There are several disturbing features of this panoptican state in which we will soon be living not the least of which is the sheer breakneck pace of its assembly.
It seems like only yesterday that speed cameras suddenly appeared on every lamppost but even they are so much old hat now:
Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems are set to be deployed by police forces throughout the UK as a major plank of a campaign of “denying criminals the use of the roads.” The system will link up to the DVLA, Police National Computer and a National Insurance Database, with these links alone giving it the capability of identifying untaxed, unroadworthy and uninsured vehicles, but they’ll also facilitate police surveillance operations, the swapping of data on “prolific offenders” between forces and, well, other stuff… Take this, for instance:
“Eventually the database will link to most CCTV systems in town centres, meaning that all vehicles filmed on one of the many cameras protecting Bedford High Street, for instance, can be checked against the database and the movements of wanted cars traced to help with serious crime investigations.”
As far as the drivers are concerned, well, that just about wraps it up, folks.
But truly one hardly has time to digest one horror before the next one comes galloping over the horizon. Dr.Sean Gabb has suggested that our rulers our ‘drunk with the technology’ but I am not so sure. More like they are stone-cold sober and determined to get the whole country locked down before the public realises exactly what has been done to them.
Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology has a legitimate place as a useful law enforcement tool. Its use by mobile police patrols who are then in a position to stop and examine a suspicious vehicle is not much of a privacy problem.
The real privacy problems with ANPR come from public systems which monitor *all* the vehicles in view, e.g.
All 24 million users s of motorways and A class roads in the UK, not just the 100,000 or so ones who have paid for a road traffic information service (e.g. Trafficmaster
(c.f. http://www.spy.org.uk/trafficmaster.htm),
Every vehicle entering or leaving the massive Blue Water retail shopping park near Dagenham (allegedly just monitoring the vehicles of staff)
The notorious London Congestion Charge scheme (c.f. http://www.spy.org.uk/cgi-bin/cclondon.pl) where ANPR and other “scene ” photos and videos are captured, not just of those people who are trying to evade the £5 charge, but of all the people who have paid or are exempt.
All vehicles crossing the main Forth and Tay bridges in Scotland
(http://www.scotland.gov.uk/pages/news/2003/01/SEJD195.aspx)
Another monitored spot is on the M42 north of Tamworth- there are individual TV cameras above each lane facing both ways on a particular bridge. They are positioned low enough and shallow enough to get full-face of the occupants.
There are no camera warning signs in the area and the cameras are in white enclosures rather than yellow ones so they are unlikely to be specifically speed cameras.
These cameras always strike me as rather sinister, probably a combination of their anonymity & presence.
I have woken up to the use of all these “monitoring” systems in use on the roads in the uk and would be obliged if there were some websites of locations of anpr cameras (not traffic master) that are used by hm goverment that you could point me in the right direction to finding more info about.
Many Thanks I.Tweedie
Traffic master will save lives, road users will be so scared of losing there liscense. It is now when the toting up system comes into play.
Will the real offenders not just use false plates?