Wes Vernon
NewsMax.com Wires

Someone is making money off a blatant invasion of your privacy and your constitutional rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

This "business deal” was exposed to the light of day in a congressional hearing Tuesday.

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., told his colleagues he had uncovered evidence of the "bounty-hunting system,” as Rep. Tim Johnson, R-Ill., called it. "An outrage,” the Midwest lawmaker exclaimed. "They have a different concept of the Constitution than I do.”

This payoff system was further confirmed in the testimony of San Diego’s popular radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock of KOGO.

He revealed that in his community, Lockheed-Martin, which had contracted to provide the camera system, had computers that accessed DMV computers, and pursued the case from A to Z.

"This was revealed by a lawsuit filed by 290 people who had been cited,” Hedgecock told NewsMax.com after the hearing.

"Through discovery, they actually found that under the contract, in the operation of the red light camera-enforcement program, Lockheed would review the film, provide the staff to identify the violators, and obtain the DMV records of the violators, compare that information to the license plate numbers, prepare the complaint and direct the complaint to the person whose target vehicle was registered.”

So they’re turning over law enforcement to a private company?

"It’s contracting out law enforcement. Outrageous.”

"The worst traits of government arrogance and corporate greed,” all rolled into one is how Greensboro, N.C., attorney Marshall L. Hurley described it. He complained of similar offenses in his own state.

'Government Kickback'

"The contractors typically install the surveillance equipment at high-volume intersections in exchange for a guaranteed percentage of the fines and penalties collected,” Hurley explained. Such schemes are based on "a government kickback.”

In North Carolina, he testified, "a company with a delightfully revealing Orwellian name of Peek Traffic currently receives $35 of each $50 fine collected. That is a handsome 70 percent cut. The municipality gets $15 in ‘free money’ every time a fine is paid.”

The system is also vulnerable to favoritism. "Ticket-fixing” has been a joke down through the ages. But when that translates into the equivalent of a political payoff, it takes on a new meaning.

In San Diego, according to Hedgecock, vehicles driven by two senators were caught on camera through an intersection, as was another vehicle driven by a prominent state Senate staffer driving a privately registered vehicle.

Lockheed-Martin decided not to issue citations to the two Senate-registered vehicles, but did issue a citation to the staffer’s privately registered automobile.

This provoked a public outrage that resulted in a promise to ticket everybody. That in turn prompted an angry reaction from the police after some of their cars were cited. Soon the policemen’s union was complaining, armed with a dissertation from its attorney arguing that the whole idea of spy cameras was unconstitutional.

Questioned by Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., Hedgecock proclaimed there was "not a single scrap of evidence that one single life has been saved" by the spy cameras. "Not one.”

Some lawmakers sided with police officials and safety interests who argued in favor the spy cameras.

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., recalled the same privacy concerns were expressed back in the 1950s with the advent of radar.

Rep. Johnson replied that under the new radar system, a trial was involved and due process was accorded the accused.

In another classic mixture of apples and oranges, non-voting Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., whose capital city had recently decided to use the spy cameras, said she couldn’t understand the objections to the involvement of private companies. She said they came from the same people who wanted to privatize the Social Security system, ignoring the fact that the proposed modest personal Social Security investment accounts are voluntary and designed to accord the citizen more freedom, as opposed to a public/private collaboration in police-state tactics, as in the use of the "red light cameras.”

Howard County, Md., Police Chief Wayne Livesay, accompanied by Lt. Glenn Hansen, argued the stoplight cameras were effective. Questioned by Rep. Robert Borski, D-Pa., about a private company sharing in the proceeds, he acknowledged as much, but said the county was negotiating to start paying a flat fee so "there won’t be a taint” in the system.

Judith Stone, president of Advocates for Highway Safety, supported the camera system.

Lockheed-Martin representatives were at the hearing, handing to reporters a slick brochure championing the stoplight cameras.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a longtime critic of the traffic spy cameras, submitted a written statement saying they are "more trouble than they’re worth” and violate the Bill of Rights guarantee of "the right to face one’s accuser in court as well as the right to avoid self-incrimination.”

Johnson called the spy cameras "an incredible threat to our concepts of civil liberties.”

Addressing Livesay, Hansen and Stone, he said, "I know you’re speaking from the standpoint of sincerity. But you’re — all three of you — dead wrong.”

"I’m just going to say that none of you are dead wrong,” Norton chimed in.

And so the lines are drawn.

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