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Britain to log all vehicle movement
dubbayu_d_40 writes "Using a network of cameras that can record license plates, Britain plans to build a database of vehicle movement for police and security services: rollout begins in March. Can't someone just swap/steal/disable the tracking device? Seems to me just another way to track the average citizen and not those wishing to avoid authorities."
It is only targeted at law abiding citizens.
Between this and data retention they are going to know about everyone we contact and everywhere we go. It would be different if this was only to be used for finding stolen cars or tracking known criminals but they plan on monitoring everyone.
It seems like we are getting closer and closer to that futuristic dystopia and it scares the hell out of me.
I would be interested to see an impact study of this in a couple of years.
I'll guess it'll show to be effective against common crimes, but little else.
I'm opposed to police state measures. I'm not afraid and I see little reason for anyone to be afraid. You have a much better chance of winning the lottery than being killed by terrorism.
The fascists are playing on people's unjustified fears.
Who will guard the guards?
Logging might actually feed the police with false information: I mean it's not a hard to make replicas of plates belonging to someone else... someone with the same kind of car.
That way the terrorists or whatever can actually use the system against the police
So now I'm asking, why put this system up in the first place... only to scare people into quiet submission? Seems that way to me...
sig?
Surveillance like this is not bad with the proper checks and balances on access to the data and how it is used. But those checks can erode. Sure the data may not be abused this year or the next, but what about 20 years from now, or 100? Can we really be so certain that our democratic institutions will hold together? Sure, today's leaders might have our trust (barely), but how can we possibly put trust in people who aren't even in power yet?
I, for one, am worried about the world my 3-year-old will come to know.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
This story broke a few days after Pc Beshenivsky was shot and killed in Bradford W Yorkshire, and the police claimed to use new technology to track the get away car. This was the new technology that just happened to be on trial in Bradford and certain areas in London.....
Coincidence????
Also, I'd like to insert a cliche: I've got nothing to hide.
Until you get pulled in by the police on a murder charge because you happened to be near a murder scene...
I keep seeing broad laws being passed with people saying "well it's ok for them to be really broad because noone will ever abuse them" and then they get abused _every time_.
For example: does shouting "nonsense" in a political debate make you a terrorist? The government seem to think so. Just days before that happened, the Prime Minister argued that it was ok for the anti-terrorism laws (the same ones used to detain someone for shouting "nonsense") to be so broad because the police would never use them inappropriately.
There are similar examples of abuse of the DMCA, EUCD, PATRIOT Act, etc. I've got nothing to hide either... oh wait, yes I do - I play legally purchased DVDs under Linux and that's illegal.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Instead of going for the outright conspiracy theory, consider that authorities were just waiting for the right opportunity to spring their plan into action. If there's a high profile shooting, roll out the surveillance...
I'm sure some of this went on with 9/11 - if there's a terrorist attack, roll out freedom limiting changes to the law, attack Iraq, etc...
Fed up with Labour. I already voted against them in this election, but seeing as my constituency is full of out of work 'scrounging from the government' layabouts who don't get off their fat asses because the government gives them armfulls of cash every month, it was hardly likely that the vote would go any other way.
What pisses me off the most is the usual 'this is being done to try and catch terrorists' - ffs, we've had ONE single Al Qaeda related attack happen in this country so far and THAT was from people that the government never suspected as they were British Muslims. How exactly would license plate tracking catch legal residents of the united kingdom if they so desire to blow themselves up in a public area?!
Why can't they spend the countless billions this service is going to cost to implment where we bloody well WANT and NEED it - in the schools, in the hospitals, on pensions for our old people.
Fucking fuckers. It really makes me mad. The priorities are fucked - this terrorism 'excuse' for taking away our rights is just really starting to piss me off.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
To counter this it looks like that the British government is looking at RFID tags in numberplates
Naturally, because everyone knows that you can't steal a license plate if it has an RFID device in it, right?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Labour changed how crime was 'counted', its how they hit most of their 'targets'.
Things like this dont get mentioned much beca...look celebritys!!
Ah, the "Yeah, well Clinton did it, too" approach. The Carter wrinkle's a new touch, though. Very nice. For clearly what's going on right now is nothing that hasn't happened before, these measures are here to protect us, to strengthen us in a world that's out to get us, you're all just overreacting and if something is wrong, then it's Clinton's fault. Substitute Clinton with "the Jews," and you've got Hitler's platform down pat. If things get as bad as we fear, it'll be on the head of nationalistic morons like yourself.
America isn't a baseball team; you don't cheer for it no matter what. This is not a Republican-Democrat issue. It is not a conservative-liberal issue. This is about keeping your leaders in check by watching what they do instead of listening to what they say, because every word that comes out of their mouth is something you want to hear. They've turned the country into a partisan sinkhole, where people are so busy choosing sides and playing favorites that they've forgotten what really matters, namely what the guys are actually doing. It was a master play.
The natural inclination of any organization, including a governmental administration, once it has succeeded, is to dominate. In the US at least, this must been done at the expense of the system that brought them to power in the first place, for that system discourages domination. The inclination to dominate has nothing to do with political ideology or the personality of the leaders, though clearly the people currently in power are showing little or no restraint whatsoever. In business, antitrust legislation prevents large businesses from destroying the economy. In government, similar restrictions were put in place to prevent administrations from attacking its internal enemies in order to perpetuate itself and grow in power. If you let these go without a fight, you are a fool.
Some future government will find it has all it needs already in place for dictatorship. And not one element will have been installed for malevolent reasons. All will have been installed from the best of motives.
Family courts meet in secret, names of those appearing before them cannot be published, and there is no appeal from their judgments. It protects children.
Foreigners can be subject to preventive detention without trial. To defeat terrorism.
Anti social behaviour orders can make any act by anyone, and them alone, a criminal offense. We have to do something to restrain people making everyone's life around them a misery.
We will be tracking dysfunctional families, and interventing to help children at risk of future criminal careers. Why wait until it is too late and they have already started?
We have covered the streets with cameras, to defeat street crime. Now we will track all vehicle movements, to deny cars to criminals. Next we will film all faces on all streets, so that we can track down the wanted and the terrorists.
We will have compulsory mental health medication. It will cut down on crimes committed by those in care in the community who stop taking their medication.
We will record all details about an individual on an ID card and will make this card the access point for benefits and medical care. We have to do something about benefit fraud and illegal immigration. And having all medical records available instantly will dramatically improve emergency room care.
I am not being ironic. We really do not have to worry much about this government. The intentions really are good. But the effect is increasingly to make practical liberties dependent on the goodwill of either the government or officials. I don't know what the answer is, but the lesson of history is that you cannot always rely on this, given swings of popular feeling in times of crisis, which may coincide with elections. But this is an argument you never hear in the UK.
That's really the point, isn't it? It doesn't target criminals at all, except insofar as any citizen might be a criminal. By targeting the general population, they greatly increase the number of things to investigate when criminal activity does occur. But criminal activity will be a miniscule portion of what they are actually recording, and more significant criminal activity will take steps to cover its tracks and deflect attention (stolen license plates, etc.), so this will only end up stopping petty criminals, make things safer for organized crime, and give anyone who wants to invade other people's privacy a very convenient infrastructure for stalking, eavesdropping, following, etc. Crap like this only helps real terrorists, and the ones it helps you catch are amateur enough that they would have been caught anyway without this.
Yet gun crime has doubled.
There is a very real problem at the moment with stolen licence plates. They are desirable to avoid speed cameras, and also the London congestion charge. Many people who find their plates missing - or often just one: most cameras look at the back of the car/bike - don't bother reporting it.
This will, of course, make such thefts more common.
Of course, it would be possible to detect that there is a duplicate plate around, but not easy. For a start, having stolen a plate the thief will have several days' grace until the victim purchases another plate. For normal criminals that would be sufficient for their purposes.
For terrorists - especially suicide bombers - they're not worried about capture and are seldom known to the security services until after their attack, so this technology would be of little use for prevention. The only value it would have is to track their movements after the fact and build maps of their relationships, and I'm far from convinced that this would be terribly useful if the terrorists took a few elementary precautions.
There is a very real problem at the moment with stolen licence plates.
No, this is the very problem for eternity with violating the rights of people by a government.
Outlaw guns, only outlaws own guns.
Outlaw drugs, people will now kill, steal, and do other things to provide a desired good on the black market.
Outlaw abortion, women and their child die from kitchen table abortions.
Oh, well, it keeps us busy I guess.