Speed cameras trap motorists from space

How do you feel about a satellite system that uses (ground based) cameras to read your car's license plate and detect how fast you are driving? Law enforcement in the UK likes the idea very much, as does PIPS Technology, who says its system provides "number plate capture in all weather conditions, 24 hours a day." UPDATE: I incorrectly wrote that the cameras were satellite based, but the cameras are on the ground.

• [dolo54]

  And won’t it be nice when that traffic data is subpoenaed in court, criminal, civil or divorce. Why should you have anything to fear if you have nothing to hide? (Yes, I know the answer to that question.)

• [Mitch]

  I just wish photo radar and red light cameras were legal in my state. People need to slow down.

• [Jvalver]

  That is how the TUTOR system works on the autostrada, there are 5 or 6 stations (AFAIR) on the A1 between Naples and Rome and the data is all coordinated to give you a cumulative fine for your journey. Supposed to stop people slowing down just for the speed traps. The system really slowed down traffic on the Tangenziale, when it moves at all.

• [deejayqueue]

  I wonder what would happen if everyone drove the speed limit?

  -For a few days, maybe even a few weeks, it might be ok. Then, suddenly, law enforcement realizes that speeding ticket revenue has fallen to $0 and start systematically pushing for lower speed limits, citing the same studies, only this time they’d have “Well, look how well it’s doing so far!” on their side. Then we’d be in the same position, only going slower for our trouble.

  I say F the police.

• [SteveT]

  I’m not sure I see what’s particularly _new_ about this.
  They’ve been using ‘average speed’ cameras in the UK for years (most motorway repair sites use them to enforce speed restrictions) and I _think_ I first read about them on BoingBoing.
  You can’t do average speed calculations without linked cameras, synchronised clocks and the ability to tell one vehicle from another – say by reading its’ licence plate.
  So… WTF?

• [Felton]

  In space, no on can hear you triangulate.

• [Anonymous]

  When a government uses traffic fines as a revenue source, you have a good chance that steps will be taken to increase (or at least perpetuate) the revenue.

  When the government outsources the enforcement of laws to an outside vendor in return for a percentage of the fines (which is usually the case with these types of systems), you are *guaranteed* that steps will be taken to increase the revenue.

  To me, *that* is the worrisome thing.

• [leidan]

  While this is an enforcement tool for speeding that doesn’t seem to be the likely end-game. A short look at PIPS Technologies pages is enough to convince one that the final goal is a surveillance.

  See http://www.pipstechnology.co.uk/news.php??section_id=9&article_id=307 for example.

  I would also (were I a city planner) use it to monetise my city road system, charging a per-mile usage quota for every journey within my municipality. It is like a gated system only better, you get to charge people for the priviledge of entering _and_ keep out undesirables. They (PIPS) already have plans for automated entry systems in the Minder(TM) system.

• [dragonfrog]

  Well this was disappointing – I was hoping for grainy speed camera shots that may or may not show extraterrestrials doing 92 in a 70, whether in an earth-car with controls suitably altered for their alien anatomy, or, even better, on some sort of Mars-speedster they towed all the way here behind the interplanetary RV.

• [Roy Trumbull]

  I love it. An error. If it’s like most errors it will be quoted two years hence as gospel. Easy to make hard to kill. Next time you’re in the Peoples Republic of Berkeley obey the lights at Shattuck and University. Nuff said.

• [Anonymous]

  Damn UFOs should have to obey the speed laws, too.

• [Joe]

  So, if any motorists from space invade us, this system will capture them. Space Patrol!

  • [Felton]

    Yeah, yeah, yeah, space truckin’!

• [freetard]

  Look, I’m not fan of ubiquitous surveillance any more than anyone on this site, but I get tired of hyperbole being used to drive discussion on the issues. Oh noes!! SPACE CAMERAS WTF WE’RE DOOMED!!!1! It seems like if you can throw in space-based technology, it makes everything ten times worse.

  I’ve worked on this kind of tech: do you have ANY idea how many pieces of equipment in EVERY town and city have GPS receivers on them? Almost everything. Water pumps, traffic light controllers, intersection cameras, streetlights, streetsweepers; dude, these things are truly ubiquitous. And HARMLESS. They aren’t used for tracking fixed assets like city infrastructure, they are used to synchronise clocks. Simply that. So if these spooky speed cameras have GPS receivers in them, which is a great idea if you’re gonna try to, oh I don’t know- TIME A VEHICLE as it passes two fixed points, it’s not because someone is deploying spy satellites on us.

  Oh, and here’s a fun one for the conspiracy theorists: Many mobile towers have terrestrial GPS transmitters on them, which increases the accuracy of mobile GPS receivers. Space-based GPS is only accurate to within a dozen or so centimetres (if you have a large antenna), but with terrestrial transmitters, you can get centimetre-resolution accuracy. It’s used by road-building companies all the time to control heavy equipment, and there’s absolutely no reason it couldn’t be used to track the GPS receiver in your phone to within a few centimetres.

  All that rant being said, I am guessing that their Plain Old Radar-based speed cameras were loosing in court too many times, so they had to come up with a better system. This is WAY cheaper than the old way of timing vehicles, which (here in Canada) was for police in aircraft to fly over the highways and time cars as they passed over white marks on the road. These systems are going to be a lot harder to beat in traffic court, I tell you that. Which sucks ass.

  • [IronEdithKidd]

    You said: “They aren’t used for tracking fixed assets like city infrastructure…”

    GPS is being used to track City vehicles, such as snow plows (Howard Co, MD; Cincinnati, OH) and garbage trucks (Dallas, TX). Not to punish drivers, but to have solid responses to entitlement-bloated residents who like to call and complain that their cul-de-sac hasn’t been plowed 15 minutes after it starts snowing, or to discredit claims that the garbage truck came “too early” or “skipped our house”.

  • [Anonymous]

    And what are the odds they’ll make sure speed limits are below what is necessary or reasonable? 100%? Writing tickets sure beats paying for government with a proper tax system.

    • [5onthe5]

      I think that whatever the government set the limit at, people are always going to think it’s just a little below what is safe / reasonable.

      It’s 70mph on motorways (highways) in the UK. Many people (like me) drive around 80mph unless there’s obvious, visible speed enforcement in place. If the limit was 80, those people would drive at 90.

      There’s always going to be some “speed limit + X” speed at which you feel you’re driving just fast enough to get an advantage over the law-abiding trundlers in the next lane. Therefore, “speed limit + X” feels like a reasonable, justifiable speed because it’s the one where you get there faster but don’t lose control.

      Keeping people from blocking the middle lane solve most of our traffic problems overnight. Too often there’s a lorry in the inside lane doing 60mph, the lorry behind him is doing 61mph and so embarks on a ten-minute overtake, reducing the motorway to one effective lane.

      Drives me mad.

• [Rich Keller]

  They’ve been using vans with cameras in construction zones in the Chicago area for at least a year to catch speeders. An envelope shows up in your mailbox with a nice picture of you in your car and a ticket for at least $375 dollars. Also, some of the suburbs have cameras to catch cars that run red lights.

  The way around this is to slow down and stop running red lights. It keeps construction workers from getting killed in work zones, too.

  • [spejic]

    I’m not against catching speeders. But is a system that keeps track of all travelers and their movements the way to do it? If you give people that kind of information, they are going to use it, and use it in a way that they want, not what you expect.

    • [Anonymous]

      I am against catching speeders…

• [Gutierrez]

  The lord of Mordor sees all. His gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and flesh. You know of what I speak, Gandalf: a great eye, lidless, wreathed in flame.

• [echolocate chocolate]

  Aren’t satellites… you know… UP? Like way up above the sky? As in, perpendicular to the direction they would need to be to read license plates?

• [Grant]

  “number plate capture in all weather conditions, 24 hours a day.” Except when it’s cloudy. Or your license plate is recessed or below the bumper so the satellite camera cannot view it from that angle.

• [Teller]

  “AA said it would watch the system “carefully” but it did not believe there was anything sinister.”

  They should just stick to the twelve steps.

• [5onthe5]

  This will be an interesting counterpoint to other threads here about privacy / surveillance etc, since unlike copyright laws I actually think motoring laws are pretty fair.

  In which case, since the motivation behind this system is clearly the money generated from speeding fines etc, do we feel that if the laws in question are just then the state is entitled to use their enforcement as a revenue stream?

  (Incidentally, the copyright gods could learn a few things from traffic enforcement. If the penalty for being caught breaking copyright was a £30 fine, the industry would make millions and the public would have an incentive to keep the right side of the law but without living in fear and hatred.)

  • [EricT]

    Fair when people are dealing the summons. Teh unblinking eye of electronics without adjustments in the actuarials and price of a ticket is utterly unfair.
    A good driver will drive within 5 – MPH of the posted speed limit. Will he get ticketed if he gets from point a to point be too quickly? as a sheer question of law sure but there is a speed limit to prevent accidents not pump money onto cities and vendors. teh fine revenue is a by product of enforcement and should not be the reason for enforcement. of course this is not going to be the case, I am not that high minded. It is just when you automate these things to the point where every offender is paying into the coffers there is too much opportunity for abuse.

• [Anonymous]

  Trafic Cameras in Space!
  No, not really – it’s just a camera on the ground with GPS in it.

• [asuffield]

  All that rant being said, I am guessing that their Plain Old Radar-based speed cameras were loosing in court too many times, so they had to come up with a better system.

  Nah, there’s nothing really wrong with the old system. This one is just New and Flashier and hence the government will want to spend money on it. It’s not about the technology at all.

• [KremlinLaptop]

  I fail to understand how this camera could have the resolution required to photograph a license plate from space. Aren’t most commercial satellites that take pictures of the earth only giving resolutions of say one pixel being a quarter of a meter?

  So I would guess there is some other way to find out the license plate number involved? Finding it a bit confusing.

  Also I imagine it won’t take long before Jeremy Clarkson bribes some Russians to bump another satellite into this one.

• [Anonymous]

  Let’s just outlaw license plates, and arrest those who dare to drive.

• [Bucket]

  This is what I’m getting from the article:

  The satellites don’t see the plate from space, two cameras on the ground do. They have gps recievers in them, hence the “satellite” bit. They read your plate at point A, read your plate at point B, and compute your speed based on the time you took to traverse the distance between the two.

  What the advantage of this over a radar or laser based speed camera is I have no idea. Perhaps the fact that to be effective you have to buy two. Not really an advantage to the municipality, but an advantage to the vendor.

• [Anonymous]

  See? Once again, the British are full of hypocrisy. They don’t mind Government Big Brother, but have all sorts of complaints about an open, free Google Street View.

• [Anonymous]

  If they could detect when a bank issues trillions of dollars worth of bogus ‘securities’ from space…then they might have something.

• [scottglz]

  The only satellites involved in this are the regular old GPS satellites. The linked news article is more or less a regurgitation of a confusing press release, which makes it sound like they have something a lot more exciting going on here than they really do. All this is is a system of multiple street-level cameras (like red-light cameras) taking pictures of your car. According to some PIPs documentation, the GPS is used to keep the clocks on the cameras synchronized. Maybe they use it for positioning data, too, but I wouldn’t imagine so… the cameras being stationary and all.

• [mattxb]

  The system does not read your number plate from space. The system uses a conventional infra-red camera to read your number plate from the roadside. The ‘satellite’ business is that the cameras use GPS signals to determine both an accurate time-stamp, plus the camera’s own precise location.

  All the news reports floating around about this are referencing a House of Commons report which is this one, from the Transport select committee:

  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmtran/505/505.pdf

  See page 120, Memorandum from PIPS Technology Ltd. The speed camera system is called ‘speedspike’.

• [EricT]

  Meant “drive within 5 – MPH ” to read drive within 5 – 10 MPH

• [Phikus]

  It is paramount that we use the latest and greatest technology available to us to monitor vehicular speed limits, even if there are no other cars on the road. This is the most pressing concern before us here in the 21st century. The time is now. Children are our future.

• [mdh]

  ?How do you feel about satellite cameras that can read your car’s license plate and detect how fast you are driving?

  I feel pretty crappy about them, thanks for asking, Mark.

• [syncrotic]

  Reading a license plate from space is probably not possible. If optics of the necessary quality exist, I don’t think they exist in the civilian world… and as someone pointed out, license plates don’t face the sky.

  Idea: the system registers a car’s position at two ANPR stations and then calculates the shortest possible route taken. This wouldn’t involve satellites at all though, unless the cameras were just using GPS to plot their own locations on an internal map.

  I like that nobody working at The Telegraph has even the slightest idea of what is / isn’t possible with current technology. Yet another example of a newspaper putting out an article with information that’s obviously wrong. Fail.

  • [arkizzle / Moderator]

    Syncrotic,

    Idea: read the thread.

• [anansi133]

  Vernor Vinge warns about the tendency toward ubiquitous law enforcement. If laws can be enforced at all times, then their authors can begin to believe that those laws are always right.

  Something about water monopoly empire should come next.

• [PolishQ]

  I wasn’t aware we had so many Motorists From Space on our highways!

• [ian71]

  Why use satellites when they can just GPS track your mobile phones?? Now THERE is where the new money will be. Not like the Brits won’t line up to be surveilled even more than they already are. ’1984′ is PORN to those folks.

  Seriously, though, this sickens me.