UK License Plate Cameras Have "Gaps In Coverage"

Aguazul2 writes "UK police are sad that despite having the most comprehensive driver surveillance system of any developed country, there are still gaps in their coverage. From the article: 'The cameras automatically record plate/time/location information and send it to a central data store, which has complete nationwide records for 6 years.' Also interesting is that an unspecified 'particular driving style' can be used to evade detection by the cameras. It appears, however, that criminals are well aware of the cameras and take other routes. Big Brother technology, coming soon to a country near you!"

Comments

tick tock

[epyT-R]

bit by bit, freedom is chipped away in the name of safety. I know I want no part of such a society.

Re:tick tock

[shitzu]

Not even for safety. It is chipped away for an *illusion* of safety. Does anybody know anyone who feels more safe than a couple of decades ago thanks to all the modern surveillance tech? I don't.

Re:tick tock

[VortexCortex]

The government does.

Re:tick tock

[epyT-R]

Well basically, people end up forced to disguise motives for actions taken if they don't comply with a social status quo that demands moral justifications for almost everything. In other words, one doesn't have a right to something unless it complies with a 'universal' morality. As this status quo becomes less and less compatible with basic human needs, it breeds all kinds of passive aggressive behavior as individuals attempt to get their legitimate needs filled without feeling institutionally programmed guilt or getting in to trouble with authority. Today, it's bad enough that it's almost impossible to have a truly honest discussion about anything truly important nowadays, never mind live truly satisfying lives. I think this dynamic is one of the first causes of political problems in western countries, or any country that claims a representative government. The more 'socialized' and interconnected the society, the more powerful this dynamic becomes.

His statements about 'lack of meaningful work' are also interesting. Having large numbers of people seriously unsatisfied with the daily grinds they must endure is definitely a key component of social unrest. We anesthetize ourselves with cheesy entertainment or embed ourselves in (or generate) trivial real life drama to hide from this. Sometimes we combine the two (reality tv). While most would be quick to state how hard the back breaking rural lifestyle was, 12hr work days cooped up in office buildings are not any better. They may in fact be worse. He sees technology as the enemy because of this.

As far as technology goes, I admit it enables this to happen with more efficiency, but I think the solution lies in fixing the root causes, not attacking tools. As the drug and gun wars have shown, attacking tools solves nothing.

Re:tick tock

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

The UK government actually wanted to increase the speed limit on motorways, but was forced to concede in the end that the safety case didn't allow it. It would cause too many accidents. They initially believed that since modern cars had better safety systems and build quality than when the original limits were set, a higher speed limit would have no effect. They conducted a review, and ultimately scrapped the plans, because after looking at the evidence they knew damn well that it would cause more deaths.

Re:tick tock

[epyT-R]

Sure, but road design and layout is the biggest external factor. The problem is that speed limit benefits are interpreted as a slippery slope argument for the sake of lowering them to increase revenue. The lower it is, the 'safer' things are assumed to be, making the speeding 'offense' ever more egregious.. The logical conclusion is to ban driving altogether.. now everyone's safe, right?

I'm not saying there are always idiots (though that's also true), I'm saying that lowering the expected levels of performance makes better idiots.. People adapt themselves to the new normals, and the accident levels creep back up again. With modern cars, that creep levels off pretty damn close to the same level as the above-limit speeds most people travel at. 65 or 80, the accident levels for most stretches of highway are similar enough that strict enforcement of 65 is pointless. For the most part, the limits are changed along roads for no rhyme or reason unless that particular state wants to set up traps for revenue. Obviously, I'm leaving out situations where it does make some sense, like construction, though even there, the 'temporary' speed limit signs are enforced even when no workers are present and there is no other hazard. I've seen situations where these 'temporary' signs are still up a year after the work was completed, complete with two cop cars sitting around waiting to ticket 'speeders.' So while you're technically correct, the reality is that a fatal accident at 80 is most likely going to be a fatal accident at 65 in most highway situations. It's just assumed by the law that the speeding was the fault, when it it's more likely due to some other behavior causing inattention. The same thing goes with the 35-50 zones on most backroads. 'most' being the operator here. Ideally, funds from tickets should go to civil projects to redesign areas with recurrent accident problems instead of law enforcement budgets.

I'd rather have alert drivers going 80, than a bunch of cellphone yammering idiots going 60. If the real goal is safety, the best thing we can do is tear down the road mounted cell towers. Interactive communication is as distracting as intoxication.

Re:tick tock

[epyT-R]

whoa hold up.. No one has a right to 'feel safe.' That is a fallacy that needs to die. Feeling safe and being safe are two different things with two very different political outcomes.

The problem is that cops are treating every situation as 'dangerous' now, because of these ever more powerful tools. with the information provided by the cams, they're free to justify any sort of intent they want by washing the recorded behavior though a pile of half baked and badly interpreted psychology. With this, they can now justify targeting nearly anyone they choose. This is really bad for freedom for obvious reasons. TASERs are another example. You're welcome to respond with 'don't tase me bro', but the fact is these weapons are often misused under the guise they're 'non fatal.' Give a bully mentality a bat to whack people in the head with, tell him it's 'non fatal', and watch what happens. There's a reason the schoolyard bully type often gravitates to law enforcement.

Re:tick tock

[Yer Mom]

This isn't just about the average speed cameras, though — these are cameras specifically to scan and log registration numbers and match them against a database of "vehicles of interest" (untaxed, seen near scenes of crime, etc).

Naturally, the data gets kept for years even if a vehicle isn't on the watch list. Just in case, like.

That's what the fuss is about.

Re:tick tock

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Perhaps you are forgetting that the UK has a functioning democracy?

Not really, and road laws are a prime example.

If we made these laws on a democratic basis, we wouldn't have absurd situations like we have in Cambridge right now, where ironically it is the police themselves who have said there is no point in trying to enforce a reduction in speed limit to 20mph on a lot of roads at the moment because almost driver ignores them. The main people who seem to want those limits are people who live in the big, expensive houses along those roads, and a few local councillors primarily elected by such people. Our city council as a whole has a fairly poor reputation in terms of being blatantly anti-motorist, but given the tiny electorate for each councillor that means most people who use our roads don't actually get a vote on the people making the policy, we do not have a functioning democracy in this respect.

It's even worse on a national level, because this whole ANPR business seems to have been started on the quiet by the police themselves. Part of the controversy is because the whole surveillance operation had little if any oversight by elected officials at that stage and was effectively presented as a fait accompli.

Not Gaps

[N1AK]

There is no national plan to cover the whole road network in these cameras which makes saying there are 'gaps' in coverage a little misleading (it even says so in the article). It may well be a hint that universal coverage is a de facto goal of many involved in deploying these cameras. Weird and wacky driving may help you avoid detection but in many cases the bahaviour would draw attention to you and would be counter-productive.

Re:SOUNDS ALL RIGHT TO ME !!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Surely you mean it sounds doubleplusgood...

Burden of Proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

The world is only now waking up to the dangers of 'big data', and having faceless corporations track your every move across the internet, or your purchases, or your contacts via social media. Governments quite like corporations doing this, since once the data is mined and analyzed, they can get it via court order, for free, with laws that prevent the companies from telling their customers.

What's happening with motoring is similar. Placing ANPR technology on main roads implements the whole-scale surveillance of a nation. Gone are the days of having to have a court order to tap a phone or intercept someone's postal mail. Now, the data is collected and analyzed first - essentially presumed guilt, not presumed innocence.

The linked article suggests that there are ways of defeating ANPR technology. There are perhaps two. The first is to steal the license plates of a different car. This trick has been around for years, and extensive effort has been put into supplying license plates that show clearly visible signs of this - they fracture and turn black. The other is somewhat more dangerous, which is to know in advance where all the cameras are, and then tailgate a large truck past the cameras.

In short, the police have the inclination, budget and incentive to build out a better and better tracking system until even these few gaps are gone.

A more important question, however, may be to step back and look at where the balance now lies in terms of personal freedoms versus state power. The theory of a democracy is that it provides a 'government by the people', yet I wonder how many people are comfortable with the current state of play?

How the system works

[ModelX]

I used to work on license plate recognition about a decade ago. Typically there are problems with illumination, motion and noise. So what the systems try to do is boost illumination (often by hidden IR lights) and decrease motion related blur by taking multiple shots and integrating images and/or filtering the results. All this algorithms have some built in assumptions about the expected area of interest, scale and most likely motion. Suppose you detect license plate at some position and scale in frame N. To boost the probability of being correct, you want to check if you can find the same plate number in frame N+1 and possibly N+2. Detection is all about probability. There are some thresholds built in that on one side maximize the probability of license plate detection and on the other side minimize pollution of the database with bad results. So in short, if your license plate is dirty and your trajectory is not what the system expects (changing lanes and velocity) it's more likely the system will not store the result. If you know the specifics of the particular system, you may beat it easily, like if the system first looks for the plate frame, you can mask or offset the frame, or if you know about the exact illumination filtering procedure you may add some conflicting structured illumination.

Re:SCORPION STARE

[xaxa]

I think the "unspecified driving style" is to drive straddling 2 lanes, then the alignment of the camera is wrong. They do say it's impractical ...

Re:SCORPION STARE

[Chrisq]

I think the "unspecified driving style" is to drive straddling 2 lanes, then the alignment of the camera is wrong. They do say it's impractical ...

I once saw someone do this. There was a sign saying "left-turning traffic use both lanes" and he obviously thought that it applied to individual cars, as he passed this sign he moved into the middle!

Re:SCORPION STARE

[RaceProUK]

Urban myth - the SPECS average speed cameras are not limited to a single lane, and haven't been for a long time.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECS_(speed_camera)#About_SPECS_cameras

Re:more cameras

[vlad30]

when its as easy to beat as

1) steal a set of plates from another car

2) place on your car

3) enjoy driving, filling with fuel etc

4) discard plates - goto (1)

Lasts upto 24 hours before plates are reported as stolen as they generally have to check with current owner

and soon to be replaced with

1) raprep plate from same/similar make model color vehicle (I've seen a very convincing copy already)

try telling the police you weren't at the crime scene

criminals will always have the upper hand in a Big Brother/Nanny state