UK To Passively Monitor Every Vehicle

DrSkwid writes "The UK Police are building a network to monitor the movement of every vehicle in the U.K. through an extensive Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system. The data will be retained for 2 years. The Register further reports that the system will likely be used for issuing speeding fines." From the article: "The primary aims claimed for the system are tackling untaxed and uninsured vehicles, stolen cars and the considerably broader one of 'denying criminals the use of the roads.' But unless the Times has got the spacing wrong, having one every quarter of a mile on motorways quite clearly means they'll be used to enforce speed limits as well, which would effectively make the current generation of Gatsos obsolete. Otherwise, checking a vehicle's tax and insurance status every 15 seconds or thereabouts would seem overkill."

Comments

Another reason

[VJ42]

Yet another reason for me to want to emigrate from the UK, what with ID cards, and 90 days detention without trial etc.(Thankfully the latter was defeated in parliment). At this rate, with ever more draconian laws I'll be able to claim asylum.

Re:Another reason

[dfjunior]

I didn't say come to the U.S., I said have a revolution.

Kinda Cool, Kinda weird

[ViperG]

I remember seeing something like this technology being tested with police. They setup a unit like this (might be the same thing) on a busy road. Anyways, a few hours later, the system caught a few stolen cars, speeders, and few other things, that led to a record number of arrests that day.

Kinda werid though, for some reason it reminds me of 1984.

The only thing I have a problem with

[Bazzalisk]

is keeping the records for two years - I can't see any good reason for that. The cameras themselves aren't much different from the camera system already used to maintain the congestuion charge in central london and are overall a Good Thing. (As a cyclist I find that the largest regular threat to my life tends to originate from speeding/incompetent motorists - and I want them to be caught and have their licenses revoked)

do, or do not, there is no try

[PMuse]

Could the stated goals not be acheived more cheaply simply by fitting each vehicle with a transponder? Anything that must be installed every quarter mile of every road will necessarily be ungodly expensive.

Vehicles operating without a transponder would be fined steeply. A few random checks would ensure compliance.

It's one thing to be an evil overlord, but there's no excuse for being an expensive and incompetent evil overlord.

Re:A little difference

[Kjella]

A home is a private place, a street is a public place. Shall I draw a diagram?

And if you have absolutely no privacy in public? Even if you walk past CCTV cameras, you are primarily observed, not tracked. In general, there is no record of you being there. I would certainly feel that a full record of my public movements would be an invasion of my privacy. Even big celebreties tend to get some privacy. Try these on for size, all "public" facts:

Who bought condoms last week.
Who slept where, either going away or coming over.
Who went to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Who went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 in cinema.
Who went to a mosque last week.

That's a lot of social, political, religious and other profiling for each and every citizen. In general, I place a big difference between being observed and being tracked, and what is being described here is a tracking system. Would you really like to have the government keep a huge file on everything and everyone? Move to DDR, ca. 1970 but don't bring that society here. We don't need nor want it.

Whose problem? This is just a power play.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Speeding is a problem

That is very debatable. The speed limits here in the UK are now so absurd in many places that the vast majority of motorists exceed the limit, yet no accidents ever result (literally; speed limits have been dropped on roads that haven't had even a minor injury accident in a decade).

This is just another power play by Blair's dictatorship and his ever more draconian Home Secretaries, right along with ID cards for everyone, the National Identity Register, electronic strip searching on the way onto the London Underground, the RIP Act, detention without trial for as long as they can get away with, installing CCTV everywhere (yes, we're still the most spied-upon nation in the world), reversing the burden of proof and/or attempting to do away with jury trials for increasing numbers of cases...

All of these things, of course, are "justified" by arguing that they increase national security, help to prevent crime, or otherwise benefit Joe Public. Unless he's in the wrong place at the wrong time, in which case he loses his benefits because some junior staffer in a government office mistyped one number out of 1,000 they entered that day into the master database. Or the ANPR system misreads a number plate, and sends him a fine for doing the physically impossible, which he then has to challenge in court after several weeks of concern, with no compensation for the time wasted or grief caused. Or his daughter's the one being rendered naked for the pervert watching the screens at the Underground station. Or he's late for the train, and since he ran through the screen he's obviously a terrorist so they shoot him dead. Or he's black, old, bald, young, or a registered member of an opposition political party, the biometric recognition doesn't work, and he's held for three months as a suspected terrorist on the whim of a senior politician, by which time he's lost his job, his home, and the trust of all his family and friends, not to mention the ability to challenge the statements of absolute fact issued by our political leaders (and I use the term loosely, since they didn't even win the popular vote in England, never mind an overall majority that might justify their absolute control of parliament, not that this particular abuse ever went before parliament) to justify all these Big Brother efforts.

I used to think the tin foil hat brigade were eccentrics. In recent years, looking at the direction New Labour have taken our government, I think the sooner we have a written constitution and a constitutional court above parliament and answerable only to the public, the better.