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.


You think that automated radar-based speed enforcement of those that go 15MPH over the limit in school zones during school hours with no detrimental effects to license status is a slippery slope to a panoptic AI surveillance state?
Because personally I think that as a society we can and should agree upon reasonable tests for overreach and abuse of technological systems, and build automations that respect those tests.
We both agree that AI surveillance is bad. You just stumped against it for a whole comment, but I already said AI surveillance is bad. That was not my point, my point is that I find this article’s approach to the problem of AI surveillance problematic in that it’s leveraging the reaction that drivers have toward any automation whatsoever to make an emotional case against AI surveillance that I feel amplifies pushback against otherwise reasonable automations that catch egregiously dangerous use (eg The radar cameras in place in NYC) an muddiest and important distinction. I just don’t like the way this article is pitched.