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

Re:I've seen the future...

[D-Cypell]

Seashells!!!

Re:What's a Gatso?

[chris_mahan]

Paying for bandwidth is one thing. These guys make plenty of money above the hosting costs.

Economics 101

[Agarax]

That margin is what we in the business world call 'profit'. Profit is something that all companies strive for as it allows you to do really nice things like R&D, paying more to your stockholders (like Granny's 401k), and expand into new markets.

If you make enough profit you might even be able to give your employee's who brought you the profit another thing that is rather nice: a raise. This is the typical reward for brining in more profit and allows them to do nice things like take their kids to Disney Land. /sarcasm