There's still going to be a person who is reviewing the footage and deciding whether or not to prosecute. It's not as if the camera is just emailing the DA and saying "you need to prosecute this guy"
Maybe not yet, but as surveillance gets more advanced, we get closer and closer to that.
I know for a positive fact that at least some law agencies have the capability to put concealed cameras up that broadcast real-time video back to a data center. From there, the data is algorithmically processed by license plate readers and facial recognition tools that cross-reference their found data against databases containing persons of note (like persons of interest, but less specific to a given case) and, when results are found, notify agents or officers via messaging.
We're really just a hop, skip and a jump away from the "self-driving car of surveillance".
That's really interesting actually. Redlight and speeding cameras are pretty straightforward engineering problems to enforce though, compared to determining whether someone's violating their parole.
I suppose a similar (yet different again) concern would be ankle-monitoring bracelets for parolees.
It's interesting to think about where to draw the line on those things.
I know for a positive fact that at least some law agencies have the capability to put concealed cameras up that broadcast real-time video back to a data center. From there, the data is algorithmically processed by license plate readers and facial recognition tools that cross-reference their found data against databases containing persons of note (like persons of interest, but less specific to a given case) and, when results are found, notify agents or officers via messaging.
We're really just a hop, skip and a jump away from the "self-driving car of surveillance".