Here's an article on the subject that I had saved, sorry for the long post:
Techno-Battle Rages on American Highways
Tue Mar 19, 3:36 PM ET
By Lisa Baertlein
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - America's roadways are becoming increasingly automated -- with camera surveillance and automated ticketing and tollways turning them into electronic superhighways.
Programs like E-ZPass, the automated toll-pay system, have been big hits with consumers happy to avoid traffic tangles at toll booths. But drivers are becoming increasingly angry about being ensnared in another web -- the electronic ticketing systems that have replaced traffic cops with ticket-issuing Big Brothers.
Now, some drivers are starting to use their own technology to reverse the tide of automated policing efforts based on red-light and speed cameras.
San Diego English professor and former traffic school operator Patrick Mulroy devotes a good deal of the real estate on his Web site --
http://www.ticketassassin.com -- to teaching drivers how to fight red-light camera tickets, which carry a fine of nearly $300 in California.
When a citation hits the mailbox of an alleged red-light runner -- complete with a photo of the incident -- that person often thinks there is no way to fight and pays up, said Mulroy and others who help people take on so-called "camera cops."
"With red-light tickets there isn't a witness ... it's your word against technology," Mulroy told Reuters.
"It prevents accused persons from being able to confront their accuser and it denies them the ability to defend themselves," according to San Diego attorney Arthur Tait, who also has an Internet site.
LIGHTS ... CAMERA ... CASH
Law enforcement agencies in California, New York, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, Australia, Europe and other parts of the world use the red-light or radar cameras. Officials from those agencies have crowed on the Web and elsewhere that the technology has cut accident rates and freed police officers to attend to more urgent matters.
Critics contend that the cameras have, in certain cities, contributed to rear-end accidents as motorists slam on their brakes in an effort to avoid hefty red-light fines.
An executive summary on the Internet site belonging to U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey makes reference to "the red light camera scam," calls the fines a hidden tax on motorists and cites examples where lengthening yellow-light times have dramatically reduced incidents of red-light running.
The American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) calls the camera systems an invasion of personal privacy. And, as of last year, a handful of states -- Alaska, Nebraska, New Jersey, Utah and Wisconsin -- had banned red-light cameras.
There is, however, one thing virtually everyone agrees on: camera cops are cash cows.
Motorists snared by 44 red-light and radar cameras in Washington, D.C., paid nearly $23 million in fines between August 1999 and January 2002. The city got almost $14 million of that revenue, while the company that operates the cameras got about $9 million, according to the Washington Post. New York City, trying to stretch its dollars, has put hundreds of "dummy" cameras at intersections, and rotates a much smaller number of real ones throughout the city.
LIGHTS OUT IN SAN DIEGO
Red-light fighter Tait and former law partner Coleen Cusack built RedLightLawyers.com. They represented nearly 300 San Diego drivers, who had their red-light tickets thrown out in September.
In that case, a Superior Court judge ruled the use of the cameras constitutional but said evidence collected by them was inadmissible because the city broke the law by failing to supervise Lockheed Martin IMS, which installed and ran the camera systems. The contractor, the judge found, had a conflict of interest because its revenues would increase with the number of tickets issued.
San Diego's red light cameras had been switched off in June, when city officials learned that Lockheed Martin IMS had, without notifying the police, moved the street sensors that trigger the cameras.
Tait said the city now is appealing the judge's ruling, which is not binding in other jurisdictions but likely to be mentioned by people fighting tickets elsewhere.
JOIN THE CLUB
To that end, a Vancouver group called Safety by Education not Speed Enforcement runs a site that outlines how to contest radar-camera tickets in British Columbia.
A band of two- and four-wheeled revolutionaries in Wales are demonstrating the "oppression of motorists and motorcyclists throughout Britain who have become targets of highway robbery and tax exploitation" -- and selling T-shirts -- on their Web site at
www.speedcamerassuck.com.
Los Angeles artist Gabe Leonard said he may soon be the newest member of the anti-camera cop Internet movement.
Late last year, the illustrator got a picture of himself in the mail -- along with a hefty $271 fine -- courtesy of the city of Beverly Hills.
Faced with an expensive ticket and what appeared to be no way of making a case for himself -- Leonard turned to the Web.
He built his defense with help from RedLightLawyers.com and a book called "Fight Your Ticket ... and Win!" He researched relevant case law on a legal resources Web site called FindLaw.com. Leonard even went so far as to dig up the contract between the city of Beverly Hills and Lockheed Martin IMS.
"The more I started to learn about it. The more I thought it was a screwed-up system," said Leonard, 26, who was once a supporter of the automated systems.
"It should be the police enforcing the law, not some sort of camera system ... It puts you in the position of trying to disprove a machine ... It forces you to prove your innocence rather than forcing the officer to prove you're guilty," said Leonard, who had his ticket dismissed after spending $150 and 30 hours preparing his defense.
As he waits for Beverly Hills to refund the $271 he paid as a prerequisite to contesting his citation, Leonard is mulling whether to post information on how he won his own red-light fight to his Web site,
www.gabeleonard.com.
