Current Event: Rigged Red Lights
Summary
In Italy, public officials have been abusing their authority to make more money from the public by making reds come earlier than they are supposed to (a shorter duration yellow than legally allowed). This means that, since they use cameras to automatically give tickets to people running red lights (see security review of automated traffic cameras for a different look at that aspect of it), they can make money off residents who are given inadequate time to come to a stop, and thus must run a red.
Who Was Hurt By It
Drivers have been economically affected, with 1439 people caught over two months (the fine is 150 Euros, or roughly $190 at current exchange rate). Prior to that, at most 900 people would have been expected to be caught assuming the maximum number of tickets normally given were given out per day (this means a 50% increase over a value previously considered unrealistic to obtain!).
The public has also suffered a reduced amount of trust in the transparency and honesty of their government–a system which was out of their control and which they were mostly powerless to oppose or investigate was found to have been compromised in such a way that people were labelled as both criminals and charged unfair money.
Who Did It
109 officials are being investigated with regards to it, although the programmer himself is the current person taking most of the blame in the news. Also involved were: police, local government officials, and the heads of seven different companies. Roughly 300 municipalities and a host of different companies were profiting from this scheme.
What’s Being Done
Currently a criminal case is being pursued against those responsible. However, this does not really address the problem–the faulty systems are still in use, and ultimately fixing them should be the first priority. Although the programmer responsible has a lawyer proclaiming his innocence, ultimately a review of the cameras themselves will need to be done.
Long Term View
This adds yet another complaint against automated traffic cameras. Many object on privacy reasons, but this also adds concerns about faulty software, either maliciously or through incompetence. Although it is unlikely that Italy will suddenly abandon automated traffic cameras, it may cause them to take a second look at them, at the least, and hopefully be more open in the future. In all likelihood, however, they will continue to use a closed source solution, and will merely (hopefully) patch this problem.
Finally, this also adds another potential weakness to the list in the security review–corrupt officials who view it as a way of making more money.
See also: http://cubist.cs.washington.edu/Security/2009/02/05/security-review-automated-traffic-enforcement
Comment by Ryan McElroy
February 6, 2009 @ 9:49 am
Given the financial incentives behind the installation of red light cameras (usually under the guise of “making traffic safer”) this is not that surprising to me. After all, traffic and parking cops are never cut during a recession — its just a way of collecting a little extra money through what is essentially a randomly distributed arbitrary regressive tax, much like speeding or other minor traffic infractions (rolling stops, broken head lights, etc).
This seems to harp on two themes — first, people are motivated by the incentive structures they are faced with. In this case, city officials saw a way to make more money for their important government programs, and thought it would be okay to charge a little extra money from people who were cutting the light too close anyway. Second, whenever a government hides something it is doing from its own citizens, no good ever comes out of it. Transparency in government is the best defense against this kind of abuse of power.
Comment by vkirst
February 6, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
I’m curious to hear opinions on what would be the best way to fix this problem. There will be corruption regardless of technology, so it seems like this is not necessarily a problem with the software than it is a problem with the infrastructure. One solution would be to use open source code so the public can evaluate the code for mischief. This of course is not a solution to all problems, as we have talked about in class and in the textbook.
Another suggestion may be to get rid of the cameras altogether, though certainly cameras do help enforce traffic laws. Perhaps there could be another technology that would help enforce traffic laws that doesn’t have the same problems as the ones seen now?