Miles's blog

According to an article in USA Today, a lot of people are up in arms over the use of red light cameras.  Some people think it is just not right for the government to use technology to monitor things like traffic violations, that such means of enforcement is some kind of cheating and that the police should be forced to sit there and have a live human being doing exactly what the camera is doing.  Others, though, go further, and drag out that old shibboleth, “invasion of privacy.”

These people react the same way every time surveillance of any kind is used to monitor activities.  I guess they fail to understand that the right of privacy applies to things done in private.  I can see their point when it comes to monitoring phone calls, or putting tracking devices on cars.  When I talk on the phone I do expect no one to be listening.  If they were, they might hear some pretty whiny chatter about the state of baseball, or perhaps some moaning about a collection of various and sundry grievances like noisy neighbors and the lack of good barbeque.  And people do drive their cars on places other than the public streets so tracking devices can invade a certain level of privacy.  (If the government was tracking my recent trip to Florida they could have plotted pretty much every rest area on I-95.)

But surveillance cameras at intersections directed at the maniacs who routinely run red lights do not violate anyone’s most minimal privacy.  The legal standard, and one which mirrors common sense, is that you only have a right of privacy in a situation where you have a reasonable expectation of it.  What you do at home with the doors and windows shut is done in private.  What you do while walking or driving down the public street is done in public.  Anyone can see you there—cop, reporters, nosy neighbor, even people who work for Rupert Murdoch can observe you without the necessity of hacking into your e-mail.  In this day and age when everyone carries a camera there can be no reasonable expectation that anything you do outside the walls of your own home can be kept secret from anyone.  

The simple answer for those who fear red light cameras will invade their privacy is stay off the road.  While you have the right to travel and arguably even the right to drive as long as you carry a legal license, you do not have the right to drive on public streets without the government knowing.  In fact, because these streets belong to the government, they have the right to regulate who is on there.  Watching to see who is creating a dangerous traffic hazard by running a red light is a commendable use of technology, not an insidious threat to anyone’s privacy.  Frankly, I like the increased use of surveillance cameras.  I have no doubt that from the moment I step into the train station in Stamford I am being watched (except perhaps when in the bathroom, but with the amount of guys in there I have no privacy there either).  I am fine with that.  Odds are I will want to use the video if something happens to me.  I have nothing to hide.  And if I did I would not expect the government to let me do whatever I am so concerned about in Grand Central.

So I think those privacy advocates should stop whining about the cameras and just stop for the red lights.

By the way, did you see about the wacko in England who took offense to some rowing race and jumped into the water to stop it?  I guess this is someone simpatico with the Occupy Wall Street people (who have now left the Wall Street area and have taken up occupancy at Union Square).  He wrote a blog entitled “Elitism Leads to Tyranny” and apparently thinks a race between Oxford and Cambridge smacks of elitism.  (Strangely, this guy went to the equally elite London School of Economics.)  This race has been run since 1829, and it strikes me that at that time England was ruled by a king.  Now England has a completely democratic process which allows clowns like this to have input into the government.  Difficult for me to see how this “elitist” race has led to more tyranny.