Thanks to www.stpetecameras.org for the link!

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/9194525/ows_redlight_cameras_and_corporatization.html?cat=9

OWS, Red-Light Cameras, and Corporatization of Government
 

Isa-Lee Wolf, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Nov 29, 2011

COMMENTARY | Peaceful protesters. Officers in white shirts brandishing night sticks and pepper spray. It sounds Orwellian, and it feels Orwellian, but it is the government response to our clear rights enumerated in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

But is it our government's response, or the response of those companies whose government involvement is the subject of the protest? While the New York Times reports http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/nyregion/nypds-white-shirts-take-on-enforcer-role.html that the officers who seem to be doing the bulk of the rough arresting are white-shirted supervisors, that account may not be accurate.

According to Counterpunch http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-put-new-york-city-cops-on-their-payroll/, those white-shirted New York police officers seen here http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/occupy-wall-street-protest-broadens-scope-20111005 beating and pepper-spraying a crowd - including the Fox 5 news crew who later reported the story - are being paid by private interests. Despite the appearance of officers acting on behalf of New York, with their guns, hats and liability furnished by the city, they are part of the Paid Detail Unit, allegedly being funded, at the rate of $37 per hour, by the very firms that drove the Occupy Wall Street http://www.associatedcontent.com/topic/17121/wall_street.html protesters to exercise those rights in the first place.

It is a strange no-man's land of corporate governance. Only the government can violate constitutional rights, and in the world of corporate justice, there is no First Amendment. Though Counterpunch reports that the city retains liability for the officers acting as paid detail, that fact does not necessarily mean that they have the same constitutional responsibilities when funded by private interests, as the police do when acting on behalf of the state, making room for a distinction that lawyers with hourly rates that look like telephone numbers could easily make.

We've entered a dystopian place with the melding of business and government. In Chicago, a private firm issues tickets for parking violations and reaps revenues, yet a parking violation is a violation of the law. Red light camera companies also gain their revenue from people who break the laws of the state; according to NBC affiliate WBIR, red light camera company American Traffic Solutions filed suit against the city of Knoxville, Tenn., claiming that they violated the contract with the company when the city, in compliance with state regulations, no longer required vehicles to fully stop before turning right on red. Instead, reports WBIR, ATS does not want the law to apply to pre-existing contracts. In other words, that company is seeking to dictate the law in Knoxville to protect their profits.

While there is some motion toward separating corporate and government interests, most notably the drive to amend the Constitution to limit corporate election funding sponsored by several senators, such action barely tugs at the knots of entanglement. What we have is a government purportedly of the people meant to protect the rights and interests of the people. Instead it blatantly, and in some cases, violently, protects its corporate masters while its citizens pay economic and physical price.

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