Speed Camera Company Accused Of Cooking The Books
from the in-the-fast-lane dept
Bob Dole writes "You've heard of Enron and Global Crossing but probably not "Poltech." It's an Australian manufacturer of automated red light and speed camera equipment used in California, Oregon and other parts of the world. The company took a big hit last year when the citizens of Hawaii revolted and dropped a multi-million dollar camera contract. In deep financial trouble, two new articles show that Poltech has publicly lied about its contracts to keep its stock afloat and has been caught cooking the books. So, it looks like crooks are responsible for the machines that some cities use to administer the law, issue tickets and collect millions in revenue. Great. Their claim that cameras are about "saving lives" and not "hard cash" should be greeted with a the same hefty dose of skepticism you'd give if Ken Lay was their spokesman." This of course fits with the recent story (also submitted by the same guy) about how a new study shows that speed cameras don't work. I'm not sure that the fact that the executives may be crooked actually has anything to do with the technical integrity of the camera systems, themselves.
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Get with the program....hehehehe
Come on, cooking the books is an in thing right now. They are teaching it in all the business schools as a viable business practice when your stockholders are screaming cause you aren't producing enough money for them. Everyone is doing it. If you haven't been indicted yet for cooking the books, you obviously aren't a good CEO. After all, it is only money. Next week everyone will be claiming that they invented air. And they'll back it up with invented facts about how they made oxygen, and thus any O2 which exists in the air exists under their copyright, and any derivitive works will need to obtain a "breathing" license. You'll have to license it from them at $699, which will go to $1399 if not enough people are scared into buying their license. Of course, this will all be an elegant plan to increase their stock prices.
In all seriousness, this is really getting annoying. While the government is busy prosecuting (or apoligizing for prosecuting) McDanel and Lamos (who are poor security researchers with a conscience,) Lay and the other rich CEOs with no conscience to speak of get away with a hand slapped...I guess this is all fair, after all, the researchers were pointing out the evil truth, while Lay and the other rich CEOs valiantly pulled the wool over our eyes.
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This is why the company's crookedness matters
"Styn ruled that because a private company ran the San Diego program, the company had a strong motive to generate tickets for profit. That made the evidence so suspect, the judge said, that it should not be admitted into evidence. A private company installed and maintained the cameras, reviewed the film and sent out citations. The company was paid by taking $70 of each $271 fine generated....
"San Diego suspended its program several months ago when police learned that Lockheed Martin IMS, the company that then owned the cameras, had moved sensors, which threw off data at three of 19 intersections."
ACS now runs the camera program, and it's a $320 ticket.
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Re: This is why the company's crookedness matters
The only reason we know Lockheed Martin IMS (now ACS) was rigged the technical accuracy of the system is that a massive criminal court case forced the company to turn over all its technical data.
This has not happened anywhere else in the country, or probably the world. Is San Diego an isolated incident? Is it a stretch to say the book-cookers in Australia are too virtuous to do what Lockheed (ACS) did? We'll never know because the cities and companies involved keep a tight lid on all information. And, as we've proven, they lie.
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