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Mossad operatives hacked into Tehran's traffic camera network to spy on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his bodyguards and other top Iranian officials for years Israel gained access to almost all the city's cameras, and tracked the movements of key bodyguards. Images were said to be transmitted back to Tel Aviv and southern Israel, allowing Mossad to develop intimate knowledge on the guards' addresses, work schedules, and who they were assigned to protect. One camera angle proved especially helpful and allowed agents to track where bodyguards parked their personal cars when arriving at the Supreme Leader's compound on Pasteur Street in the...

Israel spent years hacking Tehran’s traffic cameras and monitoring bodyguards ahead of the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader

No doubt there is much more to the story, but this is awesome: Years before the air strike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Israeli intelligence had been quietly mapping the daily rhythms of Tehran. According to reporting by the Financial Times, nearly all of the Iranian capital’s traffic cameras had been hacked years earlier, their footage encrypted and transmitted to Israeli servers. One camera angle near Pasteur Street, close to Khamenei’s compound, allowed analysts to observe the routines of bodyguards and drivers: where they parked, when they arrived and whom they escorted. That data was fed into complex algorithms that...

According to reporting by the Financial Times, nearly all of the Iranian capital’s traffic cameras had been hacked years earlier, their footage encrypted and transmitted to Israeli servers.

DOT received $6 billion to issue grants to "help cities and towns" with road safety as part of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that Congress passed. The U.S. Department of Transportation's "National Roadway Safety Strategy" includes promoting the use of speed cameras in cities and towns as a "proven safety countermeasure." DOT received $6 billion to issue grants to "help cities and towns" with road safety, which was part of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that Congress passed. "That law creates a new Safe Streets and Roads for All program, providing $6 billion to help cities and towns deliver new,...

Speed and red-light cameras are the bane of many motorists. A modern idea made possible by technology, they have been installed in at least 24 states. Although these cameras are a revenue boon for governments across the nation, their intrusion into daily life is disturbing, and their constitutionality is dubious. Specifically, use of these cameras could violate the Sixth Amendment. The Confrontation Clause grants criminal defendants the right to be confronted with the witnesses against them. Since it is a camera and not a person that witnessed the offense, such violations generally cannot be considered a criminal offense. The ticket...

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on Thursday announced that the city will no longer issue tickets from red light cameras. "The days of our most vulnerable residents being overburdened by these costly fines are over," Suarez wrote on Twitter. In January, the Florida House of Representatives once again called for an end to red light cameras. Lawmakers who backed the repeal contended red light cameras are being used by cities and counties as a way to make money. Those who support red light cameras argue they improve traffic safety.

NASHVILLE — State Rep. Andy Holt is urging Tennesseans to ignore traffic camera tickets and emphasizing his point by burning a citation in a video that apparently has received more than 325,000 Facebook views. "What do you do if you get one? Throw it in the trash. Personally, I prefer to burn mine," says Holt, R-Dresden, in a lengthy news release issued in conjunction with posting the video on his Facebook page Wednesday, which shows him using a cigarette lighter to set the ticket aflame. Holt, a longtime critic of traffic camera tickets who repeatedly has called for banning them...

Speed cameras became a cash cow for the small village of New Miami, Ohio. The town, with a population of about 2,200, collected over $3 million in revenue from heavy-footed motorists after it installed stand-alone speed cameras along one of its major throughways, US 127. The speed cameras in New Miami, which is less than one square mile, automatically fined motorists $95 if they drove faster than 50 miles per hour. It proved to be a lucrative venture for the village just 35 miles north of Cincinnati. Flush with cash, it raised its annual budget from roughly $1.5 million to...

LUBBOCK, TX (KCBD) - Traffic cameras have watched Lubbock streets before, but within six months, they were gone. That was five years ago, but the option may be back on the table. This time, it could be speeding cameras throughout Lubbock County. Recently, Lubbock County was approached by American Traffic Solutions about installing speeding cameras in the county's school zones. That's the same company that put up Lubbock's controversial red light cameras in 2008. But before the option is even considered, Precinct One commissioner Bill McCay tells us they're weighing every option. "If there's something broken that needs to be...

The Government has an archive of 17 billion pictures of vehicles discretely photographed at the roadside by hidden cameras every single day, it was revealed today. That works out as an average of 472 pictures for each of the 36 million cars, lorries and vans on Britain's roads. There are 8,000 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras hidden on streets across the country which are used in the battle against crime. It is thought that by 2018, between 50 million and 75 million pictures of vehicles will be taken every day. Julian Blazeby, from the Association of Chief Police Officers,...

Gov. Terry Branstad is ordering transportation officials to cut the number of special license plates issued to government vehicles that exempt them from traffic cameras. Branstad said Thursday it's unacceptable that 3,218 plates given to local, state and federal agencies have a designation that keeps them out of computerized databases. The designation is meant for those doing undercover work. Cities with red light and speed cameras typically let those with the plates out of tickets that would cost ordinary drivers $75 to $200. Branstad also said the review should look at how many tickets the cameras have issued and how...

You know about speed cameras and red-light cameras. But did you know about plate-reading cameras? Few people do, and that's a worry for the ACLU, which says the cameras are infringing on our civil liberties. Unlike the speed and red-light cameras, which are activated only when someone violates a traffic law, plate cameras photograph every license plate that goes by. Vehicles are instantly IDed then checked against cars associated with crimes, the Washington Post reports. The problem, says the ACLU, is that the license plate info is being stored, creating huge databases of motorists and where they travel—even though more...

<p>Those traffic cameras drivers hate and municipal bean counters love have brought a small village in Ohio to a grinding halt.</p> <p>Elmwood Place (pop. 2,188) has seen four of its six Village Council members resign amid public outrage over a flurry of fines issued by the cameras. The devices have raised nearly $2 million for the tiny Cincinnati suburb, but angry drivers and shopkeepers complain the ticket blitz from above could turn downtown Elmwood Place into a ghost town. Now, with two-thirds of the council gone, partly in protest over the cameras, the governing body can't reach a quorum to conduct the people's business.</p>

The federal government recommends that yellow lights at intersections last for at least three seconds before turning red. So why are so many yellows being timed at 2.5 seconds? And why are those fleeting yellows often located at intersections where red-light cameras are installed? The mandarins tell us that red-light cameras are for our own safety, and that we need more of them than the 150 already in New York City. “While we wait,” city transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said last month, “New Yorkers are dying on our streets.” So why increase the mayhem by cutting the duration of the...

The chairman of the Australian company behind Chicago's red-light program resigned this week and trading in the company's stock was suspended amid an intensifying investigation into allegations of corruption in its Chicago contract. Redflex Holdings Ltd. announced the extraordinary actions just days after board members were briefed by an outside legal team hired to examine ties between the company's U.S. subsidiary and the city official who oversaw its contract, a relationship first disclosed in October by the Tribune. In a brief statement Thursday to the newspaper, the company also revealed for the first time that it is sharing information with...

In keeping with that very modern desire to find complex solutions to problems that don’t exist, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed his desire on Monday to put cameras on “every corner of the city” to enforce observance of red lights and, eventually perhaps, speed limits. And so, in the same year that the Los Angeles City Council considered the evidence from its trial run and unanimously voted to do away with L.A.’s camera system, explaining bluntly that the “program did not work as anticipated,” Mayor Bloomberg is blithely seeking to expand New York’s camera network. As the Los...

Members of Indiana General Assembly leadership introduce legislation promoting photo enforcement. The residents of six cities with a combined population of over 2.7 million voted last year to outlaw the use of automated ticketing machines on their streets. The photo enforcement industry is now working overtime to make up for lost ground by expanding operations into states where neither red light cameras nor speed cameras have been well received. Lobbyists are hopeful that Indiana could be the next state to reconsider. Powerful members of the General Assembly earlier this month introduced legislation to authorize the use of traffic cameras. House...

<p>The Louisiana Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from the city of New Orleans of a lower court ruling that the city's network of traffic cameras is legally invalid, meaning that city officials must stop issuing tickets based on the cameras.</p>

Traffic camera firm invokes 1965 civil rights bill to stop votes in Baytown and Houston, Texas that would ban red light cameras. The citizen-led groups that want the public to decide the future of red light cameras are racist, according to lawsuits filed by American Traffic Solutions (ATS) in a pair of Texas cities. The Arizona-based photo enforcement firm filed in a state court in Baytown on Thursday and then an ATS-funded front group filed an identical case in a federal court in Houston on Friday. Residents in both cities signed petitions placing a ban on automated ticketing machines onto...