UK Police Expand License Plate Camera Systems

An anonymous reader writes "According to this article at the BBC British Police forces are widening their use of automatic License Plate recognition. One of the police officers involved says 'we can effectively deny criminals the use of the roads.' For those who don't know central London already has a network of number plate recognising camera systems to support the Congestion Charge system."

Comments

Really?

[sdjunky]

This...
'I'm sorry to say that as a [fairly] law abiding citizen, I am pleased about this.'

... is an interesting perspective from somebody with this...

'"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up your skirt" [Oscar Wilde]'

...for their signature.

From this evidence I must assume that you are either A) Joking or B) A cop who gets off on using public surveillance to look up skirts.

Re:Right Vs Privilidge

[Rick.C]

Imagine being able to use this to identify stolen vehicles, minutes after they are reported stolen

Imagine using this to identify all vehicles, all the time, so that you can know where any vehicle is, just minutes after it is reported stolen. I don't know about Mr. Blair and his cronies, but I'm sure Mr. Ashcroft would see the benefit in this.

To further enhance the system, let's keep a history of where each vehicle goes on a regular basis, so that when it's stolen and the thief drives it somewhere else, we'll see that it has deviated from its normal pattern and we can intercept it.

(The cool part is that thanks to keystroke monitoring, Mr. Ashcroft was stroking his chin and thinking, "Hmmm..." even before I hit SUBMIT.)