This is the third installment of our exclusive and extensive monthly focus on ALPR (Automatic License Plate Recognition) aka, ANPR/ LPR/ NPR. News about one of the biggest threats to liberty, freedom, and privacy is updated often throughout the month so be sure to bookmark this post.
Keep up to date and informed by Visiting October’s headlines and commentary
September’s archives can be found here
Starting things off, we visit Britain again:
Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey
Great Britain is a Giant Surveillance Test Lab. What happens there, comes across the Atlantic fast
“By next March a central database installed alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of 35 million number-plate “reads” per day. These will include time, date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global positioning satellites.
Already there are plans to extend the database by increasing the storage period to five years and by linking thousands of additional cameras so that details of up to 100 million number plates can be fed each day into the central databank.
Senior police officers have described the surveillance network as possibly the biggest advance in the technology of crime detection and prevention since the introduction of DNA fingerprinting…
The scheme is being orchestrated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and has the full backing of ministers who have sanctioned the spending of £24m this year on equipment.
More than 50 local authorities have signed agreements to allow the police to convert thousands of existing traffic cameras so they can read number plates automatically. The data will then be transmitted to Hendon via a secure police communications network.
Chief constables are also on the verge of brokering agreements with the Highways Agency, supermarkets and petrol station owners to incorporate their own CCTV cameras into the network. In addition to cross-checking each number plate against stolen and suspect vehicles held on the Police National Computer, the national data centre will also check whether each vehicle is lawfully licensed, insured and has a valid MoT test certificate.
“Every time you make a car journey already, you’ll be on CCTV somewhere. The difference is that, in future, the car’s index plates will be read as well,” said Frank Whiteley, Chief Constable of Hertfordshire and chairman of the Acpo steering committee on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR).
“What the data centre should be able to tell you is where a vehicle was in the past and where it is now, whether it was or wasn’t at a particular location, and the routes taken to and from those crime scenes. Particularly important are associated vehicles,” Mr Whiteley said.
The term “associated vehicles” means analysing convoys of cars, vans or trucks to see who is driving alongside a vehicle that is already known to be of interest to the police…”
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