[acituan]

Speed of any car currently travelling on US public roads is public information, it is publicly observable, people have no expectation of privacy on this. Now imagine some technology made it possible to observe and mine this data en masse, and to issue speeding tickets all at once based on it, as often as speeding occurs. This would be so massively disruptive that the speed limits and/or the law itself would have to change to make things work back again.

This is not to have a blanket claim that law enforcement should always have less data. The point is that innovation in law enforcement tech has to be balanced with accountability, experience and changes in the actual law. Especially in a climate in which rightful use of authority is in question, the last thing we would want is to empower further asymmetry.

[unishark]

We don't even need to change the law. An even simpler fix is to simply veto the idiot who thought it was a good idea to mass issue those tickets without leniency. Personally I think this human factor already exists in our government. Police can give warnings even when they have you dead to rights. And they are subject to pressure both to write more tickets or to write fewer, depending on the climate.

However I'd say changing the law is the best option of them all. Restricting surveillance protects people out in suburbia from cops who are almost never there anyway, while poor schmucks downtown have to deal with the "broken window policies" getting tickets for a lot of nonsense.

[BrandonM]

You might want to look into “automated speed enforcement.” AFAICT, it’s primarily used in construction or school zones right now.