By Steve Ranger, 23 March 2005 15:50
NEWS English and Welsh police forces are developing a national network of thousands of cameras that will scan number plates and check them against police databases, a move they say will keep criminals off the road.
The cameras use automatic number plate recognition technology (ANPR) to check a vehicles identity against the Police National Computer, records at the DVLA and local intelligence systems.
Cars flagged by the system can then be stopped by police and, in a trial of the technology by 23 forces last year, police stopped 180,543 vehicles and made 13,499 arrests, bagging 1,152 stolen vehicles and 13 firearms.
The updated ANPR strategy calls for the development of a national infrastructure of ANPR-enabled cameras and readers, and a national datacentre to analyse intelligence from ANPR readers. The datacentre will collect all the readings for crime analysis, ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) said.
All police forces in England and Wales will have at least one dedicated ANPR intercept team by October 2005, with more to follow, the strategy says.
Chief Constable of Hertfordshire Frank Whiteley said: The launch of the ANPR strategy for the police service is a key step in grasping the opportunities ANPR provides for denying criminals use of the roads. The police service is now integrating ANPR into its day-to-day activities as a mainstream policing tool.
The government is spending £15m to support ANPR development through to 2006.
The trial of the technology last year ran into problems because of poor quality of the data held in the DVLA database but an ACPO spokeswoman said that steps were being take to improve it.
Comments
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1. Carl Maycock
Fantastic!
Who said we live in a police state ?
Making sure someone who hasn't paid their road tax is a far better use of police man power and time!! Besides think of the revenue it'll create!
The laziness of the police astounds me every time!
God forbid they should have to chase real criminals!
2. Alan Tench
As each number plate is identified, if the check against databases doesn't throw up a match, then is the registration number deleted, or is it stored together with date ,time and place as a permanent record? I bet you a penny to a pound of brown stuff that it's the latter!
3. Ian Sargent
According to the Chairmam of the ACPO steering group for this project, all data will be held for 30 days. So even though the scheme is out to catch the guilty, the innocent can be tracked for a month afterwards.
4. Gary Boardman
Perhaps they could be coupled to roadside land mines, thereby saving the cost of prosecutions and meaning that the "villians" don't need to be chased. Grundons could then come along fit a new mine and clear away the offending vehicle and so also help private industry.
5. Zakala
Surely an automated system for prosecuting tax evaders is a good thing (they are effectively stealing OUR money). Also aren't most vehicles used by "real" criminals stolen? So with this system the police will be chasing "real" criminals as well as tax thieves.
Since driving a car is a PRIVILEDGE not a right and to do so you are required to register with the DVLA how does using that information to target criminal activity (yes that's ANYONE driving an untaxed, uninsured, unsafe or stolen car) constitute living in a police state?
6. anonymous
This is frightening! The daughter of a colleague was stopped by the police a few months ago while driving her dad's car. The police knew every place her dad's car had been over the previous 4 weeks. (He had been driving his nephew to football grounds around the country as part of a fubd-raising exercise!) What has keeping tabs on law-abiding citizens got to do with catching criminals?
7. anonymous
It's the same old thing - the criminals will aviod being caught by using false plates and the typical Joe Bloggs will get a fine for his MOT being a day out of date.
8. Richard Davies
If they think that a success / hit rate of 0.5% (1152 stolen cars out of 180543) is good then I would hate to know what they think bad looks like...who would pump money into a scheme that basically uses the following idea - 'if we stop enough vehicles, then we're bound to catch a criminal eventually'. Their figures work out to about 5 out of every 1000 cars stopped that are actually doing something illegal...I think this is just like blanket bombing a country and just as unacceptable. Why should the british people suffer because the police are racist, discriminating and highly ineffective at most of what they do.
9. Graham Crispin
1984 may have long passed, but Orwell's vision of the future is alive and well and thriving in Blair's Britain. Wonder if Orwell (Eric Blair) and Tony are related!
10. Brian Burkill
I am all in favour of keeping real criminals off the streets/roads. And if this is the intended purpose, ie tracking and capturing stolen cars, then its a good thing, as it is known that a lot of stolen cars are stolen purely for the purpose of committing another crime.
But I suspect that this is nothing more than a revenue gathering exercise to pick up outstanding parking tickets and honest motorists who have genuinely accidentally lapsed on their car tax. After all, Criminals just nick somebody elses tax disc, so they are covered from that angle.
And what happens when it goes wrong, which it will. Is there any redress or comeback when falsely accused of something, just because a camera says you are a criminal does not necessarily make you one.
But, if the purpose of this is personal safety and getting scum into prison, then I am in favour, and I must remember not to frown when driving now.. Have to look my best for the cameras.
11. anonymous
Surely crooks are just going to recreate/steal legitimate license plates to get around this?
The plates probably don't have to come from the same type of car, and all you need to have in order to "nick" plates is a screwdriver... not beyond your average criminal mind?
Sounds like it is more about extracting maximum car tax revenue?
12. anonymous
So it's OK for people to drive around without tax or insurance? Surely if you automate the enforcement of these common, yet mundane tasks then you free up officers for more important tasks (even dare I suggest crime prevention?).
More importantly you can do this without causing inconvenience or delay to legitimate road users.
We don't live in a police state. Those people that say we do have no idea what they are talking about.
Want to know what a police state is - get a history book and look up Nazi Germnay or Stalin's Russia.
Providing that we respect civil liberties, and control and limit the use of technology then our collective freedom can not only be maintained, but also enhanced.
Sorry if this comes as a shock to any daily mail readers out there.
13. anonymous
A worry is the growth of cloned number plates being used by criminals. Several innocents have been summonsed, and on one occasion at the same time in two places. I know Halfords require proof of identity before they sell a new plate, but the naughty ones will find a way round that too
14. paul wingfield
Use a German Plate; it's tax free too!
Now it will be an impressive data base that can find that.
15. gav the chav
Do you pay your road tax?
Do you pay your insurance?
Do you maintain your car to MOT standards?
I do and it annoys me that people who don't are constantly able to avoid the system.
Somehow silicon readers seem to think that this is OK. Well how about they try getting involved in a accident caused by an un-roadworthy vehicle driven by an uninsured driver?
This is not about civil liberties, it's about enforcing long standing legislation in an effective way. Do you honestly think that the governemnet is remotely interested in your daily movements? And that they are that concerned that they'll spend taxpaers money just to follow your BMW while it drives around middle england?
This type of system is not aimed at targeting hardened criminals. It's targeted at those people that flout the law because they think they can get away with it.
People don't just forget their tax is going to expire - it's on you're windscreen and DVLA send you a reminder (and it often runs concurently with your MOT). Not paying tax is a choice either not to pay or delay payment
As for parking tickets - if you have a parking ticket - pay it, otherwise avoid them by parking legally.
16. anonymous
The sheer short-sightedness of the 'I'm all right, Jack, I'm law-abiding' brigade is breathtaking.
What will happen is that the criminals will soon map the camera positions and will move onto the byways rather than the highways - which is already happening as quiet country lanes (like mine) become rat-runs as the drug dealers from the big cities bypass all the major routes to bring their wares to town.
The police's attitude? "there is nowhere suitable to site a camera because of the nature of the road" (ie narrow and winding).
17. Charlie
legal for illegal that gets legal!
I appreciate the gentlemans comment about us all being legal and how this system is only designed to bannish the illegal - no one wants a drunk man in a car with no tax risking lifes! - but it is perhaps a bit naive to believe the Goverment are funding this so heavely because they really care!!!! - reducing criminals is how they gift wrap it, but in reality it will be the legal ones of us that pay back the goverment 10 fold!
Speed camera's are proof of that.
So please! I'm happy to support a goverment who really care! but lets not accept their spin on this - this is about revenue and nothing more!!!!!
18. anonymous
All cars now need is an ID card reader so you have to log in to start the engine, and the picture will be complete. Will also help ensure that speeding points go to the 'correct' person.
No doubt Mr Blunkett will next surface at the Transport Dept...
19. Simon
I too am amazed at how blaze some perople are about this sort of thing. Yes, I too have no problem with a system that does nothing more than reads a number, checks that the vehicle is taxed, then forgets the number. The problem is that like so many other things, this is potentially teh thin end of a very dangerous wedge - once we have been conditioned to think nothing of these cameras, what is to stop the next government moving the goalposts a little by keeping the data for a little longer.
Then how about keeping it a bit longer and applying data mining techniques to profile our movements ?
Then ...
If all successive governments are honest then we have nothing to worry about, but that is a rather big if !
20. Steve
Being fair to the police for a moment. I am sure it can and will be used for catching 'real' criminals. I am also not against them using it for catching insurance and tax dodgers. Cynically however, I guess it could also be used for working out average speed between two cameras and then sending speeding tickets out. Considering the lack of local community policing for the real crimes like burglary, murder, etc it is a bit off they they are going for the easy target not to mention 'fund raiser'.
21. Iain
I'm with Simon - we are one of the only developed democracies in the world without a written constitution - we really do rely on the goodwill of those in charge to protect our interests.
Until we have our fundamental rights laid out in black and white I am not going to blindly trust that successive governments can be trusted with this sort of surveillance information - why would anyone have this level of trust in yet-to-be-elected politicians?
22. anonymous
Accurate - Oh no it isn't. And this is just the start.
My boss, who is severely disabled, was being driven home in his car by his wife. They were stopped by a Policeman who told them they had been stopped because "Your car is not insured according to our database". Such was the confidence of the policeman he told them to take the Drivers Licence and the MOT (of a 2 year old car) to their local police station, but NOT the Insurance. Moral of tale. If you renew your motor insurance there will be a period of upto 4 weeks when its not on the Police database.
PS When told there was no MOT, the local Police insulted the driver and told her to bring in the V5 as "you are probably lying."
Guess who's not getting a donation this year?
23. Nick
Glad to see money being spent where it's needed, going on this & not worthlessly frittered away on urgent road repairs.
24. anonymous
Anybody who is not worried by the extension of day by day surveillance this represents is a tad too trusting in my opinion.
In the UK we get nearer and nearer to the 'panopticon' state where the police will be able to watch us from cradle to grave.
Britian already has 28% of the world's total of CCTV camera, plans for the world's most advanced database of it's citizens (sold to us as an innocuous 'ID card') and the world's largest DNA database. And now total surveillance of all our movements on the road (to go with keeping our phone data including GPS data from our mobiles and Internet records.
And no constitution to protect us. And who says those camera positions will always just be used for number plate recognition? Once they're up (and they seem to be springing up like mushrooms at night) we'll see Function Creep and an increasing proliferation of cameras for all sorts of purposes.
Welcome to the Prison Planet.
25. mccaliho
Bring on the technology thats what I say. I have never heard so much wineing about personal freedom of movement and anonimity nonsence....
If it helps to clear the streets of criminal activity and tax and insurance dodgers then bring it on.
As far as I am concerned the authorities can monitor my movements whenever they like, I've absolutely nothing to hide.....