The Plettenberg Bay Traffic Department (South Africa), sent a summons to the owner of the Volkswagen pictured above. The department's camera clearly shows the auto traveling faster than the 60km limit. Pretty much a slam-dunk conviction, you'd think. The photo and story came from The Daily WTF. There is a reproduction of the entire summons.
I really love this kind of thing, no sarcasm. Sometimes I worry about the emerging big brother systems in Europe and the USA. That some governments are keen to use massive computer systems for law enforcement and keeping order is no longer a paranoid fantasy. It is coming true. I don't think anything can be done to stop it. However, there is all the difference in the world between always-on monitoring and a repressive police state. Seriously.
Stalin was the perfect dictator, in the perfect storm sense. He didn't have computers, or CCTV, or biometrics. He didn't need them. Such technology would be useful, but is not necessary. Complete political control makes the structure of dictatorship. As long as those operating the CCTVs aren't required to belong to a particular political party, or have a commissar watching them, these systems are functionally useless to the dictator.
They can, obviously, be enabling if a dictator can gain control. But most dictatorships are really kleptocracies in disguise. Creation of a determined lack of accountability more often protects corruption than ideology. Compare China and North Korea. North Korea is a real, Stalinist, ego-driven dictatorship. China went through periods like that, but has degenerated into corruption. The leadership will allow anything that does not come between them, their personal financial opportunities, or the monopoly on power than creates those opportunities. Ideology doesn't come into it. That is why there are no more cultural revolutions or great leap forwards. That kind of ego-politics is bad for business.
During the Cold War, there was an ongoing debate about the inevitability of a Communist state producing a Stalin. Now we know the answer is no. What is inevitable is an East Germany or a China. Not because they are Communist, but because the leadership has no accountability. These states get taken over by thieves who displace or co-opt the ideologues. They become kleptocracies who's lifetime varies inversely to the greed of its leaders. The more restrained the leaders, the longer they can get away with it.
Which brings us back to technology. It doesn't work. Technology cannot produce dictatorship because technology is stupid. Corrupt, inefficient bureaucracies can't use technology to impose central control because they are corrupt and inefficient. Such systems, however, can enable petty tyranny very well. Just look at US airports. But the technology isn't a means of control in those situations. The technology is a means of corruption (through contracts) and way to protect the petty tyrants from accountability. The two always go together.
The venality, incompetence and rigidity of the would-be dictatorship makes a real big brother like monitoring regime impossible. In real life, the cameras are pointed the wrong way. The file systems are incompatible. The servers go down at critical moments. Turf wars prevent interoperability. Greed ensures that contracts go to vendors who's systems are crap. The technology that ends up getting deployed is easily hacked. The whole technology driven police state model doesn't work.
The traffic ticket at the top is an example that gives away the game. Its not about enforcing speed limits (control). Its about tax revenues for the government and revenue for the company contracted to run the system (greed). This can be petty dictatorship, but never the real thing.
