Monday 23rd January 2006

Your Journeys Logged for 2 Years

ANPR data archived for policing purposes

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Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems are becoming more and more widespread across the UK, with systems being integrated with local council CCTV cameras as well as an extensive plan to cover the UK motorway network.

In Parliament last week it was revealed that the Police are to be allowed to keep records from the systems for two years.

Whilst the benefits of such systems are obvious, the perils of creating a society that so closely monitors the movements of its citizens is something that increasingly concerns many people.

Links

• Original Story from The Register
• What is ANPR? (Wikipedia)

[wab172uk]

"We recorded your number plate at position A at X Times, then again at position B at Y Time. Meaning you traveled at 68mph in a 60mph zone. Please pay £60 and we'll give you 3 point. Thankyou"

[devious]

I'm surprised the period is only two years. I'd have expected our beloved leaders to want more.

[hanse cronje]

thin end of the wedge

we'll have precogs next predicting when we're going to spit out our chewing gum and arresting us just before the flavour goes

[jsr]

[safespeed]

hanse cronje said:

thin end of the wedge

Actually I think the wedge is getting quite thick already. This is a damn serious issue that urgently needs organised resistance.

And the best way to organise resistance is for a champion to step forward. I posted as much last week on the Safe Speed forums: www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5670

[Twincam16]

My main worry is that, although this looks like the thin end of the wedge, most of that wedge is actually being put in place right under our noses, and all it will take is a biased debate in the Commons and some fatuous anti-car statistics gleaned from the denizens of Islington, and some neo-Brunstromite will push a button that will see us sitting in the middle of this rather thick wedge unawares.

I hear this 'if you've got nothing to hide why are you worried' line being trotted out by Labouristas all the time. Thing is, increasingly I don't know what I have to hide.

[Einion Yrth]

Twincam16 said:

I hear this 'if you've got nothing to hide why are you worried' line being trotted out by Labouristas all the time. Thing is, increasingly I don't know what I have to hide.

Or, indeed, what I might conceivably have to hide in 5 or ten years time.

[broadside]

Time to get a set of false number plates made for my wedge then !!

[pakrat]

The UK citizen is now the most monitored in the world. And you have to ask why. Also, if they carry on at the current rate, what's it going to be like in 5 or ten years time? DNA registration and chip implants at birth I suspect. Doesn't matter which pack of morons you vote for either. More than 361000 Brits emigrated in 2003...where’s me passport

[timmy30]

Do you know that in the UK we live in a country that has 1% of the worlds population but........ 25% of the entire worlds CCTV cameras! Free country my arse it's a police state.

[Beggarall]

Panic not - if this is like any other government sponsored computer system it will be completely useless and when a piece of data is really needed (to confirm your innocence) it will be impossible to retrieve it. Just imagine the data storage implications....buy the shares!

[puggit]

Beggarall said:

Just imagine the data storage implications....buy the shares!

No need, I already work for a small private company in storage

[DanL]

Hmm:

"The Data Protection Act 1998 gives you the right to see the personal information held about you by businesses and organisations in the public and private sectors. This is known as the right of 'subject access'." (link)

Could be interesting in a couple of years time.

Dan

[trevorh]

Mmmm - one application per month under the FoI act for every driver should constipate the system somewhat.

[havoc]

trevorh said:

Mmmm - one application per month under the FoI act for every driver should constipate the system somewhat.

They'll just stop issuing the data on the grounds of operational needs...which was always the big problem with the FoI...if they can say they haven't got time to, they don't have to.

Talking of precogs, I forsee a big stone hitting my front numberplate before long, breaking it, and it'll take me a while to get a replacement because I work full-time and am really busy at weekends...

[GKP]

Surely the ANPR system (and subsequent two year storage of data) relies on the info supplied by the DVLA to be 100% accurate and up to date?


Phew, we're all safe! You can go about your day to day business knowing they'll never track you down

[cyrus1971]

Here begins the rant…

This is really the thin edge of 2 distinct wedges, the innocent / liberty one that is well trodden. The second wedge is the massive potential of data convergence.

The real power of data is in it's unification. How many of you have Supermarket loyalty cards and wonder why you are cold called and recieve targeted junk mail ? They know (and sell) your information within their "group of companies" which in the case of one is huge. They know if you buy meat or veg, high value or low budget goods, if you go for sale items, typical times of purchases, gender, post code, what you redeem your points for video's at Blockbusters or health food – and that’s just one example. This information has massive commercial value. How many of you work for companies or support these business in some capacity – we’re all part of the very machine we don’t like being wedgied by !

I was fingerprinted for the first time last year on a trip to the US. My blood could have been DNA profiled a dozen times and I would not know it. I am on 300+ CCTV camera’s a day in London. My government is proposing I have black box fitted to my car ! Knowledge certainly is power. The Victorians who coined that phrase used to pursue knowledge of the universe, now it is knowledge of each other no matter how trivial – ref : Big Brother. In 1948 this was Orwellian fantasy, today it is everyday reality.

I did warn you it was a bit of a rant :-)

[furry dice]

The problem as I see it is this Government’s reliance on automated systems, and their total belief that’s it’s the answer to their perceived problems.
The problem for us, the law abiding majority, is that number plates can be and will be cloned, thus protecting the criminal and leaving the law biding citizen taking the can for something they haven’t done.
Very soon it will be increasingly difficult to prove ones own innocence, the Government have a total blind spot to the fact that if something is automated than its just a system which can be defeated and the people who want to move around undetected will do so with ease just by swapping number plates.
It won’t be long before we see more stories of people being arrested for something they haven’t done. Let's hope its just arrest, as opposed to something more serious like a shooting due to case of mistaken identity or was it a communications breakdown? which ever I see more of such things happening as the reliance on automated systems increases due to the belief that they are infallible, they are not.
The bottom line is I don’t trust the system anymore, its not that I think its corrupt it just got incompetent.

[T5-R]

Very astute man that George Orwell. He saw this coming way back in the late 40's, when he wrote 1984. He was only 20 odd years out, so not too bad.

Just waiting for the pigs to rise up and take over now, or are they already in office?

[james_j]

timmy30 said:

Do you know that in the UK we live in a country that has 1% of the worlds population but........ 25% of the entire worlds CCTV cameras! Free country my arse it's a police state.

I know, this sort of thing is a bloody obsession with this pathetic government. Just look at the crime figures in London alone - 500,000 CCTV camera and the crime (guns etc) is worse in some areas than some of the worst parts of America.