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Indybay Feature
Overnight Camover Attacks in Oakland After Council Approves Continuation of DAC
At some point late in the night after the Oakland City Council voted to continue with the Domain Awareness Center -- albeit a significantly scaled-down Port-only version of the surveillance center -- a group calling themselves the Technophobic Women's Action Team (or T.W.A.T.) staged camover actions against stoplight cameras at two intersections in West Oakland.
(stoplight cameras at Northgate Avenue and 27th Street, photo by T.W.A.T.)
Some wondered aloud whether camover actions would happen in Oakland after similar anti-surveillance vandalism has been reported in Berlin, Greece, Santa Cruz, the Puget Sound, and other cities across the globe. The Technophobic Women's Action Team has answered that question with claims to two strikes against surveillance cameras in Oakland since late last year.
In December, T.W.A.T. targeted a portable private security company surveillance trailer on 36th and Adeline Streets in West Oakland, and now have hit one traffic camera at the intersection of 36th and Market Streets and two more at the intersection of Northgate Avenue and 27th Street.
The red light cameras at Northgate Avenue and 27th Street are reported to be the largest revenue generating cameras in the city of Oakland:
"In 2010, the most recent year for which city figures were available, 9,273 tickets were issued there through violation pictures - worth a gross of $4.2 million, based on the 2010 red-light ticket fine of $450. Figures available for much of 2011 put the gross worth at more than $3 million."
That averages out to around one red light ticket every hour of every day, generating revenue in the neighborhood of $11,000 daily. And those are the tickets that are paid and not contested. Local residents have reported mis-firings of the stoplight cameras when no red light has been run — requiring those cited to lose a day of work and fight the ticket in court — so the total number of tickets issued via these cameras is greater than one per hour.
The revenue figures are so high for just this one intersection because California has the steepest fines for red light violations in the country, by far. From the same SF Chronicle report:
"Anyone in California snapped violating a red light pays a fine of $480, and according to the traffic-watch site TheNewspaper.com, no other jurisdiction anywhere has a tab that high. The second-highest fine in the United States is $250, and it is usually more like $100."
And so Caltrans wasted little time in cleaning the lens coverings for the cameras today.
TWAT attack on the DAC
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/03/05/18752047.php
March 5th, 2014
T.W.A.T. Action Report
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/12/06/18747405.php
December 6th, 2013
From Berlin to Greece to Santa Cruz to the Puget Sound, Camover Actions Coming to Oakland?
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/11/21/18746605.php
November 21, 2013
Red Light Cameras in Oakland
http://oaklandwiki.org/Red_Light_Cameras_in_Oakland
Some wondered aloud whether camover actions would happen in Oakland after similar anti-surveillance vandalism has been reported in Berlin, Greece, Santa Cruz, the Puget Sound, and other cities across the globe. The Technophobic Women's Action Team has answered that question with claims to two strikes against surveillance cameras in Oakland since late last year.
In December, T.W.A.T. targeted a portable private security company surveillance trailer on 36th and Adeline Streets in West Oakland, and now have hit one traffic camera at the intersection of 36th and Market Streets and two more at the intersection of Northgate Avenue and 27th Street.
The red light cameras at Northgate Avenue and 27th Street are reported to be the largest revenue generating cameras in the city of Oakland:
"In 2010, the most recent year for which city figures were available, 9,273 tickets were issued there through violation pictures - worth a gross of $4.2 million, based on the 2010 red-light ticket fine of $450. Figures available for much of 2011 put the gross worth at more than $3 million."
That averages out to around one red light ticket every hour of every day, generating revenue in the neighborhood of $11,000 daily. And those are the tickets that are paid and not contested. Local residents have reported mis-firings of the stoplight cameras when no red light has been run — requiring those cited to lose a day of work and fight the ticket in court — so the total number of tickets issued via these cameras is greater than one per hour.
The revenue figures are so high for just this one intersection because California has the steepest fines for red light violations in the country, by far. From the same SF Chronicle report:
"Anyone in California snapped violating a red light pays a fine of $480, and according to the traffic-watch site TheNewspaper.com, no other jurisdiction anywhere has a tab that high. The second-highest fine in the United States is $250, and it is usually more like $100."
And so Caltrans wasted little time in cleaning the lens coverings for the cameras today.
TWAT attack on the DAC
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/03/05/18752047.php
March 5th, 2014
T.W.A.T. Action Report
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/12/06/18747405.php
December 6th, 2013
From Berlin to Greece to Santa Cruz to the Puget Sound, Camover Actions Coming to Oakland?
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/11/21/18746605.php
November 21, 2013
Red Light Cameras in Oakland
http://oaklandwiki.org/Red_Light_Cameras_in_Oakland
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Hey you who bravely climb those poles to place stickers with your message on the cameras. How about doubling your effectiveness by stickering the lense camera instead of the side of the camera?
I heartily applaud your efforts!
I heartily applaud your efforts!
So sad that people think it's ok to target Oakland for vandalism and violence. We are a poor city that can't effectively fight back, and so we become a place for smashing windows, attacking buses, and throwing paint on streetlights and houses. We don't need the "help" you are offering us, in the form of your destructive fetishes cloaked in some political philosophy or another. Please stop fooling yourself: you are not doing good. You are acting out your childish violent impulses, and you are making things worse for all of us. Please leave us alone!
WTF? How is making Oakland less hazardous for fucking assholes who run red lights some form of radicalism? This is bullshit. Making it easier to speed and endanger pedestrians is no act of resistance to me.
It's really bizarre to pretend like this is somehow harmful to the typical person living in Oakland. If anything, this is less money being stolen from random people who take a second too long to get through an intersection. Constant surveillance and documentation of your activity doesn't make anybody safer, it just makes everybody easier to control.
consider the high likelyhood that at least one of the two commentators, myrtle goss or james belson, is a paid officer of the FBI counterintelligence program.
if not, same difference, they are liberals who volunteer for their love of the military state.
if not, same difference, they are liberals who volunteer for their love of the military state.
There's a couple secrets about red light camera tickets.
1. California is a "driver responsibility" state - the tickets are supposed to be issued in the name of the actual driver, so California's red light cameras are equipped to take a photo of the driver's face. Often it will not be the registered owner ("RO") at the wheel, so when the police are processing a ticket and see an obvious age and/or gender mismatch between the face photo and the file photo of the RO, they may send the RO a fake ticket - not filed at court - to bluff him into revealing the identity of the actual driver. If the RO doesn't realize that he can ignore that fake ticket, and provides the identity of the driver, the police then send a real ticket to the driver identified. For more info Google snitch ticket.
2. Been down south? The LA County Superior Court, which handles the tickets from the dozen active programs in LA County, has decided that if they do not hear from the defendant (the ticket was delivered to the wrong address, or is being ignored), they will not report the delinquency to the DMV. This means that the tickets can be ignored. Google red light camera ignore.
1. California is a "driver responsibility" state - the tickets are supposed to be issued in the name of the actual driver, so California's red light cameras are equipped to take a photo of the driver's face. Often it will not be the registered owner ("RO") at the wheel, so when the police are processing a ticket and see an obvious age and/or gender mismatch between the face photo and the file photo of the RO, they may send the RO a fake ticket - not filed at court - to bluff him into revealing the identity of the actual driver. If the RO doesn't realize that he can ignore that fake ticket, and provides the identity of the driver, the police then send a real ticket to the driver identified. For more info Google snitch ticket.
2. Been down south? The LA County Superior Court, which handles the tickets from the dozen active programs in LA County, has decided that if they do not hear from the defendant (the ticket was delivered to the wrong address, or is being ignored), they will not report the delinquency to the DMV. This means that the tickets can be ignored. Google red light camera ignore.
The destruction of surveillance cameras in any city anywhere is justified and right by anyone who desires to do so and there is no privilege or identity politics you could possibly attach to the activity. Surveillance cameras have no right to exist anywhere, period.
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