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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.
That cuts it, I'm moving to America!
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?
I have never seen a story where tinfoil hats were so neccesary, and so useless.
:-(
Good bye privacy.
I'd just like to point out that anybody wishing to drive dodgy vehicles around the Trafford Centre's car parks, should be more careful -because they have these cameras too. They look like tannoy horns, and are i think on most entrances to Manchester city centre!! -these things have been in place for a while now.
Steal the tracking device...what tracking device? They plan to use cameras, which will record the plates of passing cars. You submitted the article, but didn't read it?
What I found most inane was the notion that a vehicle traveling near another vehicle of interest can be incriminated by association. How did they ever come up with THAT idea?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Like, how hard would it be for a "terrorist" to get fake licence plates and stick them on a car?
No sig today...
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?
They also plan on using this setup to catch speeders. The time it takes to move between cameras can tell exactly how fast you're going.
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.
And you'll be fine.
Vote Quimby!
I fail to see how this is any worse than, say, a bunch of Americans voluntarily buying vehicles equipped with OnStar that tracks your vechile's movements pretty well by means potentially more insidious than cameras.
It's always refreshing to be reminded that there are still places that hold privacy in lower regard than America. But how long until we follow in Britain's footsteps?
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????
The ACLU has a less dramatic but just as powerful scenario in SWF form.
When a police woman was recently shot dead in Bradford, the gang who were responsible had bullied a man into hiring a car in his name. The man went to the police before the murder had been committed, but the police just filed his complaint and didn't link it to the murder until too late.
The car was tracked on the camera network (it already partly works), but as it had been hired in his name the police arrested him instead of hunting down the gang.
As this network becomes more widely known, this is going to become more common - gangs will bully and blackmail people with no criminal record into hiring cars, and may even, to prevent them going to the policeabduct or kill them.
And, of course, criminals will habitually carry several sets of false number plates, so that they can change the 'identity' of their vehicle several times in the course of a journey.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
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
The answer to this is of course to get a SUV and a can of spray-on mud! The SUV establishes the bona-fides that you actually were out in the mud off-road somewhere, and the mud just happens to coincidentially (ahem!) obscure your number plate.
An interesting fact known to many bikers is that the current fine for not displaying a licence plate on a vehicle is only £20. Also, since it's a 'Construction and Use' offence and not a driving offence it doesn't add any penalty points to your driving licence. So if you're a biker going out for a blast take off the licence plate, stick it in your back pack, and "it fell off" should you get stopped by the police.
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...
The system is currently in use in certain areas of what people in the UK call "the city". It has been in place for several years after the IRA bomb attacks and other issues. They are now rolling out that number plate recognition system across many other areas. It does not require them to have any device on your car except that you have to have a number plate. However the system for number plate issuing in the UK is heavily floored. There are so many cars that are driving around uninsured, un taxed and without an MOT (road worthy certificate) that it will really only be an issue for the people that are law abiding as the people with out their car registered and on the road legally can still get away with whatever they want.
Moving forward they need to really start working hard at defeating the uninsured, untaxed cars from the roads. Its not that hard to do have several big crack downs. At the end of the day it will reduce the overall cost of motoring in the UK as there will be less risk of being hit by an uninsured/untaxed motorist which costs everyone more.
Some of the implications of the system they are implementing is that they will be able to calculate distances between cameras and KNOW if people are speeding, They will also be able to proove that particular cars/trucks/bikes are in certain areas at certain times. That in itself is a great benefit for tracing criminal activity.
In many places in the UK they already have the CCTV cameras in action and they do record the cars going along the roads. However they are just adding the ability to track the number plates.
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!!"
The documents for the GPS system all claim that it's about reducing road congestion, but I do not find this justification to be credible.
Firstly, there are ways for charging tolls on congested roads that are far cheaper and easier to implement than putting a "Little Brother" in everyones car. A mandatory RFID unit in the number plate and a pickup loop in the road come to mine. And secondly, it's not credible that road pricing is any more effective at reducing congestion on roads that are the only viable option for a particular commute, in the light that the far more obvious negative motivator of the unpleasantness of driving in a traffic jam does not have a similar effect.
The disadvantage of this method is that it can only track you in areas with the infrastructure. Of course, this is not a disadvantage of your only goal (as stated) is to reduce congestion. On the other hand, it's a real downer if your real aim is to track the whereabouts of every vehicle in Britain, whether they be on the motorway or the moors. Since the alternative is so much cheaper to implement (by their own estimates, a GPS onboard unit would cost £100, without the labour to fit it, some £3 billion pounds to fit to the UK fleet of 30 million vehicles), one has to conclude that this is their aim.
Once you note the EU directives quoted in these documents that refer to an EU-wide standard for GPS road-tolling, it's not difficult to see that this is something that has had widespread approval for some time.
And you have to start wondering about the real reasons for Galileo. They can claim they want independance from the US, and the way the US has been acting, this is more credible now. But one of the features of Galileo is that it has been designed to operate far better than GPS in urban areas, which would seem ideal for the purpose of vehicular tracking. I can't help but make the association.
I think we should move on from the 1984 comparisons. Let Orwell get some rest.
A much more appropriate and unused comparison is "V for Vendetta":
http://www.shadowgalaxy.net/Vendetta/vmain.html
1984 + Dark Knight + Utra Violence = V for Vendetta
"Never trust a computer you can't throw." -- The Mac
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.
No, not reported crime. I refer to the British Crime Survey, which interviews tousands of people and ask whether they have been victims of crime in the last year. BCS is considered the best measure of actual crime in the UK. BCS figures rose every year till 1995, and have declined every year since.
I didn't refer to reported crime for exactly the reason you state. I'm way ahead of you.
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.
If you have nothing to hide what is the problem with a daily cavity search and tissue sample?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
I wrote about this yesterday.
Oh, did you also know this Government passed an identical law to Hitler's Enablement Act? This law enabled Hitler to assume absolute power after he burned down the Reichstag and blamed it on communists.
My Grandfather fought Hitler across two continents to protect Britain from this kind of totalitarianism. The least we can do is help the resistance campaigns at Privacy International and No2ID.
Yet gun crime has doubled.
Another victim of the new tyranny, John Catt, was subjected to a stop-and-search by police, who recorded the purpose of the search as 'terrorism' and grounds for their intervention as 'carrying plackard and T-shirt with anti-Blair info'. There you go, then: an anti-Blair slogan on your T-shirt is grounds for suspicion of terrorism, even if you're 80 years old.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I am increasingly convinced that the sacrifices of his generation count for less and less in today's world. It has always amazed me how government behaviour such as this or the recent revelations about the NSA in the US not only fail to alarm citizens but are widely defended.
I was recently reminded during a conversation with a someone who grew up in Soviet Russia of the saying that the USSR didn't fall because the majority of the populace wanted freedeom - it fell because they didn't like standing in bread lines. I'm afraid the same thing might be true about the Nazis - that they are regarded as bad guys for committing genocide not for being a totalitarian regime, and that many people aren't bothered by totalitarin governments.
Tell me this:
If you were to pull into a parking lot of a mall and swap plates with a car of the same make/model (shouldn't be hard to find), how many days/weeks would it take your average person to notice that their plates have changed? Okay, so then someone has your plates, but create a chain of swapping plates on 5 cars and they'll never quite find it in time... giving you a few days to do your damage. Find someone on vacation, go into an underground garage of an apartment and find a covered car or car where someone looks like they've been in Florida all winter.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!