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

Ok...

[SkyLeach]

So if a badguy shoots someone and takes their car how does this system keep the badguy from using the roads?

Or what if they steel the license plate from valid drivers while they sleep?

This sytem is only for keeping track of law abiding (or at least those that attempt to be law abiding on some level) people.

Nothing to fear

[interiot]

• "Law-abiding motorists should have nothing to fear"

Yeah. So they thought about this long enough to realize there'd be at least a small public backlash, but didn't do much thinking beyond that.

If we're going to go down this road, fine, but as papers on the Transparent Society suggest, this should be much more open.

• Everyone, not just police officers, should be able to use it to track people. Charge whatever fees are required to support it, but you should be able to track anyone.
• Everyone should have access to the transaction logs and should be able to see who's tracking who.

Everyone benefits... the police and "law-abiding motorists" get their criminals, McCarthys get to entertain their delusions, politicos get to have their watergates, and the public and press get a little entertainment over the whole thing.

Re:Nothing to fear

[Rick.C]

"Law-abiding motorists should have nothing to fear"

Also from the article, "One in 12 stops during the trial of the scheme produced an arrest and Mr Ainsworth described the results as 'surprisingly good'."

Well, I'd bet that the other 92-percent of the people who were stopped were none too pleased.

"Big Brother" is sometimes okay

[qewl]

Many will say this is a true invasion to privacy and what is next is complete control over the traffic system. I must disagree. While I am opposed to stoplights taking pictures of light breakers and machine radar enforced areas (the ones where they send you a ticket in the mail), this is a positive direction towards making roads safer and more efficient.

Where I live, there is an incredibly busy road. The city was going to have a man monitor the roads and sit in a booth with cameras to determine which lights they should change when (for better traffic control). Some stupid liberal jumped on the issue and said "Absolutely not, it's an invasion of privacy, and Big Brother is entering our lives." And he convinced about half of the voters(the stupid ones) who were initially for it completely against the idea. The world is getting bigger, we have to try new things so our systems don't get out of control. With all the political disagreement and lack of logic the people in our politcal system have, we move in almost no direction.

-Greg