[blackcatsec]

While I'll make no judgment specifically on whether or not she is telling the truth, because the article itself isn't enough validation to say she is telling the truth here; I'll comment more on the comments in this thread.

At what point is automated enforcement a good or a bad thing for law breaking? We have yet to grapple with that as a society, and the short answer is there's no easy answer to this problem. Both for precisely the reason this article calls out (that overnight location of car is not a 100% accurate representation of residency, and fixing it seems like a mess); but also because people ARE inherently selfish and REALLY do not like the rules applying to them equally.

A great many people in the United States, particularly white (sorry, I'm going to bring race into this because it's important) enjoy some level of flexibility on what laws they follow and when. Certainly more flexibility than the average black experience. In fact, this problem is so bad that states like California have had to institute policies that allow things like license plate lights being out to exist because the profiling is so catastrophically bad that it's completely unfair.

So now, we have an automated system that at least tries to provide some level of fair enforcement. At least for now, things like speed cameras, red light cameras, license plate readers, etc. don't appear to openly consider racial bias in the immediate decision making process on whether the law is enforced or not. (There are other biases, of course, and even indirect bias with regards to where these things are placed, but I'll digress a bit here).

But even aside from the racial divide, the class divide on enforcement is a problem. And the upper classes have generally enjoyed a level of insulation from complying with laws, which just continues to go up the higher you climb (See: Epstein files). But that's on the more extreme end.

At any rate, better enforcement of laws that are now crossing the lower to middle class divide because automation allows us to do so is certainly an interesting social problem.

[JuniperMesos]

Is putting a bunch of red light cameras in a black neighborhood to catch and fine red-light runners an anti-black policy because it imposes automatic punishment on black drivers who are running red lights? Or pro-black because it helps secure the safety of black pedestrians who deserve not to have people breaking traffic laws around them? What if it turns out that even though the neighborhood is black the car traffic on that street has a greater percentage of non-black drivers than the neighborhood population? What if it turns out that black people run red lights at a rate much higher than other races everywhere in the country, so no matter where you put up red light cameras it will always catch and fine a disproportionate number of black drivers?

Regardless of whether you approve or disapprove of automatic red light cameras, you can construct an argument that either having them or not having them is the policy that is actually racist against blacks.

More generally, whether automated law enforcement is good or bad depends highly on how good or bad the law is, which people legitimately disagree about; and also how reliable the automatic enforcement is.

[blackcatsec]

To be fair, the first point is a good point. But I'd argue that you should deploy them everywhere in order to not be racist since we already generally know that the red light cameras are revenue generating devices. Is there some data on whether they increase safety? Preferably unbiased (probably not). Unsure.

Nonetheless, a fair point that deserves analysis. (My vote, to be fair, is ask the community what they want and put it up to a vote. With honest information on safety data versus revenue generation)

[JuniperMesos]

What are the boundaries of the community that votes? What if the racial demographics of that community have changed recently, in ways that affect how the vote turns out? What if some people in that community are aware of these voting patterns and explicitly bring up race when engaging in public discussion about the merits or demerits of the red-light-camera-policy, because it's important? What if they try to change the boundaries of the voting district in order to include/exclude more people who they think will vote with/against them on the red-light-camera issue, in ways that highly correlate with race?