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CCTV Network Tracks Getaway Car
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is reporting that a 'pioneering number plate recognition system in Bradford played a vital role in the arrests of six suspects' after the murder of a Policewoman - within minutes of Friday's shootings, police were using the system to track the suspected getaway car." From the article: "When a car is entered on the system it will 'ping' whenever it passes one of our cameras, which makes it a lot easier to track than waiting for a patrol car to spot it."
"When a car is entered on the system it will 'ping' whenever it passes one of our cameras, which makes it a lot easier to track than waiting for a patrol car to spot it." If the "Ping" is above 100, I'm finding another server..
I know, its terrible. People can't commit murders now without being tracked by the police straight away. What has the world come to!
So because it has one good use does that mean we should ignore all the possible misuses?
This system is so sophisticated they tracked it for 211 miles across the country.
:(
For a pioneering system, this sounds very well integrated or they are just using the bad news to give a reason for the cameras. It was only last week we heard about this for the first time.
I don't like living in the UK. Big brother really is watching us
(Though I am very pleased they caught these crooks in this instance, I still don't see why a criminal would go up north, rob a store then flee to the biggest city in the country. Don't these people think about lying low?)
liqbase
Next time I commit a crime and get my number plate followed using a system like this, I'll be horrified at the privacy invasion...
Perhaps if/when they extend it to track all vehicles as a matter of course, I'll be worried about some Orwellian nightmare the way you seem to imply I should be now. Maybe if I knew how to drive and owned a car it'd be more of a worry to me now, I can't really say.
Game dev and music blog
If this concept spreads, criminals will merely switch from making getaways in cars to making getaways in boats. The speeds may be reduced, but boats have much less maneuverability and longer stopping distances. Risks to neighboring automobiles from anchors and propellers also promises to raise the number of injuries to innocents in this misguided effort to fight crime.
Probably explains why there are about 35 fatal shootings each year in the UK, and 11,000 in the US.
2) What is it?
1) It's the machine that goes Ping!
2) What?
1) We don't know what it does, it just goes "Ping" every now and again and we are scared to turn it off.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
These posters were all over London when I was there a couple of years ago. No joke.
Just wait until someone commits a crime USING this system.
Its a lot easier to rob a bank and flee the country when the police all go after your "Getaway Car" in London while you take the train to Calais.
It's also a lot easier to find those pesky activists that don't like cameras everywhere.
Or round up undesirables for imprisonment.
Or single out your rival.
Or stalk your ex.
Or find a diplomat's motorcade.
Who watches the watchers?
I know of suspicious/vindictive/controlling/abusive people who if they had the power to see where their spouse/ex-spouse/SO would certainly abuse the priviledge by doing so.
I find it hard to believe that buddies of buddies wouldn't use something like this to say "hey, keep an eye on my SO, I've got to be on stake-out for the next few nights"
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Some guy goes to a meeting with his probation officer, and parks in front of a squad car with the plate recognition equipment in it. The system pings his ride - which was stolen.
Pretty convenient for the cops.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
do they:
1) input a number plate that they want to track and it pings every time they pass a camera, discarding records of number plates which aren't the ones being tracked (i.e. recognise plate, check against list of plates being looked for, if it's not on the list, discard)
2) record every number plate and look through the logs to look when a particular one passed a particular camera, then keeping the logs until forever.
3) some sort of hybrid, like keeping the logs for 24 hours to see what happened earlier in the day, but killing them after that. (like some sort of caching system)
No1 I'd just about support (so long as there were adequate safeguards to make sure that it was only used to track suspects (not potential suspects) and I'd just about stretch to No3 so long as the logs really were being killed.
No2, however, is a BIG no-no. Automated camera systems to track the movements of every car in the country and then keep that on a permanent record are VERY bad (although I suspect that is what happens). When did spending a vast sum on public money on an automated system to track the car-using public go through parliament?
And another thing, where do the police get the idea that it's a given that they can 'deny the use of the roads to criminals'? take this very case, right now these people are SUSPECTS they haven't even been charged, as such they aren't 'criminals'. Someone explain why being a suspect means that you're no longer entitled to use the roads without being tracked? They'll be wanting tracking bugs in shoes next 'to deny criminals use of their feet'
FGD 135
All this will do is create a big black market for fake plates.
If you are going to commit a crime, make sure you pick up a 10-pack of fake plates and switch them out randomly during your arrival and your getaway. Even better if the fakes use valid numbers off other vehicles in the same vicinity giving the coppers two nearby "pings" to choose from. They don't even have to be high-quality fakes, just enough to fool the cameras and anyone else looking at them from a distance.
Well... If the system was so good why the f*** did the car get all the way from Bradford to London? That is 4+ hour drive across half of the country.
What you are seeing here has nothing to do with the merits of the system. It has something to do with typical newsmanagement by Tony Bliar cronies. Similar to the one they tried on the "Good day to Burry Bad News (9/11)". They want to push this system as a replacement for speed cameras with the difference that speed will be checked every 400m, not in specific locations. Further to this you have the transport secretary which is waiting in the wings to use the same network for charging per road use.
The only problem - the road users are just a few inches short of wanting to lynch 'em both. So what do you do in this case - get good publicity. And this all this is about. And using the death of a mother with 4 kids in the line of duty for this is as appaling as it can get.
By the way who is the criminal idiot who sent two unarmed, untrained women without body armour to investigate a reported armed robbery in progress?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Ummm, yeah. By eliminating data you don't like, you can make statistics say whatever you like. Congratulations.
"i suspect that there's a very small portion of the us population which accounts for an overwhelming majority of the gun related incidents."
would that be people with guns?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Well tickle me pink and call me Norman, but I'd rather have my car stolen than my brains blown out.
Maybe it's just us Brits that see the advantage.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Back in 1972 there was a French movie called "Un Grand Blond Avec Une Chaussure Noire" (The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe). In the movie, the chief of French secret service lays a trap for his rival - he convinces him that a particular man is a dangerous and cunning secret agent that is planning to expose the rival's dirty secrets. This rival then goes crazy trying to investigate this "agent". The truth is that the man is, in fact, what he appears to be - a clumsy orchestra player. The movie is summed up with these lines:
"...because when looked at closely enough, every man's life is suspicious".
Individually, any of these systems may appear to do good things in individual cases. And the arguments for them always center around certain immediate benefits without considering the wider picture. The bigger truth is that such systems lead to a society full of anxiety, fear, and guilt, with arbitrary and random enforcement of the rules. There's a word for such conditions - the word is "despotism".
In the UK, they can take a DNA sample from an arrested suspect, and keep that data indefinitely even if the suspect is subsequently acquitted or not even charged. This has already been tested and found legal by the courts.
Numerous methods of speed camera avoidance have been tested: hairspray, cling film (PVC film), refraction grid plate covers, etc. Absolutely none of them work.
However, my dad did come up with a couple of really good ideas to counter them. As the use of radar jammers (as opposed to detectors) is illegal, you need to disrupt the photo process. The cameras that use white flashes would be easiest to disrupt. Mount a photographic slave flash trigger above the numberplate, connected and adjacent to two fast-charging flash guns. Speed camera flashes, slave trigger fires and the two numberplate flash guns go off. Result: one completely over-exposed photo with the number plate hopefully obscured by a white smear.
For the infra-red cameras, drill a few holes at random in the plate and mount a number of high-intensity infra-red LEDs in the holes. Not sure how effective this would be, but it would certainly make life a bit more difficult for the people looking at the pics.
Windows Tweaks
First of all, I speak as ex-police officer. The parent post shows a serious lack of knowledge of this crime and British policing.
According to press reports, the two police officers were attending a report of a disturbance. There was no information that this was an armed robbery in progress, and the police women just happened to be the closest officers. Please remember that most city policing in Britain is done by cops on foot walking the streets with inimate knowledge of their beat area; not by remote seeming individuals running around in cars. For example, in the division that I last worked, we had 29 foot patrols and 4 vehicle patrols - which isn't to say that there aren't other vehicles around (traffic division cars, tactical patrol group, special patrol group, vice, Criminal Investigation, etc.)
Gun crimes are rare in Britain - there is no legal way for any individual to own a gun and there are stiff penalties (like jail) just for possession. Having a gun is considered a more serious crime than having drugs. If a police officer suspects that they may be faced by a person with a gun they have only to use their radio and armed officers will be on their way within seconds - literally. Guns are available at all police stations, and many (perhaps most these days) police officers are trained in using them.
In five years as a police officer, including over 1,000 arrests, I was never faced by anyone with a gun, and I can only recall a handful of times that officers had to call for backup because of suspected gun use. However, I was faced by knive wielding people six times and five times I disarmed them without injury to either of us. The first time I was faced by a man with a knife I wasn't quick enough and received a cut to the back of my hand that needed ten stitches, and the knife wielder received six years in prison.
According to all press reports, the policewomen involved in this incident did have body armor. However, body armor doesn't stop all bullet types, and there are bullet types specifically designed to penetrate such armor. The principle reason that most officers wear body armor is to protect themselves from knives, a much bigger threat than guns. Of course, this doesn't apply to all officers, those who carry guns (diplomatic protection group, anti-terrorist group, special patrol group, royal family protection officers, etc.) expect to face guns and wear appropriate protection.
Police work can never be totally safe. In Britain approximately one officer a year dies in the line of duty. However, the most common cause of death is being run over by a vehicle, deliberately or accidentally. Over the last 30 years, 12 officers have died to gunfire, and three of those were in a single incident in London.
British police value the fact they are generally unarmed. It makes the general public feel less intimidated by officers, and there is a general sense of public cooperation with the police that far exceeds that of countries where the police are armed. There have been many strident calls to routinely arm the British police, but very few of these calls have been from police officers. I think that arming British police would fundementally change the way that the British police interact with the public and cause more incidents (such as the case where over-eager officers shot and killed a suspected terrorist in the London underground, and subsequently found out that the man was merely an electrician on his way to work with no terrorist connections at all.) It would also make criminals more eager to carry guns and more willing to use them.
These two policewomen were just unlucky. A routine incident turned deadly. It happens, but it's pretty infrequent. Rules should not be based on very rare incidents.
The parent post asks why the car was allowed to travel all the way from Bradford to London. I don't know, but a number of possibilities come to mind. The most likely reason in my mind is that there was not a suitable location to isolate and take the
Automated camera systems to track the movements of every car in the country and then keep that on a permanent record are VERY bad
You are anthropomorphizing the data (I refuse to make the obvious joke). The data itself is not bad or good. The data is just data, another tool.
What is bad or good is the procedures by which this data is accessed, the uses to which it is put.
The real question is - is this tool too powerful to exist? I do not think so as long as there is oversight in it's use, because it can do a lot of real good - as in the case of the killers being caught, or (potentially) a vast reduction in stolen cars.
People like to argue that the genie is out of the bottle in regards to filesharing. Well, the genie of pervasive monitoring is so close to out as to make no difference. So we as humanity must adjust and figure out how we are to live with this very powerful tool, and make it serve us instead of fearing it just as the RIAA and ilk must figure how to live in a world when anything can be copied. This situation may seem dissimilar but it is not; something you do not wish to happen is becoming prevalent so instead of a futile battle to stop what cannot be stopped, figure out what leverage you have to control its use.
Some people also claim the UK is now a "Police State". They are mistaken; the difference between a police state and this is that in a Police State is that you are always being WATCHED (or be made to think you are). In the case of the modern UK your public actions are constantly being RECORDED. There is a huge difference between activity and passivity.
If a system is passive and takes no action without direction, if a person in order to direct a system to take action has oversight and rules binding what they may do, then I am generally OK with that system. A network of passive cameras that can be used to track fleeing thugs or stolen cars? Grand. A network of cameras that automatically issues tickets without intervention? Now that pisses me off and I think is a serious misuse of the power granted to the government. The sooner people see the difference the sooner they can push for oversight and reasonable use of the cameras.
Having read David Brin I would argue that any feed from a public camera also be publically accessible. When anyone can watch anyone else, when the police as well as citizens are bothe being recorded in public - then there is equal footing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley