras get a pass?
And the surveillance debate got even more interesting Tuesday. The LA City Council voted 9-to-6 against imposing additional safeguards on a new LAPD license-plate camera pilot in the San Fernando Valley, falling one vote short of the 10 needed. Among the rejected demands: an independent audit of past surveillance practices and tighter restrictions on who can access the data. Apparently, even asking who’s watching the watchers is a tough sell at City Hall.
City officials say the new cameras will save lives. Sound familiar? That’s what Los Angeles promised with Vision Zero, its decade-old initiative to eliminate traffic deaths. Instead, traffic fatalities increased substantially during the program’s first several years.
Now taxpayers are being asked to spend millions more on another technology-driven “safety” initiative. The California Post reports, “Based on LA’s per-camera fine amount, the city is estimated to bring in about $64 million per year.” So are surveillance speed cams a safety program, or a revenue program?
Unlike Flock, the speed cameras are legally restricted to photographing speeding vehicles, but they’re still collecting identifying information about motorists–and if Flock cameras were subject to abuse, why wouldn’t speed cams be as well? It all turns on who’s independently verifying what gets collected, stored and shared.
And where’s the evidence that this 38-million-dollar investment will deliver better results than the city’s failed Vision Zero campaign? Somebody–lots of somebodies are watching you, but will any of them watch the results?
AI helped prepare this story
