> Not a reason to violate privacy IMO, especially when at the time this was done these people were only suspected of fraud, not convicted.
Well you can't really wait until the conviction to collect evidence in a criminal trial.
There are several stages that law enforcement must go through to get a warrant like this. The police didn't literally phone up Microsoft and ask for the keys to someone's laptop on a hunch. They had to have already confiscated the laptop, which means they had to have collected enough early evidence to prove suspicion and get a judge to sign off and so on.
They had a warrant. That's enough. Nobody at Microsoft is going to be willing to go to jail for contempt to protect fraudsters grifting off of the public taxpayer. Would you?
For context for international readers, the UK has a lot of speed cameras and other automated ways to give out fines.
These get sent by snailmail to the 'owner'[simplification] of the vehicle using a government database. The owner must then, within a deadline, say who was driving the vehicle at that date and time.
If the owner fails to say who was driving, they have committed a criminal offence, and will be fined.
It looks like Tesla has in a bunch of cases not declared the driver on time. I'm willing to bet that's due to them just being slack with records in some cases - for example loaner cars, offences which occurred on the same day as a sale from person A to person B, etc.
18 offences across the whole fleet of >100k cars isn't much really, when you consider ~30% of motorists receive a fine in any given year.
It's a ludicrous system – I've experienced it first hand.
If for some reason the letter isn't delivered (or indeed sent), the original offence is scrapped and a new offence issued for Failure to provide information.
Frustratingly, there is no obligation on the Police to provide proof of posting, and per the law, it is deemed received once sent.
The primary alternative is to have signed delivery, in which case some people will simply refuse to sign it and thus prevent delivery. Signed delivery is the way the postal service usually differentiate between normal delivery which has some kind of error rate which the postal service do not take responsibility for, and the signed service which usually carry some insurance (up to a maximum) of delivery.
The US has their Service of process which is commonly seen in movies, which is often made into a joke in comedies.
A much older system is the one where by law people had to put a notice in the news paper, sometimes multiple notices, and then that was considered enough proof of delivering the notice.
It would be an interesting conversation to philosophy how a future system should be designed that can't be refused, where delivery to the recipient is guarantied, and where the sender and the delivery service must produce proof of their parts.
Perhaps, though I’m fairly confident that given enough thought we could fairly quickly come up with a much better process; and without the risk of convicting individuals because of unsent or undelivered post.
My father worked on the early 90's contract that implemented the speed camera's on the motorway. The future road map was to make these digitally automated. Dark Fibre was laid but the plans were scrapped as the government saw it as a waste of money. This is why we are stuck with the ludicrous system.
For a long while if you were changing lanes while speeding through the camera it couldn't capture the plate. Again the government didn't care. Of course now resolved with the archaic future technology we have now.
I'm not sure what the technology by which the data from the speed camera is downloaded has to do with identifying the driver?
The reason for this "ludicrous" procedure is that the police can identify the owner of the car (based on the license plate), but not the driver, so the owner has to say who was driving. And all of this has to be done in a way that will hold up in court, therefore snail mail. The same procedure exists in Germany (of course, the bureaucracy here has its ludicrous sides too) and I bet in other countries as well.
In Finland automatic camera fines (they're not exactly fines but I have no idea how to translate "liikennevirhemaksu" so work with me here) are the problem of whoever owns the car. If the owner wasn't the one driving the car, then it's up to them to inform the police who was actually driving
Interesting! If I translate it from Finnish to German, Google says something along the lines of "traffic violation fee". Usually you can't punish someone for something someone else has done, but maybe if you call it a fee (which doesn't imply punishment) instead of a fine, you can (at least in Finland)?
Reminds me of the fines for using public transport without a ticket in Germany: they're not called fines either, but "erhöhtes Beförderungsentgelt" ("increased transportation fee"). I'm sure there's a very good reason for this name too...
"Traffic vioaltion fee" is a great translation. As far as I understand the logic behind them, they're meant for relatively minor violations where a fine would be kind of overkill and specifically have to be "directed" at the right person.
The downside is that unlike fines which scale by income here – the term is "päiväsakko" or "day fine", a fine unit that scales with net income – the fees are fixed sums, so unless a person with high income really does something heinous with their car, they're not as likely to get 200k€ (really) speeding tickets.
So now if you're rich you can speed all you want and pay a relatively small fee for it, as long as you're not doing 200km/h in a school zone or something like that
Wouldn't it be more reasonable to just issue the fine to the owner of the car? The owner allowed the person to use their car and accepts that responsibility. If it was stolen, then just say so. Even in the case of fleets, someone is responsible for know who is operating the vehicle and when. The gov't shouldn't care about it any further than holding the owner responsible. If the owner doesn't want to rat out the actual driver, then the owner takes the hit on points/fines/whatever
> And all of this has to be done in a way that will hold up in court, therefore snail mail.
This needs to change. Snail mail is no longer reliable. Letters often get delayed by weeks or go missing altogether, but the law still assumes that justice is being done by it being sufficient to assume that a letter that was posted has been received within a few days. It's no longer true.
that's difficult when most post is dropped in a metal box on a street. But I'd argue that not the issue people have with the way these laws work in practice.
For those that don't use the UK postal service, Royal Mail has a recorded delivery option that can show that, at least something, mostly likely what was sent, was delivered to the address.
The issue here is that the UK government has given itself a pass that, 'trust us, we sent it' is fair and legal, while at the same time refusing to allow not the government to use the same argument.
People tend to get upset when laws and legal defenses are asymmetric, doubly so when its skewed to protect the bureaucracy at the expense of the citizen.
Just for reference the Royal Mail uses complaints to track losses, in the year 2017-2018, Royal Mail received 250,000 complaints for lost items, out of around 6 billion items processed [0]. Of course that requires that the sender somehow knows that the item was lost, so losses are likely significantly higher.
Without a recorded delivery, 'I never received what you sent' should absolutely be a valid defense. Although, 'Trust me I sent it', should not be a valid argument for either side, unless they can show that the item was send and received.
The Scottish court system uses Royal Mail Signed For to send citations, I believe it makes two attempts to deliver, and won't consider the citation delivered unless the named addressee signs for it.
...on the other hand, if you don't respond to citations e.g. for a criminal case, they might then escalate by issuing a warrant for your arrest.
Looking at the English civil courts, I'm having trouble parsing their rules:
My reading is that either the court sends the summons (claim form) and comes to its own conclusion if it has been served or not, but if you choose to do it or have a process server do it, you have to submit a certificate of service to the court. If you do that, all it says they require is the method and date you sent it, no proof it got delivered!
Furthermore, rule 6.18 says that if the court posts the claim form itself, it will inform you if the form is returned to them undelivered... but will deem it "served" anyway, provided you gave them the correct address?
Tesla finance seems legendary in this regard. A friend here in MA got hauled down to city hall because their auto excise taxes were 3 years overdue - they're the responsibility of the owner of a leased car, in this case Tesla finance. According to the person there, the town (50K people or so) had a bunch of Tesla owners in the same boat.
That’s a horrible system. Britain used to be famous for the professionalism of their police and now they can’t be bothered to make a traffic stop and give people speeding tickets face to face.
I’m a bit biased here, because a close friend’s mother was killed by someone speeding through a red light.
I think automated enforcement of minor driving infractions is a good thing. More efficient use of government resources. Incentivizes drivers to follow the rules of the road.
Except, it does. People worried about getting a fine will not chance a light on yellow. This is patently obvious for anyone that has ever driven in London (where I learned to drive).
Anyone that doesn't care about the fine (perhaps in a stolen car) may still do it, but they'd do it regardless.
Ah yes, the risk of small fines that is why people won't do dangerous things. Have we tried a £50 fine for murder?
Economist brain.
The problem is very simple: driving tests aren't hard enough, too many people have driving licences, and we don't retest people. In addition, enforcement of people driving without a licence is completely pathetic (as anyone who has driven in the UK can attest to, the stuff I have seen over the past few years is insane...obviously there is an underlying cause but if you see a clapped out hatchback, Just Eats bag in the front seat, P plates on the car, you know to steer well clear...as if the multiple dents on the car already didn't give it away).
Automatic enforcement of dumb low level stuff is supposed to free up police time for the more serious things. Whether that happens or not is a political decision. I remember the time before red light cameras in London, and the time afterwards, and the situation was much improved after they showed up.
I agree the driving test is too easy (though several orders of magnitude more difficult than in the US states I've had to do one in), and there is too little enforcement of otherwise dangerous behaviour.
I don't think I mentioned anything wrong with automatic enforcement. I think the claim was that when confronted with a financial incentive, people who drive recklessly will stop driving recklessly. Would this be the case if we paid people £50/month to drive better?
It makes no sense at all. The problem in policy is generally that you have people talking past each other: speed limits are effective for people who are generally going to comply with them anyway, they are not intended to stop serious accidents. The majority of accidents are not caused by "accidents" (as most people on here would think them), they are caused by people who drive recklessly a huge proportion of the time and eventually have an accident.
Again, the solution to this is simple: do not give these people driving licences. In the UK, you can kill someone with your car driving recklessly and be out of jail in 18 months. And I don't think people realise this is true, or that this won't have been the first "near miss" for these people...it will have been months and years of doing stuff that will kill someone, and eventually killing them. How are they supposed to kill people with cars if they can't own a car?
Now, I'll be the first to agree that you're biased, but surely you see that the rules and norms of the road are generally far more nuanced and not necessarily identical the rules of the road as the government writes them?
There's no reason motorists shouldn't be able to go almost any speed on motorways, conditions permitting. Germany's system is fairly sensible in this regard and many American states have one or two good laws that correlate well with norms and should be adopted elsewhere.
If the rules and laws actually reflected norms of behavior there would be more appetite for enforcement.
They're sort of damned if they do and damned if they don't, aren't they? If they make traffic stops for speeding people will moan about how they're just trying to meet quotas or ask why they aren't going after "real criminals."
People just want to drive irresponsibly and they will invent any reason to justify why they're the victim, actually.
You've inadvertently completed both parts of a proof by cases. We don't want speeding laws enforced at all right now, because most speed limits are way too low, because they're set for reasons other than actual traffic safety. Let's raise all speed limits to the 85th percentile speed first and only then talk about stepping up enforcement.
The UK is not alone in using traffic cameras to enforce speed restrictions. There was a funny example in Germany where their automated cameras blur the face of any passenger... leaving them to be unable to see who was driving a UK left-hand-drive car with Animal from the Muppets in their passenger seat: https://boingboing.net/2008/10/27/german-traffic-cops.html
your source...is a union? really? you can look at ONS numbers yourself (and you will see this isn't the case).
Scotland has seen a drastic reduction in police numbers (unfortunately for you, not a Tory government :( oh well) despite record government funding levels. Labour's plan appears to be attempting the same trick with consolidation of forces, which should allow massive reductions in numbers. In Scotland, there are some days when there is one traffic car covering an area the size of England, and the expected time to respond to car accidents is usually 6-12 hours (this includes situations with serious injuries).
There is a lot more going on here than funding because government has never had more resources. The Tories, to their credit, actually put money in but (even then) the results were no better.
Also, in response to original comment, I am not sure why you think the Police are competent. Much of the policing function of a few decades ago not lies with private companies. Police numbers are generally high but the level of output has never been lower. You are seeing this in multiple areas of the public sector, public-sector output hasn't increased since 1997 whilst govt spending to GDP has basically doubled. The police have massive structural issues with their remit in the UK because of demographic change, and it is generally seen as a career for people of low ability resulting in fairly weak performance. It doesn't feel complex but than you realise that people don't understand that a politician looking to get elected might say it is even simpler. Does anyone actually work at a company where more spending increases results? I have never seen this to be the case. If anything, more spending seems to lead worse results.
> In Scotland, there are some days when there is one traffic car covering an area the size of England,
Scotland is smaller than England, so this makes no sense.
Furthermore, anyone who drives regularly in Scotland knows this to be completely false - there are plenty of traffic cops around (sometimes incognito too), and they are sometimes even seen waiting in rural and semi-rural areas.
Again, there are not. The number has fallen significantly...I am not sure what you are arguing with (or why). You can just check because the number of police and the number of traffic police is reported. If you just Google, you will see that the current staffing level for overnight in Scotland is two cars for traffic police.
I live in a rural area, I have done so for two/three decades. When I moved here, you very often saw police doing speed checks because I live in an affluent area and the police would come out if you asked the right people. I don't think I have seen that for fifteen years. Again though, the data is that the number is way down since consolidation...which was the point and stated aim of the policy.
Hilarious to see pearl-clutching when people point out the SNP has been doing this after complaining about the Tories. This is why the UK is so shit, reality doesn't matter, just politics.
> Hilarious to see pearl-clutching when people point out the SNP has been doing this after complaining about the Tories. This is why the UK is so shit, reality doesn't matter, just politics.
I'm not sure where this tirade came from; I wasn't arguing in favour of any political party.
But getting back to the matter of traffic police - I have eyes, and I can see traffic cops with them. I have family in the force elsewhere in Scotland too, so I know that what you're saying simply isn't true. I really don't know why you are making this false claim.
> In Scotland, there are some days when there is one traffic car covering an area the size of England
Are you high, or did an AI write this?
Area of Scotland: 80,231 km^2
Area of England: 132,932 km^2
So on some days, in Scotland, there is one traffic car covering an area that is larger than Scotland. OK, where's it patrolling? Or are you saying Police Scotland only sends out 60% of one car to cover the whole country?
2010-2018...when did the Tories time in government end? Based on your comment, I am assuming 2018.
Lol, quite the pedant. To be clear though, yes when they are short-staffed they only have one car actually on patrol for the whole country (iirc, the actual full staffing policy overnights is two cars...which you can see has been covered by the media).
Traffic was consolidated into Police Scotland so there is only one police force, and so there aren't local forces patrolling a local area. I believe the total number of traffic police is something like 400 now (which is mostly not people on patrol) and so, overnight around holidays, the policy is to have two cars which turns into less than that on some occasions.
I avoid speeding issues by the one weird trick of not speeding.
Besides, money is a big factor here. If you want to make it cost-effective for someone to physically flag down speeders and ticket them, you'll have to raise the ticket fines significantly. And (sensibly) the revenue goes to HMT and not the individual police forces, avoiding America's perverse incentives, so you'd have to raise the police budget as a separate line item.
(pursuing speeders is right out - police chases are extremely discouraged for obvious safety reasons)
And besides, as other commenters pointed out, even if things get lost in the mail or the government otherwise drops the ball, they'll still consider that your fault.
I disagree. As much as I hate speed cameras, the way they’ve been implemented (meaning, the fact that you get a letter with evidence and it’s clear you committed the offense, and usually no points, like you might get from a cop) seems to strike a balance of fair punishment.
Now, whether they’re that effective at reducing speeding is a bigger question. Because people just slam the brakes for the 100 feet around the camera and then resume speeding.
I actually quite like the system. They tend to only install speed cameras at high hazard areas e.g. where fatal accidents have occurred. Also the camera's are mostly super visible - bright high-vis yellow, and there are often warning signs as you approach them.
It's quite a different story in other countries at least in terms of visibility!
If you break the government's rules, that should be between you and the government. I shouldn't have to front the cost of any fines or otherwise be in the middle of it.
And typically the bigger the company gets, the harder it is to migrate to a new data model.
You suddenly have literally thousands of internal users of a datastore, and "We want to shard by userId, nobody please don't do joins on user Id anymore" becomes an impossible ask.
When sharded, anything crossing a shard boundary becomes non-transactional.
Ie. if you shard by userId, then a "share" feature which allows a user to share data with another user by having a "SharedDocuments" table cannot be consistent.
That in turn means you're probably going to have to rewrite the application to handle cases like a shared document having one or other user attached to it disappear or reappear. There are loads of bugs that can happen with weak consistency like this, and at scale every very rare bug is going to happen and need dealing with.
Two-phase commit provides an eventual consistency guarantee only....
Other clients (readers) have to be able to deal with inconsistencies in the meantime.
Also, 2PC in postgres is incompatible with temporary tables, which rules out use with longrunning batch analysis jobs which might use temporary tables for intermediate work and then save results. Eg. "We want to send this marketing campaign to the top 10% of users" doesn't work with the naive approach.
These are limitations in the current PostgreSQL implementation. It's quite possible to have consistent commits and snapshots across sharded databases. Hopefully some day in PostgreSQL too.
There is literally thousands of independent search engines that use Programmable search to search the entire web. Many ISP providers use it on their homepage, kids-based search engines like wackysafe.com use it, also search engines that focus on privacy like gprivate.com etc
Also LLM tools. Programmable Search Engine API was a way to give third-party LLM frontends the ability to give LLMs a web search tool. Notably, this was a common practice long before any of the major LLM providers added search capabilities to their frontents.
I forsee the cost of travel increasing quite a lot.
Private cars will end up 2nd class citizens with 'waymo lanes' and sky high insurance costs, pushing everyone to self driving taxi services who have a really high cost per mile compared to your own car, since they have a huge debt to pay back to investors so will never get down to the $0.15 per mile that driving your own old car costs.
On the other hand, insurance costs for robotaxis should be lower if they are able to drive significantly safer.
Then the one I'm more interested / excited for: optimizing the fleet for the cargo. If most trips involve single passengers, then most cars can be small electric single seaters. This can further reduce insurance costs as well as fuel, maintenance and depreciation.
I'd hope that's enough to offset the price of the sensors, compute hardware, and engineers to maintain the system.
But yes paying back investors; not sure how long that would lead to elevated costs for riders.
We see this already in cities with a 'congestion charge' and barely any parking - taxis and Ubers become the main vehicles, and private cars are priced out.
I definitely see a future where global transportation is powered by driverless Chinese EVs, except the US, which has driverless cars that are worse and 6x more expensive.
I'd like to see a financial approach to deciding pay by giving researchers a small and perhaps nonlinear or time bounded share of any profits that arise from their research.
Then peoples CV's could say "My inventions have led to $1M in licensing revenue" rather than "I presented a useless idea at a decent conference because I managed to make it sound exciting enough to get accepted".
If it were preventing a mass murder I might feel differently...
But this is protecting the money supply (and indirectly the governments control).
Not a reason to violate privacy IMO, especially when at the time this was done these people were only suspected of fraud, not convicted.
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