Pranks using speed cameras in MoCo, MD

[MKSheppard]

God bless my area high schools.

Link

WEB EXCLUSIVE -- Local teens claim pranks on county's Speed Cams

By Joe Slaninka
Special to the Sentinel

As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county's Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people who they believe have wronged them in the past, including other students and even teachers.

Students from Richard Montgomery High School dubbed the prank the Speed Camera "Pimping" game, according to a parent of a student enrolled at one of the high schools.

Originating from Wootton High School, the parent said, students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that "mimic" those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.

Students are even obtaining vehicles from their friends that are similar or identical to the make and model of the car owned by the targeted victim, according to the parent.

"This game is very disturbing," the parent said. "Especially since unsuspecting parents will also be victimized through receipt of unwarranted photo speed tickets.

The parent said that "our civil rights are exploited," and the entire premise behind the Speed Camera Program is called into question as a result of the growing this fad among students.

The Speed Camera Program was implemented in March of this year and used for the purpose of reducing traffic and pedestrian collisions in the county. Cameras are located in residential areas and school zones where the posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour or lower. A $40 citation is mailed to the owner of the car for violating the speed limit in these areas.

The Montgomery County Police said they have not seen or heard of this prank occurring but said they will keep an eye out for people committing the crime.

"I hope the public at large will complain loudly enough that local Montgomery County government officials will change their policy of using these cameras for monetary gain," the parent said. "The practice of sending speeding tickets to faceless recipients without any type of verification is unwarranted and an exploitation of our rights."

Edward Owusu, Assistant Principal at Wootton High School, said that he heard of local students pulling the prank when the school received a call from a parent informing them of its occurrence. "I have not heard of this happening among students at Wootton," Osuwu said. "It is unfortunate that kids have a lot of time on their hands that they can think of doing such a thing."

Montgomery County Council President Phil Andrews said that the issue is troubling in several respects. "I am concerned that someone could get hurt, first of all, because they are speeding in areas where they know speeding is a problem," he said.

Andrews also said that this could hurt the integrity of the Speed Camera Program. "It will cause potential problems for the Speed Camera Program in terms of the confidence in it," he said.

He said he is glad someone caught it before it becomes more widespread and he said he hopes that the word get out to the people participating in this that there will be consequences.

[Alyeska]

Those kids could very well have spelled death to speed cameras.

[CmdrWilkens]

Those kids could very well have spelled death to speed cameras.

I seriously doubt it. For all that the cameras piss folks off in a lot of their locations they actually do their job: slowing traffic down. Now they are a far from perfect system but I think for residents near cameras the proof will be in the pudding. Oh yes and there is the fact that, as the article fails to mention, you simply have to sign an affadavit that you were either a) Not in the vehicle or b) Incorrectly identified or otherwise not guilty and the penalty goes away. Given that the speed tickets don't come with points and are about half the monetary value of an officer issued citation I just can't see this prank doing anything more to kill the speed camera program than the use of anti-camera plate coatings.

Moreover given that having a fake license plate or otherwise falsifying a plate's recorded image is a MUCH more hefty fine I rather suspect that one or two stops for that offense will be the death of this prank.

[Phantasee]

Here in Edmonton (and I think all of Alberta), they decided that the existing red light cameras will also be used to catch speeders. I'm not entirely sure if they will only catch you while also running a red, or if those cameras will also catch you during greens, but I'm not too keen to find out (at least, not without adequate "preparation"). Basically, if you speed through one of those lights to avoid the camera, you will get both a red light ticket and a speeding ticket. That much is certain.

[Tsyroc]

Here in Edmonton (and I think all of Alberta), they decided that the existing red light cameras will also be used to catch speeders. I'm not entirely sure if they will only catch you while also running a red, or if those cameras will also catch you during greens, but I'm not too keen to find out (at least, not without adequate "preparation"). Basically, if you speed through one of those lights to avoid the camera, you will get both a red light ticket and a speeding ticket. That much is certain.

The red light cameras we have in Tucson will also take pictures of anyone driving through the intersection if they are speeding beyond a certain limit. I think it's currently set at 10 mph over the speed limit but it might be as low as 5 mph.

I got a ticket earlier this year from one of the red light cameras (not for speeding) and while I hate the fact that the city has blatantly stated that they are using them as a revenue stream the cameras are really helping to make some of our worst intersections much, much safer. These intersections are very wide. There's essentially no way for someone who is following the speed limit to clear the intersection from when the light turns yellow and when it changes to red. So the threat of the red light cameras has been causing people to treat the intersections in the cautious manor that they teach in driver's ed. Slow down slightly when you approach because you might have to stop etc... Also far more people are actually stopping for yellow lights now instead of stomping on the gas. It used to be that you seriously risked getting rear ended if you stopped for a yellow light around here. Now you are mostly at risk only if someone is following too close and/or if you slam on the breaks to stop.

As for the article, what those kids are doing is clever and pretty funny. Big time illegal and it would piss me off to no end if someone did that to me. It might not be too hard to fight since the cameras around here also take a video of your violation. You can see the video and still photos of your violation online (with a password they send you) and that might provide enough information to show that it wasn't you in the vehicle.

I should also mention that the ticket that I got in the mail also gave me 30 days to inform the court of the identity of the person driving my vehicle when I got the ticket if the person caught in the photo was not me (ie the person on the registration).

[Starglider]

Those kids could very well have spelled death to speed cameras.

If they tried it in the UK it would merely give the government one more reason to push their fascistastic 'all cars tracked all the time by GPS' scheme (which they have been trying to foist on the country for years now).

[JointStrikeFighter]

Those kids could very well have spelled death to speed cameras.

If they tried it in the UK it would merely give the government one more reason to push their fascistastic 'all cars tracked all the time by GPS' scheme (which they have been trying to foist on the country for years now).

OH NOES DAMN THOSE FASCISTS!

[CmdrWilkens]

Those kids could very well have spelled death to speed cameras.

If they tried it in the UK it would merely give the government one more reason to push their fascistastic 'all cars tracked all the time by GPS' scheme (which they have been trying to foist on the country for years now).

OH NOES DAMN THOSE FASCISTS!

Do you have anything substanative to add other than rolleyes at a statement which rather succintly points out that a device which would allow the government to track the movements of every private automobile certainly smacks of facism?

[Alyeska]

I got a ticket earlier this year from one of the red light cameras (not for speeding) and while I hate the fact that the city has blatantly stated that they are using them as a revenue stream the cameras are really helping to make some of our worst intersections much, much safer. These intersections are very wide. There's essentially no way for someone who is following the speed limit to clear the intersection from when the light turns yellow and when it changes to red.

That would never fly in Montana. Our laws state that if you enter the intersection before the light turns red, you are legal. So if you get half your car into the intersection before the light turns red, you have no run the stop light. Your system would turn every single one of those into a red light violation.

[CmdrWilkens]

I got a ticket earlier this year from one of the red light cameras (not for speeding) and while I hate the fact that the city has blatantly stated that they are using them as a revenue stream the cameras are really helping to make some of our worst intersections much, much safer. These intersections are very wide. There's essentially no way for someone who is following the speed limit to clear the intersection from when the light turns yellow and when it changes to red.

That would never fly in Montana. Our laws state that if you enter the intersection before the light turns red, you are legal. So if you get half your car into the intersection before the light turns red, you have no run the stop light. Your system would turn every single one of those into a red light violation.

It would very much suprise me if they actually ticket anybody who is partially in the intersection starting with the yellow. I know in MD, just as in most jurisdictions, the Red Light Cameras only activate after the light turns red and they only ticket a vehicle which is photographed as being short of the intersection when the light was already red.

[JointStrikeFighter]

If they tried it in the UK it would merely give the government one more reason to push their fascistastic 'all cars tracked all the time by GPS' scheme (which they have been trying to foist on the country for years now).

OH NOES DAMN THOSE FASCISTS!

Do you have anything substanative to add other than rolleyes at a statement which rather succintly points out that a device which would allow the government to track the movements of every private automobile certainly smacks of facism?

Every time there is a thread about CCTV or whatnot in england someone jumps in an says OMG ENGLAND IS A FASCIST STATE.

PS. it isnt.

[aerius]

These intersections are very wide. There's essentially no way for someone who is following the speed limit to clear the intersection from when the light turns yellow and when it changes to red.

I think that points to a traffic light timing issue more than anything else. There was an article in Car & Driver in the last year or so on the subject photo radar & red light cameras. One of the things they noted was that certain cities with red light cameras were cutting down the duration of the yellow light to increase the number of tickets given out for running red lights. It then noted that NHTSA (I think) studies had shown that a longer yellow light reduced accidents at intersections, so these red light cameras combined with faster yellows didn't reduce accidents at all.

[CmdrWilkens]

Do you have anything substanative to add other than rolleyes at a statement which rather succintly points out that a device which would allow the government to track the movements of every private automobile certainly smacks of facism?

Every time there is a thread about CCTV or whatnot in england someone jumps in an says OMG ENGLAND IS A FASCIST STATE.

PS. it isnt.

Except that Starglider rather clearly pointed out that the intended regulation (tracking system on all cars) is what is considered facist. Instead of actually addressing that statement you just threw out a rolleyes and added nothing.

Let me try this as a sequence:

1) Article posted about teens pranking with speed cameras in MD
2) Starglider posts about how the actions of the pranksters would be used to push legislation to install tracking software into all vehicles if it had occured in the UK calling such actions "fasciastastic".

At this point you had two options, you could
3a) Make a post pointing out either how this paticular piece of legislation doesn't indicate facism throughout the government or some other such substanative rebuttal. Whether or not there is evidence to do this I don't know.
or you could do what you did
3b) Post a one line smiley spam reply with no substance just sarcasm


This is N&P guess which option you should have chosen?

[General Zod]

Except that Starglider rather clearly pointed out that the intended regulation (tracking system on all cars) is what is considered facist. Instead of actually addressing that statement you just threw out a rolleyes and added nothing.

Let me try this as a sequence:

1) Article posted about teens pranking with speed cameras in MD
2) Starglider posts about how the actions of the pranksters would be used to push legislation to install tracking software into all vehicles if it had occured in the UK calling such actions "fasciastastic".

At this point you had two options, you could
3a) Make a post pointing out either how this paticular piece of legislation doesn't indicate facism throughout the government or some other such substanative rebuttal. Whether or not there is evidence to do this I don't know.
or you could do what you did
3b) Post a one line smiley spam reply with no substance just sarcasm


This is N&P guess which option you should have chosen?

Isn't Starglider's post about the gps tracking being fascist tantamount to some Republitard screaching "B-b-but it's socialistl!1!!1" without providing a shred of reasoning as to why it's inherently a bad thing? I can see gps tracking in cars being equivalent to 911 locater services in cell phones, really.

[JointStrikeFighter]

I misread Starglider's "fasciastastic" as just plain fascist. Conceeded.

[Sea Skimmer]

Isn't Starglider's post about the gps tracking being fascist tantamount to some Republitard screaching "B-b-but it's socialistl!1!!1" without providing a shred of reasoning as to why it's inherently a bad thing? I can see gps tracking in cars being equivalent to 911 locater services in cell phones, really.

So a tracker that functions only when you call 911 (thus legally obligating the police to contact you) is the same as a device which records your movements and speed constantly? You know why some people don’t like that? Because its giving the government more unbalanced power, that’s why, and some of us don’t think we should need more reason then that to object to something.

If you think real time vehicle tracking is a good idea, then why not just cut out the middle man, and require every person in the country to carry a GPS tracking device with them at all times? We could even implant an RFID chip into every person the tracker would detect, this way if some poor child is kidnapped and the kidnapper ditches the tracker we instantly know something’s wrong. The chip would also act as foolproof personal identification.

I mean… what have you the law abiding citizen got to fear right? A government would never abuse any new colossal power it was handed would it? I mean just look at warrentless wiretapping in the US, no one unjustly went to jail from that, and it might even have helped catch one, maybe even two whole terrorists in five years. So its all okay. The RFID chip meanwhile is no more invasive then a government mandated vaccination, the tracker would be compact and unobtrusive, and no ones being unfairly singled out as drivers would be by vehicle tracking. No doubt will exist that the tracker is on you, unlike a car which might be driven by someone else to your determent, and its doing the same thing. I mean never mind the fact that we existed for a million years without these devices, so much can be gained in terms of health and safety that you’d wonder why anyone should even think of objecting?

That’s what this comes down too, some people, like you apparently, think that we should have to come up with a reason not to let a government do something, some of us believe that government is a life sucking if necessary abomination which must be controlled and which must justify everything it does for very specific reasons, not the most generalized ones possible. Now you can have whatever opinion you want, but which of those lines of thought sounds like a shorter road to totalitarian rule?

It’s not like the Italian Fascists or the German Nazis or the Army of Imperial Japan just kicked in the door in one bum rush (they all sure tried! Italy came closest) and destroyed any pretext of democracy. They built up over time, they invented justifications; they shouted down opponents and grabbed power in increments whenever they could. Especially they used examples of individual actions as indicators of national trends even when real statistics said the complete opposite.

It’s a trend the world has seen for the last century as we become more and more interconnected to demand faster results from life. This has meant demands for faster and surer results from government, which quickly spirals down to less talk, more action, more powerful government. More disturbingly, it means more power to the executive, less to the legislative, with the hope that the judicial will sort it all out and spare the innocent. Sometimes that works. But when do you draw the line? Or do you draw a line at all?

Me though, I don’t think Britain is fascist or going fascist at the moment, its just a peculiar island nation turned nanny state with delusions of still being a world power when it refuses to even fund the most vital and simple improvements for its military. With luck they’ll grow out of it. Some would argue the trend is already clear, and it won’t be that long before independent European militaries cease to exist, and the UK is drawn into superstate which is simply adapted without a public vote (seriously, EU leadership has openly talked about doing just that after the constitutional referendums were all defeated). I guess then the public would gain some protection from the shear inertia of such a massive government system.

[General Zod]

>snip<

That’s what this comes down too, some people, like you apparently, think that we should have to come up with a reason not to let a government do something, some of us believe that government is a life sucking if necessary abomination which must be controlled and which must justify everything it does for very specific reasons, not the most generalized ones possible. Now you can have whatever opinion you want, but which of those lines of thought sounds like a shorter road to totalitarian rule?

I think it's pretty hilarious that you're trying to argue that you don't need any evidence to prove that something is a bad idea as long as it's the government who's doing it on a message board where you're supposed to back up your opinions with, you know, actual evidence. Especially when there's already a number of good arguments in favor of installing tracking devices in cars so long as proper regulations were implemented.

[Starglider]

JSF can STFU as he doesn't live here and isn't in a position to judge the political consequences of implementing this scheme. The tracking is supposed to be primarily for usage charging purposes but has also been touted as a way to allow police to track stolen cars and virtually eliminate speeding. Now if we were under a liberalising government I would only be moderately annoyed at the enormous cost and likely poor reliability of this (large government IT projects never turn out well). It would also be really annoying since the variable pricing would mean you'd have to constantly think 'can I drive down here or will I get billed extra for it' (the intended outcome from the government's point of view, but frankly the money would be much better spent directly on upgrading the transport infrastructure - more trams would be good). It's 'fascistastic' because having complete logs of who has driven where and when is a great tool for intimidating and harassing the population, and the current Brown government has a frankly awful track record on this. Brown has been constantly pushing for expanded police powers and turning a blind eye to blatant abuses of those powers, and I have no doubt that the highly searchable database that system would produce would also be abused. I personally have been arguing against the 'UK is Fascist!!!' libertarians on places such as HPCA for some time, but while I still defend the UK after the last year of depressing news stories it's hard to deny that Brown is an authoritarian asshole.

If you think real time vehicle tracking is a good idea, then why not just cut out the middle man, and require every person in the country to carry a GPS tracking device with them at all times? We could even implant an RFID chip into every person the tracker would detect, this way if some poor child is kidnapped and the kidnapper ditches the tracker we instantly know something’s wrong. The chip would also act as foolproof personal identification.

We're getting there. More and more new cellphones have GPS, I bet in the next law dealing with phone tapping there will be something about collecting location logs and making them available for government inspection. The Labor government has been trying to push a mandatory national identity card scheme with RFID for the last few years. These things only sound good to hopeless optimists who assume that the level of abuse of this information (and there is always some abuse) will be negligable. I'm not a government-hating libertarian, but this stuff really is dangerous, particularly with someone like Brown in charge, and I just don't see any pressing need for it.

[General Zod]

JSF can STFU as he doesn't live here and isn't in a position to judge the political consequences of implementing this scheme. The tracking is supposed to be primarily for usage charging purposes but has also been touted as a way to allow police to track stolen cars and virtually eliminate speeding. Now if we were under a liberalising government I would only be moderately annoyed at the enormous cost and likely poor reliability of this (large government IT projects never turn out well). It would also be really annoying since the variable pricing would mean you'd have to constantly think 'can I drive down here or will I get billed extra for it' (the intended outcome from the government's point of view, but frankly the money would be much better spent directly on upgrading the transport infrastructure - more trams would be good). It's 'fascistastic' because having complete logs of who has driven where and when is a great tool for intimidating and harassing the population, and the current Brown government has a frankly awful track record on this. Brown has been constantly pushing for expanded police powers and turning a blind eye to blatant abuses of those powers, and I have no doubt that the highly searchable database that system would produce would also be abused. I personally have been arguing against the 'UK is Fascist!!!' libertarians on places such as HPCA for some time, but while I still defend the UK after the last year of depressing news stories it's hard to deny that Brown is an authoritarian asshole.

If they keep records of all travel logs, then I'd definitely agree that there would be room for abuse. I couldn't see justifying a need to do anymore than maintain current realtime positions without logs, really.

We're getting there. More and more new cellphones have GPS, I bet in the next law dealing with phone tapping there will be something about collecting location logs and making them available for government inspection. The Labor government has been trying to push a mandatory national identity card scheme with RFID for the last few years. These things only sound good to hopeless optimists who assume that the level of abuse of this information (and there is always some abuse) will be negligable. I'm not a government-hating libertarian, but this stuff really is dangerous, particularly with someone like Brown in charge, and I just don't see any pressing need for it.

Faster response times to emergencies and an easier time tracking theft would be a great application for it, but I will agree it'd need a massive amount of oversight and regulation in order to curtail abuse.

[JointStrikeFighter]

JSF can STFU as he doesn't live here and isn't in a position to judge the political consequences of implementing this scheme.

Have you ever commented on the potential political ramifications of events in US Politics? If yes then shut the fuck up fucktard.

[Sea Skimmer]

I think it's pretty hilarious that you're trying to argue that you don't need any evidence to prove that something is a bad idea as long as it's the government who's doing it on a message board where you're supposed to back up your opinions with, you know, actual evidence. Especially when there's already a number of good arguments in favor of installing tracking devices in cars so long as proper regulations were implemented.

Yeah, regulations will save us all, just like regulations saved us from Bush’s wiretapping, and stopped the British government from sending the SAS to execute suspected Irish terrorists? I’m sure Hitler’s rise to power and assumption of dictatorship crossed every T too. The entire fucking point is that it is and should be the government’s job to do the justifying in a free society and that the scale is exponential because a government’s lust for more power will never cease. You know it really should be a red flag to a free citizen when you think a plan to expand government power can only work with heavy regulation. How much manpower and money is going to be spent on that regulation? Did you forget it’s that same government the regulation is supposed to protect you from that will set that regulatory budget, and use its personal to implement it?

If they keep records of all travel logs, then I'd definitely agree that there would be room for abuse. I couldn't see justifying a need to do anymore than maintain current realtime positions without logs, really.

Then you don’t understand the point of the system. The main point for the plan was to charge people based on how much and where they drive as a tax. Such a system could not reasonably work without keeping full logs for at least one billing period, more realistically at least one fiscal year. Indeed as a British citizen you’d have to be a lot more crazy to accept the system if it did not keep logs, because then they could bill you anything they wanted and you’d have no records to fall back on as means of proving otherwise. Since the system is a tax, its oversight will be funded by raising the tax higher. The basic costs of installing the system and administering will also fall right on the citizen. That is all money wasted; no matter what you opinion of the system is, because it is going into creating more bureaucracy, not programs which actually do something productive.

A government of a free society must at the minimal 1) justify that a clear and present reason exists to consider an expansion of power, 2) justify that this expansion the most effective way to address that reason, and that includes addressing hidden costs like needing ten billion dollars in oversight, 3) justify that the expansion is a reasonable proposal. The citizen doesn’t have to do shit but be skeptical, and any other system is very much the road to a totalitarian state at worst, a bloated ineffective government at best. If you don’t do this then you might as well ask yourself why you don’t buy every last thing you see in stores that you could think of a valid use for…

BTW, if you want to track a stolen vehicle, which is just a tacked on excuse for the British tracking system, then just buy yourself Lojack. It works in places GPS won’t, it has no fees after you buy it, and it only functions after you report your car stolen to the manufacture’s database.

[Tsyroc]

I got a ticket earlier this year from one of the red light cameras (not for speeding) and while I hate the fact that the city has blatantly stated that they are using them as a revenue stream the cameras are really helping to make some of our worst intersections much, much safer. These intersections are very wide. There's essentially no way for someone who is following the speed limit to clear the intersection from when the light turns yellow and when it changes to red.

That would never fly in Montana. Our laws state that if you enter the intersection before the light turns red, you are legal. So if you get half your car into the intersection before the light turns red, you have no run the stop light. Your system would turn every single one of those into a red light violation.

There's still a bit of leeway in how the cameras work. In fact you can see the marks in the pavement where the trigger mechanisms are. It's just that they aren't very far into the intersection. Maybe about 2-3 feet past the far edge of the pedestrian crosswalk. Supposedly you aren't supposed to get a ticket if you were in the intersection before the light turned red. There are some quirks to trailing turn arrows though. It's best to not enter the intersection until the arrow comes on otherwise you might be sent a ticket for being in the intersection when it turned red (but before the green arrow). I know plenty of people were complaining about that at the remedial driver's class I had to take to keep from getting points on my license.

A lot of our other intersections almost require you to sit in the intersection until the light is red and the oncoming cars stop so you can turn.

Mainly, the intersections with the traffic cameras are huge and it's insane to try and beat a light. The cameras seem to be encouraging people to stop trying. It certainly makes the intersections less aggravating because you don't have to wait nearly as often for cross traffic to get out of the way when your traffic signal has already turned green.

In my case I thought I was in the intersection when the light changed so I was trying to finish my turn and get out of the way. After seeing the video I realized that I was not actually in the intersection at the time the light changed. I had been paying too much attention to the vehicle in front of me that was blocking my view of the signal directly in front of me. So when it turned and I saw the light was yellow I thought I was further along than I actually was.

[Tsyroc]

These intersections are very wide. There's essentially no way for someone who is following the speed limit to clear the intersection from when the light turns yellow and when it changes to red.

I think that points to a traffic light timing issue more than anything else. There was an article in Car & Driver in the last year or so on the subject photo radar & red light cameras. One of the things they noted was that certain cities with red light cameras were cutting down the duration of the yellow light to increase the number of tickets given out for running red lights. It then noted that NHTSA (I think) studies had shown that a longer yellow light reduced accidents at intersections, so these red light cameras combined with faster yellows didn't reduce accidents at all.

I could totally believe that of Tucson. I've thought for awhile that a lot of our accidents could have been avoided if the yellow lights were longer. I wouldn't be surprised if the intersections where it's most obvious were the first ones to get the traffic cameras.

Then again, Arizona drivers suck and many would just keep on going through the intersection as long as the light wasn't red.

[Edi]

Regarding the OP, I wouldn't want to be any one of those teens if caught doing that shit. Falsifying license plates is a crime, though I don't know severity. Bad enough in itself and likely something the authorities are not going to really appreciate.

But it's the other stuff. Conspiracy to frame people for a crime they did not commit and then actually carrying it out, which results in the framed person getting a criminal record and resulting in financial damage (increased insurance fees, possible denial of insurance, possible loss of driver's license etc) sounds like being right up there in felony territory to me. And if caught, the fake license plates idnetify the target, leaving the perps open to full scale retaliation in civil court as well as the criminal one. So anyone who gets caught doing that shit is likely to get fucked up, down and sideways without lube and they will deserve every bit of it.

[General Zod]

Then you don’t understand the point of the system. The main point for the plan was to charge people based on how much and where they drive as a tax. Such a system could not reasonably work without keeping full logs for at least one billing period, more realistically at least one fiscal year. Indeed as a British citizen you’d have to be a lot more crazy to accept the system if it did not keep logs, because then they could bill you anything they wanted and you’d have no records to fall back on as means of proving otherwise. Since the system is a tax, its oversight will be funded by raising the tax higher. The basic costs of installing the system and administering will also fall right on the citizen. That is all money wasted; no matter what you opinion of the system is, because it is going into creating more bureaucracy, not programs which actually do something productive.

All this ranting and you FINALLY get to the whole fucking point of my post! Explaining why it's fascist and/or a bad idea! See? It wasn't that hard to actually address the meat of it, but for some reason you instead decided to use it as an excuse to go on some insipid diatrabe about human rights while ignoring what I was asking and pretending I actually supported all sorts of positions I never actually claimed to for some bizarre reason, but I guess anyone who doesn't completely oppose giving the government more authority MUST be totally clueless about basic civil rights in your world or something. (Of course, Starglider already managed to answer my point with less than a page of ravings about something that's completely unrelated, not that it really matters by now).