[Carlos]

Increasing the profit in the onerous and largely corrupt speeding ticket system while helping to write more tickets is a great example of technology not always being a good thing. I wonter how long until the mag reader is used to just charge the fine to your bank card?

I wonder how the racial profiling data will be used. Do you compare it to the total population, or to the rate of people committing crime by race. Wouldn't the latter be more logical, yet if the rate of stops is skewed by race, where would you get a true number?

[Carlos]

Increasing the profit in the onerous and largely corrupt speeding ticket system while helping to write more tickets is a great example of technology not always being a good thing. I wonter how long until the mag reader is used to just charge the fine to your bank card?

I wonder how the racial profiling data will be used. Do you compare it to the total population, or to the rate of people committing crime by race. Wouldn't the latter be more logical, yet if the rate of stops is skewed by race, where would you get a true number?

[Steve Jordan]

(I thought the profiling discussion was geting a bit heavy, too.)

Hey, I'm all for anything that makes the cops more efficient at their jobs. Hopefully they'll spend more time doing it, and actually cut back on speeding, reduce accidents, save lives, etc. In areas like DC where people habitually drive 20+MPH over the speed limit, pedestrians are considered "fair game," and daily accidents back up traffic for dozens of miles, any use of technology to control rampant driving insanity is fine with me.

[Steve Jordan]

Increasing efficiency in a corrupt system is often a great way to clean it up and reduce corruption... once the public realizes that corruption is getting more efficient, and takes action.

As far as onerous goes: To paraphrase an old quote, "Laws are the price paid for civilization."

[Carlos]

Your point about efficiency is a good one; here in my city of Phoenix, the speed cameras are getting too efficient and people are actively working to beat them now.

The pedestrian safety scenario would be a much better application of this technology. I recently saw something on Discovery about police who watch for crosswalk violations in busy downtown areas and write tickets. They say they can't possibly write enough to make a difference. Unlike speeding, this has a direct corelation to safety. Unfortunately there is also less profit it in, so they were lamenting lack of support and funding.

I was unable to find anything on the racial data usage with a quick search. I would hope it wouldn't turn into a politically correct mandate to stop people of all races equally. Again here in my city, in most areas, crime commission by the Mexican population outweighs the general white population by triple (before you cry "racist," I'm hispanic myself, and this isn't politics, it's just hard data). So I would hope that there would be more police contacts with them, otherwise, you'll be stopping two white people just to get your quota of hispanics. Reverse racism is an ugly thing too.

This is an interesting thread. Usually I assume technology is good. But this has raised some intriguing questions in my mind about its application and possible far-reaching effects.

[cherring]

In my country the blood bank uses racial profiling as part of their testing for HIV+ donors.

Fairly recently our president donated blood and it very publically was destroyed because he did not fill out the necessary paperwork and is black.

At least it applies to everyone.

P.S. regarding the nature of this post, I only read further because it had racial profiling in the blurb on the front page. I'm actually relieved to see that racial profiling is used to prove the police force is not using racial profiling. Although not ideal, it beats the alternative.