UKC

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/15/cops_m6alley/

i thought anpr was only used to facilitate the finding of out of date insurance and road tax documents.

i had no idea every car that travels up the M6 is logged and stored for 2 years. anyone else feel slightly uncomfortable about that?

are there any other countries in the world where that is allowed/tolerated?

In reply to Tobias at Home:

Nope

In reply to Tobias at Home:
Wonder if they'll make the (anonymised) data available for individual-based traffic modelling? That would be 'joined-up'.

In reply to Tobias at Home: Apart from storing the data gathered, for two years, what other use are they making of the technology ?

In reply to Jon Read:

of course, there would be an identifying reference number in the data accidentally produced allowing targeted ads on the side of the road when they see you approaching....

In reply to imkevinmc:

I suppose one might request a copy of the system's registration with the Information Commissioner, which would show its purpose. Obviously one wouldn't do this, it would be far too dull.

In reply to Tobias at Home: I'm uncomfortable about everything in our 'big brother' world, I even voted against CCTV being put in my local area and this was when it wasn't the most law abiding area.
Between your phone, debit/credit card and all the little cameras tucked away on our streets, it's rather hard to get about the UK anonymously. Obviously this will worry someone with criminal aspirations more but I'm convinced we're already a long way down the road to everyone being 'tagged' twenty four hours a day, you know, just in case like...

Sometimes I wish we protested like the French

In reply to imkevinmc:

they will use it for:

finding cars without mot/tax/insurance.
evidence to prove people travelled where the police say they were
tracking fugitives
finding stolen cars.

all very laudable but i can't say i like the idea that if this were expanded then wherever i drive will be monitored by the police automatically. it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to see that any car they wish to track would easily be tracked in real-time. seems like an unreasonable invasion of privacy to me.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

"it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to see that any car they wish to track would easily be tracked in real-time. seems like an unreasonable invasion of privacy to me."

Here in Northampton it's very common to be tracked on CCTV whilst on foot and then be approached by a police officer, with a following conversation about what you are doing walking that way home. If you're polite and chatty, it's not hard to find out that this is usually after a heads up from the CCTV.

If they use the same tactics on the motorways, then I guess anyone in a quick car can be targeted, anyone young, just in case like...

In reply to Tobias at Home:

I guess it depends, if my van was stolen I'd quite like the idea they could track it.

But to be honest I doubt they give a toss what I'm doing the rest of the time, so whether or not they have data on me running up and down the motorway makes no difference to me.

In reply to Jaffacake:

nothing to hide, nothing to fear?

In reply to Tobias at Home:

Everyone has something to hide of course, so everyone has something to fear.

In reply to Jaffacake:

they already use similar techniques to prevent regulars getting to protests for example (fitw*tch recommend borrowing a car or renting one.)

give it a couple of years and the met will be tracking every car who's owner "looks a bit foreign" by default.

In reply to Tobias at Home: i don't really like the idea of being tracked [my name's not really Bob ], but i would hope they've got better things to do than follow me about. ...unless they really want to fit you up...

In reply to Tobias at Home: I keep seeing a police car locally with 'ANPR equipped' on the side of it, have been meaning to ask who these guys are for a while.

In reply to Tobias at Home:


Errr..... No.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

It really doesn't bother me in the slightest - in the same way that logging and storing DNA and fingerprints doesn't bother me. To be honest, I don't see the problem - on the contrary, it can potentially be of benefit to me.

In reply to Tobias at Home:


It appears to be relatively easy to collect the information, but I guess it must require a lot of resources to do anything with it.

My preferred way of allocating those resources would be to focus on the people who do the most harm, terrorists, criminals etc. Even then we don't have enough prison space to lock up all the criminals we currently catch.

But then again, perhaps they will target the people they can make money out of, as they do with all traffic based law enforcement.

In reply to Tobias at Home:
anyone else feel slightly uncomfortable

no, not in the slightest.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

Fitw*tch? An organisation full of self important paranoiacs. They have to cling to the hope that the police are interested in them, because no-one else is.

In reply to mrchewy: I'm with mrchewy - theres much to much CCTV, it's everywhere. In my mind it adds no security whatsoever (or marginally so) and the only benefit of it is it makes Crimewatch a little more interesting!

In reply to Gaz lord:

It's my understanding that a lot of police cars are now so equipped. They automatically scan every approaching car which then flags up the owner's name and address, whether the vehicle is insured, has a valid MOT etc. All very laudable you may think. Great if your car's stolen you may think. However, I was stopped in Swansea by traffic officers who admitted that the ONLY reason they stopped me was because their car's ANPR system showed that my car wasn't registered remotely locally and at 10pm on a weekday they thought that this was suspicious enough to stop me.

I was literally grilled as to what I was doing in Swansea at 10pm at night, the purpose of my journey, where I'd been and where I was going. One officer did a quick search of the car while the other questioned my wife and my son. A PNC check was carried out and the car's VIN number was checked against the registration number. I was breathalysed (even though I hadn't been drinking and didn't smell of drink) and I was given a producer. All this because I was driving in a city 100 miles from home at 10pm at night!

Did I have anything to fear or hide? No. Did the police's action reassure me? No. Do I think the police were justified in stopping me? No. Was I inconvenienced? Yes. Did I feel threatened? Yes. Did I feel that this was a gross invasion of privacy? Yes. Am I now suspicious of the use of ANPR monitoring? Yes. Definitely.

Dave

In reply to Dave Williams:

I would be interested to know when that happened. Since the introduction of ANPR and integrated insurance databases, producers are very, very rarely issued.

In reply to Tangler:

It was in May 2006. I was told at the time it was because I had no valid ID on me - as in photo driving license. They already knew the car was insured and didn't need an MOT but it was clear that the expectation was that I should have been carrying my driving license. Never realised it had (secretly) become mandatory. I still feel that the producer was handed out as a form of 'punishment' - to teach me that I should always carry my driving license.

No, I still don't carry it.

Dave

In reply to mrchewy:

I'm not entirely sure why the route I choose to walk home is any of the state's business.


I'm also not entirely sure why they should be targeting anyone based on their age or what they choose to drive.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

Doesn't bother me in the slightest

In reply to Tobias at Home:
The main problem I have with all of these databases is that if there is an error in entry or storage (which almost always happens with large data sets), it can very quickly turn into a Phillip K Dick story. "I'm sorry sir, you don't exist. But you do appear to owe us £x million."

Cock-up is always more likely than conspiracy.

In reply to Dave Williams:

Not sure when the Driving license database was linked to the PNC - but would have though it was baout the same time as the insurance database was, if not before. The producer seems a bit pointless as, certainly nowadays, your valid current licence details can be checked on computer.

Whilst I understand you are pissed off - it does not appear that you were pulled because of ANPR.
The same info on your vehicle would have been available from a normal vehicle check.
The power used to stop your vehicle has got nothing to do with ANPR.

There is an obligation to produce your driving licence when stopped but that's what producers were for - if you didn't have it they gave you seven days to produce it. Nowadays the database means that producers are not even required most of the time. Again that has nothing to do with ANPR.

In reply to Dave Williams:

It's a habit that's very difficult to get into - now I always take all my documents with me, and really feel like I'm breaking the law if I don't (which I would be). It's only taken 20 years. But that's France, not the UK.

In reply to Dave Williams:

I was stopped by that in a sort of similar situation.

I was driving out of a pub, 50 miles from where the car was registered at 11pm, they stopped me and asked if I'd been drinking, where I was going and where the car was registered. They mentioned they had stopped me as I was driving out a pub and my car was registered to a different city.

This took maybe 2 minutes, they were polite and didn't breathalyse me or even ask to see my driving license.

I thought it a bit odd (they suspect me enough of drinking that they'll stop me driving out a pub, but when I say no will take my word for it), but it wasn't really that much of an issue and made me very thankful I wasn't speeding and hadn't reached the point where I normally made an illegal left turn.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

I'm not quite sure why the fact it's on the M6 is different to their existing use in major cities.

When my car was stolen they said it was unlikely to be in Nottingham because it is hard to get into the city without going past an ANPR camera. The contents were dumped in the peak district, it was then picked up 2 days later automatically in Lincoln by the tax disc even though it had false plates, then picked up again going into Nottingham where they found it parked on someones drive in one of the less desireable areas of the city.

In reply to Jaffacake:

Commonly refered to as 'the sniff test'

In reply to Dave Williams:

brilliant post. Sums it up nicely. Cases like this actually make me angry.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

ANPR has potentialy prevented 2 honour killings, that i know of, in that the girls were rescued from the cars less than a hour after they were abducted, and before they were possibly murdered.

All they had was the colour and make of car, and they had the area she had been abducted from and the approximate time.

Checking the ANPR images they had for the area, they got the number plates of all the cars matching the colour and make, then used ANPR to track those plates.

holding the info for two years is important as not all crimes are known about as they happen and checking crims past road use could be vital, even if its just finding bodies.

Im all in favour of ANPR.

In reply to Daithi O Murachu:

Well said that chap!! ANPR is a vital tool, which for 99.9% of the population will have no effect whatsoever on their lives.

Only the bad guys need fear it.

In reply to Arcticboy: I suppose to broaden the debate, the main question is:

to what extent should we give up privacy in the name of ease of criminal investigation, on the basis that "only the bad guys have something to fear"?

whether that's ANPR or DNA databases or ISP records.......

In reply to wildchild:

Presumably if you get stopped and asked the reason why you're not where they think you should be, there's no obligation to supply an answer if you choose to make no comment.

In reply to Parrys_apprentice:

If it helps stop the next 7/7 or another Yorkshire Ripper then they can have the lot.

In reply to Tobias at Home:
>
if you havent done anything wrong and your car is legal whats there to worry about?

In reply to Arcticboy:
Wait, you mean it *will* effect [sic] 1 in 1,000 people, then???
Is that how many bad people there are?

In reply to beastofackworth:

Watchdog the other night reported on the joy of the 'computer says no' approach of the police when your details are wrong on the database and you are flagged as no insurance following ANPR. Apparently insurance firms have seven days to update the database after you've taken out a new policy, a period during which you can be marked as no insurance if you've renewed on the deadline.

Obviously, given the infallibility of this system you wouldn't expect the police to do anything sensible like ring the insurer...

In the cases highlighted by Watchdog, they seized the cars, in one case turfing out a family with young kids out at a services on the M5.

As with every technology, it's only as good as the people using it. I must admit, I can't have complete faith in the police and insurance companies in this regard.

In reply to Jon Read:

Yup, exactly, there are 6000.3 bad people in Great Britain......

(Facetious tw*t)

In reply to Tobias at Home:

I always avoid the motorway system when I have a body in the boot.

In reply to Arcticboy:

Sigh ... There's no need to be rude, you know. Especially as in your last post you're out by a factor of 10. Yes, this is all 'facetious', but I really hope the database managers and programmers can do basic maths.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

No, not in the slightest.

I don't exactly see it as sensitive or personal orinformation or intrusive in any way for anyone to know that I drove up the M6.

Why do you feel uncomfortable about it? You do it in broad daylight, people see you out on the roads every day. Be honest, does it really matter that some grainy footage exists of you too?

In reply to Tobias at Home:

To be honest, a Tesco clubcard probably contains much more personal infomartion, which they can manipulate to their advantage.

That reminds me, I need more tinfoil.

In reply to nickinscottishmountains:


It isn't the M6 part that bothers me it is that it seems the ultimate target is that everywhere I drive will be stored for 2 years and no doubt will be available in realtime.

and how is this not a breach of my right to privacy anyway? what justification is there to track me when i visit my love child/mistress or gay lover etc.?

In reply to Tobias at Home: Available for real time for what purpose? What do you fear?

In reply to Arcticboy:

Actually having a lobotomy is proven to stop the next 7/7 and stops serial killers in their tracks. What are you waiting for?

In reply to Tobias at Home:
Bar codes are the way forward. A tatoo on the forehead giving an unique code for each individual. Electronic kerbside readers fitted to lamp-posts and at all building entrances would be linked in to government and police databases tracking and storing current location and movement history. Parking officials and civil servants can zap you with hand held readers to apply on the spot fines or other penalties. The original tatoo will cost each individual around £250, refreshed every two years for £55. The authorities may make random investigations into your movements from time to time, an inability to fully explain could lead to prosecution.

In reply to Tobias at Home:
>

Is the record likely to be passed onto your wife/current lover - I suspect the keepers of the info will have much better things to do than to try and wreck marriages/relationships?

On the other hand the state would be interested in your activities if you work in a sensitive national security field and are laying yourself open and vunerable to blackmail by a foreign power. Maybe that's the penalty of working in such a field - your life isn't your own.

In reply to MHutch:


neither do i so i carry the original insurance schedlue in the glove compartment.

even if ANPR does flag you up for insurance, if you can produce a paid up insurance schedule then you will be fine

In reply to Daithi O Murachu:

Not really - this is one of the standard methods of the uninsured (get the paperwork then cancel the policy). If you're not on MID, contact needs to be made with the insurer.

In reply to Trangia:
You hit the nail right on the head there buddy.

People seem to think that this small loss of privacy for the greater good is the same as Mrs Miggins who works in ANPR head office with all day to idly flick through recordings and in a curious reverse of our celebrity obsessed society, taking delight in prying into the lives of innocent Steveie from Scunthorpe cruising up the M6 in his clapped out Honda, and pondering why he stoppoed so long at the service station before she calls over the other people in the office to guffaw at the footage of Stevie from Scunthorpe four junctions later, wildly exclaiming "Oh look my fellow pying colleagues! He's changed lane! Oh, there he goes again! God I love my job, getting paid to pry like this".

In reply to Trangia:

Of course not it would just be passed on to your employer so they could sack you.
The real point is you do not know how your private information will be used or even how far in the future it will turn around and bite you. If you have never done anything wrong in the eyes of the law or future law, if you have never attended a protest or been a member of a pressure group, if you have never done something stupid when drunk, if you have never gone on the web while at work or any of these others then you should be alright.

In reply to Duncan Bourne: I think we need to be relative here. There is a minicule chance that an individual's private life will bite them in thirty years time. There is a much bigger chance that these measures help with crime and terrorism. I think it is worth it.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

I find it difficult to believe that there are a team of analysts working through this data, especially considering that economic cuts are required. If its not used to automatically match against the tax/insurance/MOT databases, It'll just be kept in case they need to find people such as terrorists or serious criminals by a particular team. Unless you're paranoid, in which case there are rooms full of Spooks watching your every move.

Last week I drive to Manchester airport in the middle of the night. I took a wrong turning and instead of getting to the valet parking, I ended up going up the ramp to the drop-off area where my car is too tall to fit. I bashed all the height limit signs then did a u-turn and drove the wrong way back down the ramp. There's about a million cameras pointing at me. Never heard a thing. They're not looking for Joe Public divhead but serious criminals.

I'm not worried. Why are you?

In reply to MHutch: thats funny because i got stopped by west mercier police who were showing i had no insurence after renewal and they happily rang my insurence company,cleared it all up and allowed me on my way.they dont just sieze your car for no reason,they have a duty to call your insurer or give you the chance to prove you have insurence,i know this because a good friend is a traffic officer

In reply to Phil West: Phil Phil Phil!!! You fool!!! Don't you realise GCHQ are watching every thread all the time waiting to pounce on unsuspecting honest folk like you? You will be strung up quietly in the night for your indiscretion in admitting to this in public.


Or so the conspiricists would have us believe.

In reply to beastofackworth:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/2010/10/car_impounded.html

I agree, you would have thought that phoning the insurer was the minimum standard before towing someone's car. Perhaps this particular duty isn't being made clear to all officers.

In reply to nickinscottishmountains:

Haha. I bet that scenario would fall somewhere between 'nice to have', 'if we had an unlimited pot of cash (or were a Communist state)' and 'would never want to do that'.

In reply to Kipper:

good point, well at least i have the contact numbers and the policy number to hand if im in that situation

In reply to MHutch: Unfortunately this is another instance where it is up to the individual to prove their innocence, not up to the police to prove their guilt

In reply to owlart:

That's our justice system. What you want is the French system.

In reply to Jon Read:

You are quite right, but as I'm not a database manager you have nothing to worry about!! And the curse of these damnable forums is that what is meant in jest is oft lost in translation. Apologies if I appeared rude.

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to access information stored on the ANPR database, and even if access is granted there are many safeguards in place to ensure the information is used for the right reason.

Now, really, stop being silly.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

If it's a fixed system on a private network then it may be on all the time and be on the edge of violating Article 8.

Mobile systems are not so intrusive because they can't afford to run them. They only get switched on so that the bosses can test them every month or when TV cameras are around.

Everyone in the radio industry has the ambition to rip off the coppers in the way that O2 Airwave has.

In reply to Removed User:
may make random investigations into your movements from time to time, an inability to fully explain could lead to prosecution.

What movements are we talking of ally and are the relevant authorities myself and dave?

In reply to owlart:

But if you choose not to tell them, you're obviously up to something.

In reply to Keith Jones:
shhh!

In reply to Arcticboy:
No probs.

To return to the topic, I see nothing wrong with the information being collected per se, indeed I can see this or similar data being used (as suggested earlier) to improve traffic management and safety. But what possible reassurance is there against data corruption or loss? Does the balance of importance and use outweigh the (low?) risk of inconvenience and mistakes being made?

In reply to Jim Fraser:


The ambition may be there Jim but the ability to deliver a national network to restricted with the level of resiliance, and most importantly the rich group call functionality aint there.

Do you work for a network operator? If you do then you know that all that dabbling with PTT over Cellular never came to nought, and without that you cant service our need.

"It would require significant incentive for us to take our focus away from our core customers"

thats to quote one UK operators director of Strategy, he summs up nicely the view of the other 4

And as UK national Operators wont step upto the requirement its then not so easy to claim were not getting value for money. When you look at the Public sector value for money comparisons that were done in the early commercial stages of procuring what became the airwave service, and compare the UK's commercially owned commercially operated model, against similar and different methods of delivering and owning the network ( C2000 - Netherlands) (Astrid - Belgium) for example then its not so easy to scream rip off.

In truth the police ( home office ) could not have got the network up and running for a whole bunch of reasons , site acquisition being the obvious point where delays and legal actions against HMG would have bogged the project down. So how much is outsourcing the RISK of uncompletion worth?

Yes value was lost as the procurement process ended up with a monopolistic advantage to the a single supplier, and costs have grown with additional requirements for a more resilient architecture and coverage within London Underground.

Service quality is high though as far as forces are concerned.

And Airwave was delivered on time and in budget - not bad for a national communications project on that scale.

In reply to Tobias at Home: A lot of people post far more potentially damaging info about themselves on the internet - facespace etc - that traffic cameras are the least of their worries.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

It's one of the busiest drug, guns and general smuggling routes in the UK so I'd rather they did what they can to nick those responsible, especially now that some chaps in Ireland fancy blowing us up again.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

Try every motorway and most main roads. if your doing nothing wrong why would you care. I can assure you I am not that important that people would bother looking at me and where I have been, I bet most of you are not either. You can have national security or you can have utter chaos because we cant track criminals and terrorists, your choice.

Do you think that we could make a freedom of information request and get hold of all the data? With some careful data mining we could use it to hunt down all the middle lane sitters! We could finally come one step closer to a truly utopian society.

In reply to spartan:
That's strange, I don't recall utter chaos before cctv. You're about a thousand times more likely to die on the roads than due to terrorism so it needs to be kept in proportion. Terrorists can kill but the threat to national security is laughable compared to those in history.

In reply to spartan:

haha

In reply to Trangia:


And what about when they leave it (or in this case, access to it) on a train or in a taxi or lose it in the post like they have with classified documents before now?

Personally I'm fairly ambivalent about the whole thing but having been held by the police before now when I came up on their computer as a wanted criminal (they'd cocked up spelling my name despite several efforts) I don't think 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' holds much water.

Cockups are much more likely than abuse but a system like this is open to that abuse.

jk

In reply to Tobias at Home: mate of mine used to get regularly stopped and searched every time he went in to the city of london, bought a 2nd hand car and it was flagged on the anpr system for connection to drug offences.

he tried to get it sorted, they kept on stopping him, think he sold the car on to some poor bugger as soon as he could

has happened to other mates as well but was actually connected to things they had actually done. really pretty minor things if i was to tell you what they are, but i'm not going to tell you

In reply to elsewhere:

So what are the suggestions, bearing in mind that the risk of extremism is higher, ANPR and CCTV does what human surveillance cannot do or would be to costly. This day in age you have to pick either have your total an utter anonymity or trade some of it to be safer.

Its normally only the people with something to hide that have a problem.

In reply to spartan:

Suggestions
1) Maintain a sense of proportion, don't panic! The risk of extremism is negligible compared to the dangers my (and presumably your) ancestors faced. I'll happily accept the tiny risk and live as a proud Brit rather than betray what my father, uncles and grandfather fought for.
2) CCTV recorded the attackers but didn't prevent 7/7 or 9/11. Crime rates haven't plummeted since CCTV was introduced. It does detect individual crimes but it doesn't reduce overall crime much. Look at page 12 of the British crime Survey at http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/bcs25.pdf
3) If I suggested Stasi-like informers steaming open letters or eavesdropping on ordinary conversations you'd think I was an evil megalomaniac. Just because the ordinary conversations and the eavesdropping are digital doesn't make mass eavesdropping any more desirable.

I vehemently disagree with almost all of the post 9/11 anti-terrorism laws for the reason below.

Every time you give up some liberty and privacy to fight terrorism you are collaborating with terrorists, you are agreeing to be terrorised. Each time you surrender some liberty and privacy it is a shameful insult to the memory of those we will be honouring in three weeks time.

In summary to all that, the correct response to terrorists is mostly "F*** you, I'll live as I want".

In reply to spartan:
PS if you've nothing to hide I assume you publish every photo you take, every conversation you have, every pay slip, every credit card bill, details of every relationship, every family anecdote etc etc etc

Much of what we hide is perfectly legal and nobody else's business.

In reply to elsewhere:

Someone, possibly several people on UKC would say "if you have nothing to hide, there's nothing to fear." I'm with Benjamin Franklin.

In reply to Tobias at Home: Here's a few things about ANPR not yet mentioned which might help inform the debate:

There is no such thing as a "national" system with vehicle information other than the Police National Computer. Each force maintains it's own database, and if it wants to search in other areas , has to ask for that information in advance.

Up to two years of data are held, but willy-nilly searches are not allowed. For instance, if any officer wants to do a search on data older than 90 days, they have to make a full Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) application. This is quite a considerable legal and administrative hurdle to overcome, not least of which because it has to be approved by an ACPO ranking officer each time.

Even if the data being looked at is only a few days old, any search which was thought to track the movements of an individual or group would be classed as surveillance and be subject to the aforementioned RIPA.

In reply to Dave Williams:

It's always been the case since the Road Traffic Act was passed that if an officer in uniform asks for your licence you have to be able to produce it there and then. The producer is effectively a way of letting you off the hook for the offence you commit by not being able to do so. If the PC was doing their job properly they would have pointed that out then cautioned you at the time before speaking to you about it.

In reply to elsewhere:

Surely the civilised, humane response is "Please stop hurting people, and put your argument across peacefully and we'll listen and consider it, and if convinced will act appropriately."

And when did terrorists care about reducing our civil freedoms in UK? I'd have thought they usually have more pressing issues, like the ones they're prepared to be terrorists for...

In reply to Nigel R:

This isn't quite true where ANPR links to, for instance, insurance information.

In reply to Jon Read:
You're right, the your response is the only way to lasting peace so I'll have to restrict myself to thinking "F*** you Mr Terrorist, I'll live as I want".

In reply to Kipper:

You don't understand how this works. There are 2 types of ANPR -

1. The fixed type that the OP was, I believe, originally talking about. This has little or no human interaction and is used for the detection of traffic offences like speeding/HGV in lane 3 etc.

2. The type deployed onboard Police vehicles, where the ANPR system essentially gives the patrolling officers a second pair of eyes. There is no live link to the insurance database, it is downloaded to the vehicle on the day.

In both cases, as NigelR states, the restrictions on access to any of the data is highly regulated and entirely dependent on the higher authorisation, as it is with every database the police have access to.

In reply to Nigel R:

Can I just applaud you for bringing some sense to this discussion!

In reply to Tobias at Home:

There can be problems with government corruption. Say for example someone unscrupulous wanted to track you. All they have to do is pay a few grand to a bent copper to get your car's movements.

A recent UK example

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2007/08/04/thug-who-enforced-empir...

Bent BT engineers gave a gang details of where their targets lived, and bent coppers kept them one step ahead of the law.

The Police should investigate criminals and suspected criminals. The average UK citizen is not a suspected criminal and should be allowed to live at liberty without constant surveillance.

In reply to John1923:

Say for example someone unscrupulous wanted to track you. All they have to do is pay a few grand to a bent copper to get your car's movements.

Indeed.
john1923 has travelled up the M6. john1923 has travelled eastbound on M62. john1923 has entered Leeds via the M621. john1923 has left Leeds. john1923 has headed north on A1.

With information like that available (via bent coppers) to ANYONE, I would be too frightened to leave home.

In reply to elsewhere:

Thats ridiculous and you know it, privacy is one thing but does it really harm your day to day life?

If your honest?

In reply to spartan:
Does it harm me?
Not in any tangible way I'm aware of.

Our freedom from informers and police asking for our papers ("Ihre Papiere bitte") was paid for with 1.5M British lives in the 20th century. The technology is now digital & British rather than human & foreign but the principle is the same.
It's not ridiculous to value those freedoms highly.

In reply to mrchewy:

Yeah, but it takes up precious hill time, and we already work more hours than the French, and for years longer then the French and die years younger than the French, so why would we waste our time protesting like the French?

(I have a French neighbour, and I have never seen him protest about anything since he moved here, so I guess even he knows it's a waste of time protesting over here)

In reply to Duncan Bourne:

I've got a chocolate fountain....


Sx

In reply to Tobias at Home:
Actually I've thought about this:

They are storing data for 2 years and they are probably having to store the video. How much does it cost to store the feed from 4 HD cameras running 24 hours a day? Could the funding be used in a more productive way, although I suspect that it is a fairly small part of the budget.

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Why video? ANPR cameras won't even record in all likelihood. Just record the number plate, the time and the location.

Why HD cameras?

In reply to Tobias at Home:

Just as an aside, ANPR doesn't just access confirmed, solid data, like MOT/Insurance etc. it's also used to check against local box intelligence, the quality of which can be variable at best. It could well be a 'tip off' from your ex-wife which never gets noticed until you get pulled over, then because you've been pulled over, you get pulled over again and again and again...it does have a valid use in some circumstances, but it's only as good as the data which underpins it, which isn't always great, so it's not always great.

In reply to Eric the Red:
You want reasonably high resolution to ensure that the system can tell the difference between a 0 and a C with a black screw cover in the middle.

If you use optical character recognition and it makes a mistake due to an illegally formatted plate how do you correct for it? ANPR doesn't check if the plate is on the right car. The system can't tell that something is wrong if your plate is nicked and stuck on a different car, the only way to confirm this is with the primary evidence (video feed). I doubt anything less would be admissable in court.

In reply to Bokonon: i think my main concern is that the technology exists to track every car, phone, face (via cctv) and the only thing preventing a full-on surveillance society is the lack of the infrastructure being put in place. i've no issue with mobile ANPR which simply cross-checks outstanding warrants/lack of insurance etc. and doesn't record the location.

maybe full-on surveillance isn't a problem and we should embrace it but i'm not so sure. isn't a problem in a decent democracy but, without wanting to invoke godwin's law, there is a reason why this is illegal under the german constitution.

i'd also prefer there not to be the infrastructure in place for if an unpleasant, discriminatory government came into power.

there's already been situations where cctv has been installed to track muslims traveling in and out of particular areas (when discovered it was dismantled)

In reply to Reach>Talent:

You need enough resolution to read the plate. That doesn't mean HD, it means correctly positioned and well set up cameras. I expect they might retain a picture on the db, but definitely not video.

So maybe a jpg of about 20kb for each entry. Easy to store really.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

Tracking from faces? Really. Where? Automatically?

The vast majority of cctv in this country isn't even government owned. In fact hardly any is. Most publicly owned cctv is local authorities although the police have access. The vast majority of cctv however is privately owned. This idea of a big government surveilance operation is totally misguided. I blame csi and spooks.

In reply to Eric the Red: fyi http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/04/birmingham-surveillance-cameras-mu...

In reply to Tobias at Home:

That's anpr, not faces.

In reply to Eric the Red:
Based on a 20kb per car, which seems a bit low you only actually use 1TB per year. Not nearly as bad as I'd thought, probably requires a fair old farm for the analysis though.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

That depends on the balance that goes with it.

If you have a huge surveillance culture but records are destroyed after a short time with good FOI and corroboration, standards of evidence and prosecutions codes of practice make inappropriate conviction very difficult then maybe yes.

If you have draconian or obscure standards for record keeping, no corroboration and a target culture in prosecution services then it is definitely not acceptable.

UK jurisdictions currently tend towards the second case.

In reply to Eric the Red:

a) you seriously have no issue with every car journey being logged?
b) do a google and you'll see that there was also cctv involved. if my laptop and picasa/iphoto can spot and recognise faces, i'm fairly certain that the police can do better and if going to the trouble of installing 169 anpr cameras + 40 cctv they would include that functionality on the cctv.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

Inspector Kevin Borg? Resistance is futile, eh?

In reply to Eric the Red:

started way back in 1998
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/facerecognition-cctv-launched-1178300.htm...

various other councils use it as well.

In reply to dissonance: my issue isn't actually with any of this technology - it is the way it is being implemented as a fait accompli with, as far as i can tell, no particular public discussion about how far we want it to go. ok i can see for operational reasons you want to keep your techniques secret but it seems things only hit the news when there is a leak followed by outrage from some libertarians and a promise from the authorities to roll it back or add controls - rather than a grown-up discussion before it is implemented.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

I would say my major, first and foremost concern is not with outstanding warrants or lack of insurance, because these are justifiable and have a basis, the reality is that ANPR trawls of traffic can be very effective in stopping people without insurance or picking up people who skip bail.

I'm more concerned about the fact it is also used to stop people who might have done something, but might not, and the suspicion can come from information from a third party, who may well do it for malicious reasons, and there is very little recourse the police have, where it is recorded, it doesn't always have a clear source, and it doesn't need to be credible, just potentially useful, and getting completely inaccurate information about yourself removed is hard work, that is if you can work out what the problem is in the first place.

In reply to Tobias at Home:


Quite, the issue is not just what happens to the data today but what might happen to it in the future. All other arguments aside, for the reason alone we should be very reluctant to allow this sort of surveillance to go on.

In reply to dissonance:

If someone can do facial recognition when most cctv only has 15 pixels from ear to ear with 90% compression I'll eat my hat with a spoon.

I think the problems people have with cctv would evaporate if the true applications and abilities of the systems were properly understood. You people are living in cloud cuckoo land.

Google search Mandrake (in your link) and you'll find the company behind it TSSI no longer sell it, advertise or even mention it on their website. If you can find a result of that trial I'd love to see it. I can't find anything. My guess is the trial was a hideous disaster and the product was removed from the marketplace.

In reply to mrchewy: i agree the french are brill unlike the typical doormat british attitude...

In reply to Eric the Red:

why are oyu so sure that all cctv being installed now is low-res? if my mobile phone camera has better res than that, again, why do you think the authorities would use technology from 20yrs ago? do you think modern cctv is all stored on vhs too?

In reply to Tobias at Home:

I think that any local authority system will be legacy technology from the late 90s when the government gave them all the money for it. Newer systems will be better quality, but very few are megapixel.

Your phone is one camera. Upgrading a town centre camera network to fibre to take the increased transmission requirements and changing your storage server to a £50k 100TB RAID array is a little bit too much for local authorities.

I don't think, I know that most footage has moved to dvrs. I also know that some people still record to vhs.

In reply to Eric the Red:


You are aware that cameras are improving in quality i take it? Its now fairly affordable to install a decent quality camera and with the relative cost of hds you can store to your hearts content.
Just look up the assassination in Dubai for decent quality cctv.


feel free to give your expert opinion, particularly on how you know that it is a stalled technology and will never develop any further. bearing in mind most peoples objection isnt how good it is now just it is easier to argue at the beginning rather than halfway through.


1998 was a tad ambitious, i actually took part in a trial around then for facial recognition systems (friend working on it for thesis dragged me in as a "volunteer") however you only need to do a bit more googling to see that among others Germany and the USA are making increasing use. Admittedly this is currently under ideal circumstances (eg visa checks) but the technology is progressing nicely.
At present the false positives or negatives will give hassle but the likelihood is it will drop and of course getting back to the original subject ANPR has an even easier targets.

In reply to Eric the Red: a quick google for real-time cctv face recognition returned lots of hits.

this one for example: http://www.free-press-release.com/news-ayonix-releases-face-recognition-for...

cloud cuckoo-land? righto.

In reply to Eric the Red:


You dont need to upgrade the entire network though, just a few chokepoints for the good ones with the flagging capability.

In reply to dissonance:

Tellingly the Dubai systems were installed in a hotel which is a small network of privately owned cameras. The cost of upgrading a town centre network would be very high, more cameras and most importantly they are more widely distributed in terms of distance apart.

Of course technology will develop and you're right to say we need the conversation. The current government agrees and wants to further regulate what is already a higly regulated technology. I am trying to counter the posters who are claiming outrageous current capability like tracking from facial recognition.

ANPR tells you where cars are, if the conversation had stuck to that I wouldn't have got involved.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

The internet is full of press releases, marketing and overselling. Not just for cctv.

Find me a fully working, active system.

In reply to Dave Williams: Apologies if this has already been responded to but I have not read all the messages.

By law a constable can require you to produce your driving licence if you are driving a motor vehicle on the road (see below). It has never secretly become mandatory. The producer merely is a nicer way of you proving that you have a licence, rather than being prosecuted for not carrying it with you.

Section 164 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 provides constables with a power to require the production of a driving licence and in certain cases a date of birth.

164(1) Any of the following persons -

(a) a person driving a motor vehicle on a road,
(b) a person whom a police constable (see note below) or vehicle examiner has reasonable cause to believe to have been the driver of a motor vehicle at a time when an accident occurred owing to its presence on a road,
(c) a person whom a constable or vehicle examiner has reasonable cause to believe to have committed an offence in relation to the use of a motor vehicle on a road, or
(d) a person -

(i) who supervises the holder of a provisional licence while the holder is driving a motor vehicle on a road, or
(ii) whom a constable or vehicle examiner has reasonable cause to believe was supervising the holder of a provisional licence while driving, at a time when an accident occurred owing to the presence of the vehicle on a road or at a time when an offence is suspected of having been committed by the holder of the provisional licence in relation to the use of the vehicle on a road,

must, on being so required by a constable or vehicle examiner, produce his licence and its counterpart for examination, so as to enable the constable or vehicle examiner to ascertain the name and address of the holder of the licence, the date of issue, and the authority by which they were issued.

164(2) A person required by a constable under subsection (1) to produce his licence must in prescribed circumstances, on being so required by the constable, state his date of birth.

In reply to Eric the Red:

no because i've really got better things to do than trawling the internet to convince an obtuse person on the internet.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

You said...

" i think my main concern is that the technology exists to track every car, phone, face (via cctv) and the only thing preventing a full-on surveillance society is the lack of the infrastructure being put in place."

...which is wrong.

I've not been obtuse, I've just disagreed with you.

In reply to Eric the Red:


no they tracked them throughout Dubai, took time to build up but the quality was there.


All the evidence is this government is just as casual towards privacy as the last, eg bringing back the communications interception option.


The only comment i can see prior to your statement it cannot happen was Tobias at home who notes that it is the infrastructure which is getting in the way at the moment. However the potential is there and it is getting easier/cheaper al the time.

It isnt really a great leap to assume that since the easier technical option is already being exploited it wouldnt be extended once the cost drops for facial recognition and they get the technology better.

In reply to Tobias at Home: Why do you think you are being tracked? Your Maestro/Switch/Mastercard billing will give more information than ANPR, i.e. where you bought dinner, which hotel you stayed in, where you bought your shopping/holiday/climbing gear/petrol. All that ANPR is is a storage device. Someone actually has to want to look at your car movements to 'track' you. Unless you are already flagged up as being a 'bad guy'! I bet that there are more ANPR cameras in petrol stations than the police forces of the country have, yet that is not what you are complaining about.

From your posts you seem to think that there are thousands of operatives actively tracking every car in the country 24/7. Where do you get this notion from?

In reply to Eric the Red:

do you agree that ANPR can track every car?

do you believe that the location of every mobile is available to mobile operators and thus could be stored if someone put the infrastructure to do so? (i.e. it isn't a technology problem - it is simply a matter of desire)

do you believe that the technology exists to recognise faces in real-time from video if so desired? - i.e. again it is a matter of building the infrastructure?

note i haven't been saying that old cctv has this capability but newly installed cctv that is funded by an anti-terrorism group (as is the case in birmingham) is almost definitely going to have that functionality.

In reply to Matt Bill Platypus:


strange i thought Tobias was commenting more on how new technologies make it much easier to track and hence removing the need for all those operatives and making it far more financially viable to pry

In reply to Matt Bill Platypus:

i don't think there are thousands of operatives actively tracking cars! however....did you read the link from the guardian? the authorities installed a cordon of anpr and cctv cameras all round smallbrook preventing anyone entering or leaving without being recorded. it isn't a coincidence that that is a highly muslim area.

i also assume petrol station ANPR systems aren't linked into a searchable national database.

I believe it can tell you when every car passed the camera, so I guess it's not too much of a leap
Yep. Was that part of the discussion?
No. I don't.


It won't have it because it doesn't exist.

In reply to Eric the Red:


do you accept that you can do face recognition and searching on still photos?

if that is the case surely it comes down to the speed with which you search the database? so you're left with a database of 50 million people if you had everyone's photo. each face has, let's say 10 defining features (distance between eyes/nose etc.) how long do you thing searching that database would take? 1 second? 1 minute?

In reply to Tobias at Home:

While we are at it why don't we prohibit the police from using any commercial database, accessing private CCTV and using any mobile phone location technology.

Let's destroy the DNA database and the fingerprints records.

Let's not even talk to the police when they are trying to find witnesses.

Only then will we be truly free!!

In reply to Tangler: cheers - thanks for your reasoned contribution

In reply to Tobias at Home:

Just continuing your argument to its logical conclusion

The technology exists, is commercially available and is routinely employed in investigation of crime. You appear to want it removed, or certainly not to be available to the police.

In reply to Tangler:

No I think he wants the police to have to actively make enquiries about a person rather than have everyone's details stored on a central database which they can access at will.

I think that's entirely reasonable.

We only fingerprint criminals, not everyone in the country.

We only take DNA samples from criminals, not everyone in the country.

I don't want to live in a country where the converse is the case. Even if it makes the police's job easier. I'm prepared to live with that to protect my privacy thanks very much.

In reply to Removed User:
Not quite. Isn't DNA taking from everyone who's arrested? Then kept for a number of years, regardless of wether or not they're then found to be guilty or not. Or indeed even charged.

In reply to Removed User:



It is called a proportionate response. Total minute-by-minute surveillance of every citizen might make crime very difficult to get away with, but it would involve an excessive loss of freedom, as well as creating the instruments for totalitarianism, even if we were lucky and they were never used for that purpose. (But technological determinism makes it quite likely that it the tools are there, they will be used for ever-increasingly oppressive purposes, due to the usual scope-creep of such intrusive measures)

In reply to aln:

This is often the same for finger prints.

In reply to Tobias at Home:

There is no national database for ANPR.

In reply to Matt Bill Platypus:

this is just conspiracy theory then? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police-enforced_ANPR_in_the_UK

In reply to Matt Bill Platypus: http://www.npia.police.uk/en/10505.htm

"At the end of March 2010, the NADC was receiving approximately 10 million reads per day, with over 7 billion vehicle sightings stored. "

NADC = National ANPR Database Centre

still think there is no national database for ANPR?

In reply to Tobias at Home:
These have been in use for at least 10 years probably they are situated just inside england after stranraer traffic joins M6 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1342357