David makes some very good points in his first main paragraph below, 
with which I concur (and this is not unrelated to my being a cyclist 
too). However, it does indicate again the need for nuanced studies of 
so-called resistance to surveillance. Surveillance is not sinister as 
such; resistance is not laudable as such. The more surveillance studies 
can get away from knee-jerk paranoid responses to all forms of 
identification, monitoring, tracking etc. and the more everyday 
responses to surveillance can be analyzed in properly political and 
social-ethical frames, the better.

dl

On 31-Oct-06, at 2:34 AM, D F J Wood wrote:

> Of course this is surveillance, and of course these are automated 
> socio-technical systems, but speed cameras are there primarily because 
> speed is a major factor in serious road accidents. If you cycle 
> everywhere, as I do, then you are made very much aware of how badly, 
> how dangerously and how fast people drive, and as a cyclist I wish 
> more drivers were prosecuted for speeding. As Clive Norris remarks in 
> his recent expert report for our Report on the Surveillance Society 
> for the UK Information Commissioner, these are one of the few pieces 
> of surveillance technology that unequivocally work in their primary 
> purposes (catching drivers who are breaking the law and endagering the 
> lives of others). However many drivers do not see speeding as 'crime' 
> (or indeed as being wrong at all) - most drivers think they know best 
> how fast they are able to go - however this is an egotistical 
> delusion: there's been plenty of research that has shown that drivers 
> (and especially male drivers) overestimate their abilities. I reckon 
> most of the opposition to speed cameras stems from anger at the macho 
> delusion of competance being challenged...
>  
> The key questions are whether cameras are the best method, whether 
> they are in the right places, and whether the punishments are set at 
> the right levels and are of the right nature...
>  
> Oh, and BTW, Paul Smith of Safespeed (sic) is a lunatic, who has in 
> the past encouraged people to use the theft of dead people's 
> identities as a means of avoiding speeding fines, publishes false 
> claims, blames victims for deaths caused by cars, and who hates 
> cyclists. The press is finally starting to take less notice of him 
> here now they have generally realised he has no basis for his 
> arguments...
>  
> We should certainly not be celebrating this as some kind of 
> progressive resistance. At best it's a kind of Poujardist populism...
>  
> David.
>
> Dr David Murakami Wood
> Lecturer
>
> School of Architecture Planning and Landscape
> University of Newcastle upon Tyne
> NE1 7RU
> UK
>
> tel: +44 (0)191 222 7801
> fax: +44 (0)191 222 6008
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>
> GURU website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/guru/
> Personal website: http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/d.f.j.wood/
>
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Research and teaching on surveillance 
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of  Torin Monahan
>> Sent: 30 October 2006 22:23
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: NY TIMES: Speed Cameras in UK
>>
>> Group,
>>
>> Here's another colorful example of counter-surveillance... Check out 
>> the website referenced too: http://www.speedcam.co.uk/index2.htm.  
>> (Thanks to Christopher Toumey for bringing the story to my 
>> attention.)
>>
>> Torin
>> _____________
>>
>> NY TIMES
>> October 27, 2006
>> Kelvedon Hatch Journal
>> Cameras Catch Speeding Britons and Lots of Grief
>> By SARAH LYALL
>>
>> KELVEDON HATCH, England, Oct. 24 — To drive in Britain is to measure 
>> out your trip in speed cameras. As inevitable as road signs and as 
>> implacable as the meanest state trooper, they lurk everywhere, the 
>> government’s main weapon against impatient drivers.
>>
>> It is a shame that so many people hate them.
>>
>> Among the ways that motorists have made this clear: spraying the 
>> cameras with paint; knocking them over; covering them in festive 
>> wrapping paper and garbage bags; digging them up; shooting, hammering 
>> and firebombing them; festooning them with burning tires; and filling 
>> their casings with self-expanding insulation foam that, when 
>> activated, blows them apart.
>>
>> Visual examples can be seen on the Web site of a vigilante group 
>> called Motorists Against Detection, which displays color photographs 
>> of smashed, defaced and burned-out cameras — pornography for the 
>> anti-camera movement.
>>
>> In a nation that is estimated to have four million surveillance 
>> cameras — the most per capita in the world, civil liberties groups 
>> say — there are currently as many as 6,000 spots for speed cameras, 
>> in the country and in the city, on highways, urban arteries, suburban 
>> streets and rural lanes.
>>
>> “Speed cameras can’t detect tailgating, bad driving, drink driving or 
>> drug driving,” said a spokesman for the group, explaining his 
>> objections. An occasional contributor to British radio debates about 
>> traffic regulations, he uses the name Captain Gatso — after the most 
>> common form of speed camera — because, he says, he wants to avoid 
>> arrest.
>>
>> The government does not keep figures on camera vandalism, so it is 
>> impossible to confirm Captain Gatso’s claim that the group, known as 
>> M.A.D., has attacked more than 1,000 cameras, or that its members are 
>> “grown-up people, with normal jobs, who are cheesed off,” rather than 
>> hooligans engaging in “willy-nilly childish vandalism.”
>>
>> But if there is a battle between motorists and speed cameras, the 
>> cameras are surely winning.
>>
>> In this little hamlet in Brentwood, about an hour northeast of 
>> London, one particularly reviled camera — installed to catch people 
>> exceeding the 40 m.p.h. speed limit on a busy suburban road — has 
>> been set on fire three times in the past year, and three times it has 
>> been repaired.
>>
>> Now, about $66,000 later, it is back on the job again, new and 
>> improved, swathed in protective fireproof housing. “Touch wood, we 
>> haven’t had any incidents since,” said Rachel Whitelock, liaison for 
>> the Essex Safety Camera Partnership, which installs and maintains the 
>> county’s camera sites: 96 stationary spots; 160 stretches of road 
>> policed by cameras whose locations change; and 26 traffic light 
>> cameras for red lights.
>>
>> The government says the cameras have been a resounding success, 
>> reducing speed by an average of 2.2 miles per hour at speed-camera 
>> sites, reducing the numbers of people speeding at the sites by 31 
>> percent and reducing by 42 percent the number of people killed or 
>> seriously injured at the sites. In public opinion surveys, they point 
>> out, a majority of Britons say they support having cameras on the 
>> roads. But theory is one thing; practice is another. People like to 
>> drive fast, and they bridle at being told what to do. About two 
>> million are caught by the speed cameras a year, generating more than 
>> $200 million in fines.
>>
>> “It’s incredibly difficult to get to people to come to terms with 
>> slowing down here,” said Francis Ashton, the road safety manager for 
>> the city of Nottingham. “In the States, you have much slower speed 
>> limits, and there’s more of a culture of sticking to the speed 
>> limit.”
>>
>> The cameras detect cars that exceed the speed limit, often with radar 
>> technology, and take flash photographs of the license plates so a 
>> ticket can be issued. A speeding offense adds three points to a 
>> driver’s license. Because drivers who amass 12 points in three years 
>> face six-month driving bans, people go to enormous lengths to avoid 
>> detection.
>>
>> In a recent case, 28-year-old Craig Moore, an engineer from South 
>> Yorkshire, ran into trouble when, in the words of a spokesman for the 
>> Greater Manchester Police, “instead of just accepting that he had 
>> been caught traveling above the speed limit, Moore decided to blow 
>> the camera apart.”
>>
>> Using thermite, a pyrotechnic substance often used in underwater 
>> welding, Mr. Moore succeeded in wrecking the camera, but its hard 
>> drive survived — along with videotape of his van driving toward it 
>> and then driving away, as the picture dissolved in a cloud of fiery 
>> sparks. He was sentenced to four months in jail.
>>
>> In another case, John Hopwood, a motorist from Stockport who was 
>> caught speeding twice in one trip by two different cameras, tried to 
>> avert the second ticket by taking a 40 m.p.h. sign from a road in 
>> Manchester and reinstalling it on a 30 m.p.h. road in Rochdale, 10 
>> miles away. He was caught and sentenced to 56 days in jail.
>>
>> Even if they agree that speed limits are necessary, many motorists 
>> resent having to obey them all the time. They say they hate being 
>> constantly on the lookout for cameras and accuse the government of 
>> treating them like cash machines.
>>
>> “It’s just a road tax,” said Ian Murray, a sales clerk at an 
>> army-navy surplus store in Kelvedon Hatch. He understands the need 
>> for cameras in residential areas, he said, but feels aggrieved when 
>> he sees them on the highway, where the national speed limit is 70 
>> m.p.h. but where the fast lane generally clips along at 80 m.p.h. or 
>> higher.
>>
>> “What happens is you see the speed camera, and you put on your anchor 
>> and drop your speed, and then when you get past it you speed up 
>> again,” Mr. Murray said. Also, he said, the cameras cause people to 
>> brake suddenly, endangering themselves and the people behind them.
>>
>> Paul Smith, head of an anti-camera group called the Safe Speed Road 
>> Safety Campaign, said that drivers spent so much time scouring the 
>> roadside for cameras that they forget to pay attention to the road.
>>
>> “We’ve got a nation of people who have one eye looking out for the 
>> next speed camera, another looking for a speed limit sign and another 
>> looking at the speedometer — which is a bit of a shame, when you only 
>> have two eyes,” he said.
>>
>> Technology has moved on considerably since the 1990s, when the first 
>> speed cameras were installed in Britain. Now, in addition to the 
>> standard cameras that photograph the speeding cars’ license plates, 
>> there are cameras that can accurately photograph drivers’ faces — so 
>> that they cannot claim someone else was driving at the time — and 
>> cameras that work in teams, calculating average speeds along a 
>> stretch of road.
>>
>> Of course, for every ingenious new camera, there is an ingenious new 
>> camera-thwarting device. These include constantly-updating G.P.S. 
>> equipment that alerts drivers to camera locations and a special 
>> material that, when sprayed on a license plate, is said to make it 
>> impervious to flash photographs.
>>
>> There are also the low-tech methods of covering a license plate with 
>> mud or altering its letters with black electrical tape.
>>
>> But in the end, the effort is not worth it, said Vincent Yearley, a 
>> spokesman for the Institute of Advanced Motorists, a road-safety 
>> organization.
>>
>> “A lot of drivers feel alienated by speed cameras,” Mr. Yearley said. 
>> “But the best way to deal with a speed camera is simply to comply 
>> with the law, and not to set fire to it.”
>>
>> Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
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>>  
>>
>>
>> Torin Monahan
>> Assistant Professor
>> Arizona State University
>> School of Justice & Social Inquiry
>> [log in to unmask] | www.torinmonahan.com 
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