To the people of Greensboro who are about to get red light cameras (again): How to beat the system

Dear friends and family in the Greensboro, North Carolina area:

It has come to my attention that after an absence of several years, red light cameras are due to be installed again all over the city.  These first appeared circa 2001 and it was soon apparent that they were more a liability than they were an asset.  Well, not an asset to anyone but the city government and the company running the cameras (who got a healthy percentage of each ticket issued).

I could spend all day writing about why the cameras are wrong.  How they violate our rights articulated in the Constitution.  How it also seems that the intersections equipped with the camera have speeded-up the yellow caution lights so that there's more a chance of running the red light and getting your car's photo taken.  Volumes have already been published about how bad the cameras are and why.

I'm not going to reiterate those.  Not this time.  Instead I'm going to do something more pertinent to your situation.  Namely, how to beat the cameras.

This is what I did in 2002, when a red light camera snapped a pic of my car as I was speeding through an intersection to avoid getting rear-ended.  Now, you can file a protest through the company running the cameras, but that's going to do no good.  You have to rigorously attack them.  Maybe if enough people do this the city fathers (are we still allowed to call them that?) will get the message and pull the cameras out once more.

Okay well, this is what happened.  Here is how I didn't have to pay the ticket:

If you get a camera-derived ticket, go to the courthouse.  Ask where to go to in order to have a subpoena issued.  Go there.  Tell them that you are subpoenaing witnesses in your court case.  Subpoena the company that runs the cameras.  Specify that you require the source code for the software running the camera.

You have a constitutional right to face your accuser in a court of law.  You also have the right to cross-examine any witnesses against you.

The fact that the "witness" in the red light camera situation is a robot is not germane to the situation.  That is still most likely the only thing that the government (and the camera company) has against you in its attempt to deprive you of money.  You have the right to your day in court and to request the presence of the witness.

So tell the government and the camera company that you require the source code for the computer that was operating that specific camera on that date.  Tell them that you're going to post the code on the Internet, so that others can better examine the code.

In my situation 23 years ago, the case was dropped like a hot rock.  No company is going to want their proprietary software distributed to the general public.  They were cornered and they knew it.

It could also be asked what authority does a municipal government have the right to bestow upon a private company that has a vested interest in a system that makes them a profit at the cost of individual rights.  You can bring that up in court too.  So far as I know nobody has ever argued about that before the United States Supreme Court.  But there can always be a first time, right?

It worked in 2002.  It will probably work again.  Let me know if it does.

Now you know.  And knowing is half the battle.

"G-I-JOE!!!"

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American Inquisition: Holder's Justice Department demanding "tips" on George Zimmerman

This has been news for a couple of days now, but the reason I held off posting about it is that I wanted to do some historical investigation first.  And you know what I found out?

To the very best of my understanding, there has not been a single instance before this week of the United States federal government setting up a hotline or e-mail address asking the public and organizations for information against an individual citizen.  Not one.  And if anybody reading this does know of one, feel free to write me at theknightshift@gmail.com and better my education on the matter.

George Zimmerman was acquitted this past

Eric Holder:
Roland Freisler would have been proud of him.

Saturday night of all charges against him in the death of Trayvon Martin.  Zimmerman had been charged with second-degree murder.

And now, not being content with a jury of his peers finding the man not guilty, Attorney General Eric Holder has directed the United States Department of Justice to solicit "tips" about George Zimmerman from "civil rights groups" and the general public.  Holder's people are searching for "evidence" which would put Zimmerman up on federal "civil rights charges".

In other words: the Obama Administration has officially designated George Zimmerman to be an enemy of the state.

Holder's Justice Department is declaring war against a single American who was found not guilty and who the Federal Bureau of Investigation stated that they had "no evidence" he was a racist.

The Obama White House is engaging in activity which makes those of Nixon's in the Watergate scandal positively pale in comparison.

Among everything else that is so wrong with this (including what could strongly be considered violation of ex post facto) I must wonder aloud: could this be a case of using the weight of the federal government to perpetrate an act of racial injustice?  All of this seems motivated primarily by the ethnicity of the respective parties in the case: Martin being black and Zimmerman, a Hispanic.

"Justice is blind", it has been said.  Yet Holder's Justice Department is behaving, to any rational observer, with racial prejudice against an American citizen and to an unprecedented degree of official action.

And if the government can do this to George Zimmerman, it can very well choose to do this to anyone else.  Including me.  Or you.

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When law enforcement legally steals from people

It's bothered me for years that in the name of the "war on drugs" that some (emphasis on that) law enforcement agencies have engaged in what can only be described as theft of property from many innocent people. Chances are good that's going to continue to get worse as agencies are faced with budget crunches (along with the trend of hiring more and more individuals who have no business wearing a badge to begin with).

The Kingsport Times-News has an article on its website about "How police profit by seizing private property"...

Police and prosecutors’ offices seize private property—often without ever charging the owners with a crime — then keep or sell what they’ve taken and use the profits to fund their budgets. And considering law enforcement officials in most states don’t report the value of what they collect or how that bounty is spent, the issue raises serious questions about both government transparency and accountability.

Under state and federal civil asset forfeiture laws, law enforcement agencies can seize and keep property suspected of involvement in criminal activity. Unlike criminal asset forfeiture, however, with civil forfeiture, a property owner need not be found guilty of a crime—or even charged—to permanently lose her cash, car, home or other property.

According to the Institute for Justice civil asset forfeiture is one of the worst abuses of property rights today. The Institute has released a national study on civil forfeiture abuse. The report—Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture - is the most comprehensive national study to examine the use and abuse of civil asset forfeiture and the first study to grade the civil forfeiture laws of all 50 states and the federal government. The report finds that by giving law enforcement a direct financial incentive in pursuing forfeitures and stacking the legal deck against property owners, most state and federal laws encourage policing for profit rather than seeking the neutral administration of justice.

This is one of the biggest reasons why I've come to be against the "war on drugs", and now the "war on terror". When government can declare a cause against something and demand all possible power and authority to wield against it, it is inevitable that the rights and liberties of individuals will suffer. And there's very rarely any going back.

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Fifty years ago today: The Greensboro sit-ins begin

It was fifty years ago today, on February 1st, 1960, that four freshmen students from North Carolina A&T strolled in to the Woolworth's on North Elm Street in Greensboro, North Carolina for a bite to eat.

The lunch counter was segregated, as were many places throughout the country at the time. Only white people were served at it. Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Leinhail Richmond, Joseph Alfred McNeil, and Franklin Eugene McCain were black. They could order food at the Woolworth's and eat it there, but they were expected to stand and not use the stools and chairs reserved for white people.

Blair, Richmond, McNeil and McCain sat down anyway...

The four young men weren't served their lunch, and eventually left. The next day they came back and 27 friends joined them. The next day, even more people arrived. And very soon the sit-in movement spread like wildfire throughout other cities across the country.

A few months later, segregation was finished. The Woolworth's began serving everyone at the lunch counter.

On this fiftieth anniversary, The Knight Shift and its proprietor gladly tips its hat to Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain. If more people had the simple gumption that these four demonstrated a half-century ago, this would no doubt be a far better world.

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Robotic "bugs" might be spying on you

Eric Wilson passed along this... strange... story: apparently there are teeny-tiny robotic cameras that are flying around disguised as bugs. And they seem to have already begun to be deployed...

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "

That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Others think they are, well, dragonflies -- an ancient order of insects that even biologists concede look about as robotic as a living creature can look.

Eric has a great idea: "Now this might be a good way to incorporate Insecticons into a Transformers sequel w/o being hokey!!" :-)

For the rest of the story mash down here.

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