Wrong on Red: The Constitutional Case Against Red-Light Cameras

INTRODUCTION Though the marriage of surveillance technology and law enforcement hardly is a new phenomenon, the twenty-first century has proven to be a brave new world in this realm. Through partnerships with MindCite, (1) police in Israel, Africa, and Southeast Asia (2) now expeditiously process public and private Internet communications for leads to potential inchoate criminal activity. (3) Great Britain employs Automatic Number Plate Recognition ("ANPR") technology, (4) which allows police to capture digital images of passing vehicles' license plates and instantly verify compliance with registration and insurance requirements. (5) In the United States, law enforcement departments increasingly have turned to a different form of surveillance technology: red-light cameras. (6) Red-light cameras are affixed to traffic lights and are positioned to capture aerial photographs of offending vehicles as they pass through intersections. (7) According to American Traffic Solutions, one of the nation's leading red-light camera providers, the license plate photographs "contain all the information needed to prosecute a red-light violation." (8)