Okay, I got a question. Over the last 12 months or so the state of Texas has been installing video cameras at all state highway intersections that have a traffic light on them. This includes intersections in cities, small towns and even some intersections that have flashing lights on them, such as exit and entry ramps on the interstate. There are at least 2 cameras on each intersection, and sometimes as many as 6. In our small town, population under 5000, it is impossible to go from one side of town to the other without going through at least 2 of these intersections. If you go through the main north-south route, you are "cameraed" at least 4 times. They are supposed to be used to determine who is at fault in traffic accidents. They are supposed to only scan license plates, but the angle seems higher than that to me. Are they doing this where you live also? If so, which states do you live in? Thanks. And remember, the paranoid survive.

-- Green (ratdogs10@yahoo.com), November 14, 2001

Answers

Orygun just passed a law allowing cities to do so at their pleasure. I learned, when visiting my son, that Florida is already doing this.

I recommend that we all start wearing masks when driving.

JOJ

Or maybe those old sun visors (for those of you old enough to remember) that used to be available for your windshield would prevent the cameras from seeing you.

Perhaps someone with more engineering expertise could tell us how to build a laser, or something, which would disable the spy cameras???

-- joj (jump@off.c), November 14, 2001.

BTW, why do you think you're paranoid?

BTW again, Siskiyou National Forest (here in Orygun) began placing spy cameras at the entrances to the forest back in the early eighties. They hid them well off the road, way back in the brush, and installed a loop of sensor cable of some sort, which activated the camera whenever a car or truck would pass over it. The only reason I ever heard about it was because I was supervising a busload of kids from the YCC (youth conservation corps, or something like that), and another man who was there to do some chainsaw work was the man who installed the loops under the pavement. He was the forest service backhoe guy. He showed us the camera at the entrance we went through. The camera was BIG--about eight inches in diameter, and two feet plus long, with an eight inch lense.

Jim ( the backhoe guy) said that he was told that the cameras were there just to show the "outline" of the vehicle, to show whether it was a logging truck or some other type of vehile, so that the forest circus could determine how much of the road maintenance costs should be assigned to the various timber companies. However, he also said he'd seen some of the photos, and they clearly showed license numbers, and even faces if the light was right.

JOJ

In Floriduh, the cameras set computers in motion which automagically send you a ticket, if you were speeding. I feel so safe.

-- joj (jump@off.c), November 14, 2001.

Green, if your town has 2 traffic lights, it is not a small town. Stick to the back roads.

Those visors work well, my dead chevy has one. If you don't want your plates seen, spray them with mud so they look like Montana plates, or better yet, go play in the mudhole so your vehicle is totally unrecognizable.

Or you can be a chameleon and drive a vehicle that is identical to the "official vehicle" and go anywhere you want. I'll tell ya' that '48 Willys flatbed sticks out like a sore thumb in town!

-- Laura (LadybugWrangler@hotmail.com), November 14, 2001.

We noticed as we went through Atlanta last week that they are all along the interstates too. I haven't seen them in other cities here but I'm going to paying more attention.

-- Deena in GA (dsmj55@aol.com), November 14, 2001.

This is why folks need to stock up on ski masks and slingshots. AL is putting them up in the wooded areas to catch littering folks (so they say)..Neil and I have already organized a neighborhood slingshot group......we are still practicing.

-- lesley (martchas@bellsouth.net), November 14, 2001.

And there are wires under the road that resonate those metalic strips in bank notes so that they can tell how much money you are carrying. The information is collected and sold to agents of the UN.

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), November 14, 2001.

john hill,

Don't know if you were being funny or not. I do know that our local pd has a radar looking gun that can tell how much money you have on you. A college buddy is a detective now he showed me how easy it was to use.

The rhetoric they use to justify its use is BS. But that's our tax money at work.

-- Kenneth in N.C. (wizardsplace13@hotmail.com), November 15, 2001.

I don't know if you're being funny either, but when "they" repaved the I-5 a few years ago, they immediately carved trenches from the edge of the paved shoulder to the dashed white lane divider line about a foot wide, and several inches deep. Then refilled them a day or two later. I couldn't figure out what it was all about, so I called ODOT, various employees of which told me "it didn't happen" or "I don't know about it".

I figured it might be for speed monitoring, but who knows? These trenches were mostly dug approximately every one tenth mile, but some were at different spacing than that.

Anyone else seen this type of activity along freeways? It seems a bit much for either speed monitoring OR tracking money, because they installed LOTS of whatever it was.

JOJ

-- joj (jump@off.c), November 15, 2001.

I am not being funny at all, just repeating what I have previously read on this forum.

My favourite project just now is to perfect my windscreen tele- spectrograph. It bounces an invisible laser beam off the windscreen to give a spectrographic analysis of condensation from the driver's breath. It will be useful for stopping drunks behind the wheel and maybe tracking runaway liable parents by matching their dna.

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), November 15, 2001.

msm.com had an article on this very subject at their website this morning. It was pretty scary. I just went to find it and it was gone. I remember that it linked to yahoo news, but I'm unable to find it there either. Title was related to "big brother watching you" or some such. The stats cited are what made it scary. People are willing to give up every sense of privacy and freedom for some "security". Hell, I worry about the day some bozo decides the definition of terrorist includes all of us who don't sqaut w/o question when washington says "s**t".

-- John in S. IN (jsmengel@hotmail.com), November 15, 2001.

here in southern California they have quite alot of cameras. Most are to monitor traffic. Some areas have them at traffic lights to catch red-light runners. 2 cameras, one for the license plate, one for the drivers face. They used to only take a pic of the plate until those tickets didn't stand up in court. Many times when a crime is committed, law enforcement will get all the video available from the area, like from security cams, traffic cams, atm machines. Some areas like Hollywood and Palm Springs have cameras linked to the police department for surveillance. I suspect they'll soon be using the facial-recognition software already used in Tampa, Fla and Las Vegas.

Joe, those trenches you saw on i-5 were probably for traffic monitoring. It's in use on i-5 down here and every other freeway in the area. Here's an example- http://traffic.tann.net/lcocmap/

-- Dave (something@somewhere.com), November 17, 2001.

We have only one intersection that legitimately could have a need for cameras to monitor the site in case of accidents. It is a 5 way intersection on the US highway and has a wreck there about 3 or 4 times a year. None have ever been serious. The possitioning of the lights have made it vertually impossible to go from one side of the town to the other without being photographed. The backroads all lead into town or have been flooded out by one of the many lake projects that have been deemed "necessary" for our area in the last 25 years. It isn't that I've done anything illegal, it is just that I'm like John in IN---I worry when the day will come that anyone who doesn't do exactly as told when told to do it will become an enemy of the state. That and the fact that all my old vehicles will probably be deemed illegal in a couple of years because they cause too much air pollution. If the powers that be only realized that the reason some of us drive clunkers is because we cannot afford anything else, and we don't drive them much anyway because we cannot afford to go anywhere. Oh, well. The constant lack of privacy is bothersome. Not that there is a lot of privacy in a small town anyway.

Thanks ya'll.

-- Green (ratdogs10@yahoo.com), November 17, 2001.

Thanks, Dave; I don't completely understand, though. Is this map, which shows how heavy the traffic is, what you're referring to? Why would they need sensors every five hundred feet, on average? And why would "they" need them at all ten miles north of GRants Pass, Oregon, a town of less than 20.000 people, far from any population center, where the traffic is "never" heavy????

JOJ

-- joj (jump@off.c), November 17, 2001.

don't know Joe, someone surely knows. Any chance those filled trenches were some kind of expansion joints? That'd be my best guess.

-- Dave (something@somewhere.com), November 19, 2001.

Know one who knows will tell, Dave. Definitely not expansion joints, though that is a good guess; you'd not think that if you'd seen the trenches, though. JOJ

-- joj (jump@off.c), November 20, 2001.

They put cameras at the one major intersection in town last spring. They left the other couple of lights alone. As for the strips in the pavement, there are two stories I have heard, both of which will be especially pleasing to Mr Hill in the sand:}....First, that there will be low level emp's used to disable the electronic ignitions on any vehicle post '83(?). Secondly that they are weight activated like the ones at slow lights so that cameras will be set up every three or four and rigged to photograph the vehicle as it goes down the road. When you cross the Red River to OK there are cameras mounted up on the signs to film your entry into the state.

As to what you can do to try to protect your identity, you can purchase the plate covers that have a layer of plexi and that messes up the image resolution ability, and you can tint your windows to the darkest level permitted by law. Beyond that I have no idea! I haven't done either.

-- Doreen (bisquit@here.com), November 20, 2001.

Doreen, am I "Mr Hill in the sand"? You should know I live in the greenest country God ever made :-) . Dont waste money on anything to go in front of the licence plate, none work and anyway "They" can always make them illegal if they did. Much easier, take two loops of fence wire and hang your licence plate from those. When the vehicle is stopped everything is fine and dandy but when you drive down the road the plate blows back in the wind and is unreadable, works great on old pick-up trucks and such like.

Any EMP that might disable your auto electronics will also kill your 'pacemaker', neat huh? Think of the saving in Social Security expenditure.

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), November 20, 2001.