Police enforced ANPR

[SmoothRB]

Anyone else feel uncomfortable with this mass surveillance system we have, which monitors you irregardless of whether or not you can be reasonably suspected of a crime?

Given the government can lock you up for 30 days (under terror legislation) at their discretion does it not make the UK a big open prison?

Is the UK becoming a police state?

[Dr_Gonzo]

No, no, and no.

I'm glad that technology like ANPR make it a lot eaiser for the police to catch uninsured drivers et al.

[sneijder]

I try and carry on with my life as normal, it's hard, but I get by.

[theaxe]

SmoothRB said:

Anyone else feel uncomfortable with this mass surveillance system we have, which monitors you irregardless of whether or not you can be reasonably suspected of a crime?

Yep

SmoothRB said:

Given the government can lock you up for 30 days (under terror legislation) at their discretion does it not make the UK a big open prison?

A bit yes.

SmoothRB said:

Is the UK becoming a police state?

Slowly, yes.

Admittedly ANPR can help to catch uninsured drivers et al but it's a) being used too much (like speed cameras) as a replacement for really police work and b) is fairly easily subverted through the use of false plates. Frankly it's astonishing that the use of false plates isn't more prevalent.

[neilr]

Dr_Gonzo said:

No, no, and no.

I'm glad that technology like ANPR make it a lot eaiser for the police to catch uninsured drivers et al.

You either work for the government or you are at best hugely misguided. The net of surveillance in this country is digusting, especially when added to the web of lies that are spun about cctv/anpr etc etc. It's all about controlling the population for their own utterly insane ends, nothing more.

Tell me how cctv makes you safer? Does some magic hand stop the mugger knifing me? No, thought not.
The uninsured drivers that don't have cars registered to them aren't going to be caught are they, etc. I could go on, but fortunately I won't.

Its big brother britain mostly brought in (but all of it massively expanded) by the current trotsky-ite criminal scum who hopefully will be out on their snooping little ears in May.

1984 was a warning , not a blueprint.

[Sheets Tabuer]

Stewie Griffin law number 4

4. Any person who uses the words "irregardless", "a-whole-nuther", "all-of-a-sudden" will be sent to a work camps

[anonymous-user]

Dr_Gonzo said:

No, no, and no.

I'm glad that technology like ANPR make it a lot eaiser for the police to catch uninsured drivers et al.

+1

An anecdote I always use when this question pops up

I had an Impreza a few years ago, at the time I looked young for my age and what with my tattoos and shaved head was ripe for a pull at anytime, this is something I have grown up with and got used to

ANPR meant that any TrafPol could immediatley see my car was insured, tax and MOT'd, not stolen, no warrants, without him or me having to stop

Gets my blessing

[Oakey]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

[anonymous-user]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Calm down sweetheart

Noun 1. anecdote - short account of an incident (especially a biographical one)

I was merely portraying my experience

I've always owned Hot Hatches or the nicest car I could justify

Pre ANPR, I was routinely getting pulled, to check I was RK, Insured etc

In my experience (read those 3 words they are key) it has meant a big time saving

My dad is ex BiB and also highly rates it

I'm guessing you don't like it or me, I was merely contributing my experience

[Oakey]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Nothing against you, it was the "An anecdote I always use when this question pops up" which perturbed me. As I said, if a copper sees someone qestionable driving your car and ANPR tells them all is okay, yet in reality the car has actually been stolen / driver uninsured / etc, how does that benefit anyone?

you may have routinely been getting pulled but at least you knew your car was safe, now you see 'a big time saving' as more beneficial than the police actually checking the person driving your car has the right to.

[anonymous-user]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Ah ok

To be fair it's only because I have seen this question a few times

I see your point I was thinking less about stolen cars and more about uninsured. MOT'd cars etc

i.e

Old days - Copper sees me in Impreza and thinks, no way he has insurance on that, seems a bit dubious, lets have a word, I get a producer and produce, my time wasted, his time wasted

Now days - Copper sees me in Impreza and thinks, no way he has insurance on that, seems a bit dubious, ANPR pings that car is insured, gives them RK details, they think, ah thats about right we both go our way

I guess it has advantages and disadvantages, in my experience it has been positive

[andy43]

Cars don't commit crime, their drivers do.
Police staring gormlessly at a computer screen waiting for it to ping and flash red at them are wasting their time if that's all they do on an ANPR stackeout - yes, they'll catch numptys who don't insure their cars (or as has happened to me when I tried to do car tax online, the car is insured but insurers hadn't added it to the database), but they won't stop 'criminals'.
The way I reckon it works is you could drive past an ANPR set up wearing a balaclava with a couple of rifles strapped to the roofrack and as long as the car's taxed, I'd imagine you probably won't get pulled.
Hopefully a trafpol will be along to state they DO actually look at drivers as well as eating donuts and waiting for the computer to beep.

[Oakey]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Until one day your car is stolen, ignored by the police thanks to ANPR and ends up crashing into someone who now has the issue of dealing with an uninsured driver.

Yes, it may make our lives somewhat hassle free, but it comes at the expense of real policing and I don't really think "Computer says No" policing is the way forward.

[SmoothRB]

Dr_Gonzo said:

No, no, and no.

I'm glad that technology like ANPR make it a lot easier for the police to catch uninsured drivers et al.

Why is it being used to track people/cars then and is cross referenced with all sorts of other databases?

It's not just DVLA stuff and traffic offences.

This is SURVEILLANCE we are talking about.

[SmoothRB]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Sure but you don't need to TRACK people to do that.

What you are talking about is just an automatic database interrogation.

[SmoothRB]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Locking the whole population up in cells for 23 hours a day would help the police do their job easier and reduce crime.

The police are the last people who should have a say in what freedoms we do and don't have.

[MX7]

neilr said:

Tell me how cctv makes you safer? Does some magic hand stop the mugger knifing me? No, thought not.

I'd have thought that quite a few people have been arrested because of CCTV.

I'm not a fan of the massive surveillance that we have, but it doesn't bother me really. I think that we are still quite a long way from becoming a police state, and I hope that any new government will be more hesitant to introduce legislation that curtails our freedoms than Labour have.

[SmoothRB]

MX7 said:

I'm not a fan of the massive surveillance that we have, but it doesn't bother me really. I think that we are still quite a long way from becoming a police state, and I hope that any new government will be more hesitant to introduce legislation that curtails our freedoms than Labour have.

We are one of the most surveilled nations on the planet, certainly the most in the western world, with more CCTV than anywhere, and the government can lock us up for 30 days on a whim.

What other freedoms are you prepared to lose.

We already have very little privacy and we don't have a right to free movement.

[MX7]

SmoothRB said:

We are one of the most surveilled nations on the planet, certainly the most in the western world, with more CCTV than anywhere, and the government can lock us up for 30 days on a whim.

Who has actually been locked up for the full duration on a whim? It's actually 28 days, but, as far as I know, it's never been used. If there were scores of people who had been locked up for four weeks for no apparent reason, I think there would be a lot of public objection, but there simply hasn't. It's just a tool available should it be needed.

SmoothRB said:

What other freedoms are you prepared to lose.

As few as possible. Do you really think that somehow you care about your liberty more than anyone else? We all do, but to be honest, I don't count some cameras as an infringement of my freedom. I can still do exactly the same as I did before.

SmoothRB said:

We already have very little privacy and we don't have a right to free movement.

That's just histrionics. When was the last time your freedom of movement was restricted?

[Police State]

Dr_Gonzo said:

No, no, and no.

I'm glad that technology like ANPR make it a lot eaiser for the police to catch uninsured drivers et al.

Last year, we were stopped in one of our cars. The police (who were very nice and polite) said we were uninsured. We were not.

Just last week a nice WPC stopped me on the M1 for the same reason; it was the same car. The car was not uninsured. On this occasion, I have a feeling she thougth my driving was suspicious because I pulled in when she was behind, and overtook the lorry in front who was crawling up a crawler lane and then pulled in, effectively putting the truck between me and the WPC. When she took me back to her car, there was a picture of my model car with a similar, but not identical number plate. When I pointed this out to her, she said that she had manually checked my reg number and it came up uninsured... So, in other words, the APNR didn't flag it, but she had initially tried to bluff that it did. I was a bit miffed at this random stop on a busy motorway and never have enjoyed sitting in a parked car with 70mph traffic whizzing by just a few feet away. I obviously couldn't argue with her, but I thought she was a bit of a supercilious busy body, yes I know its her job, but I didn't think she was doing it particulary well on this occasion.

On another note, to the Op, yes, we are slowly slipping toward a police state. Just wait until we become a complete cashless society...


PS: Having just read this thread through, after posting... can someone tell me what it means when their APNR makes a single Beep noise?

Edited by Police State on Friday 16th April 19:54