National car tracking system ready to go in early 2006
Published: 15th November 2005
Category: Schemes & Plans
Reader's Rage: [29votes]

According to the Sunday Times the Association of Chief Police Officers have been building a 24x7 national vehicle movement database system. This involves deploying more CCTV cameras around the country that use Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) linked to a control centre in Hendon, London. This will allow the police to track the movement of any vehicle in the country or to find out where a certain vehicle was on a given day.

The system is reported to be a year behind schedule with a "go live" date now set for April 2006. It's intended to process 50 million number plates a day by the end of the year. According to the new ACPO roads policing head, Meredydd Hughs, ANPR systems are planned every 400 yards along motorways and ANPR will be added wherever CCTV systems are currently installed.

The primary aim of the system is, apparently, tackling untaxed and uninsured vehicles, stolen cars and to enforce Chief Constable Hughs "denying criminals the use of the roads" policy. However, The Register points out that if the cameras are installed every 400 yards then this would allow the police to monitor the speed of every vehicle and potentially issue automatic speeding tickets to any speeding vehicle on any motorway in the country. If this was not a hidden intention of the system then why, argues The Register, would they want to check tax and insurance details of a vehicle every 15 seconds on a motorway?

Another worrying turn is that a law that was required to help progress the system (the Disclosure of Vehicle Insurance Regulations 2005) was made under powered provided for in the "Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005". Whether tax and insurance invasion is a serious crime is a matter of opinion, especially when compared to murder, knifings or rape, but it's hardly an organised crime.

Data from the national ANPR will be kept for two years.

Our comment: Big brother gets even bigger. To what end will this national spying system being used?

Printer friendly version

Discussion Forum
Do you want to have your say about this news article? Head on over to our Discussion Forum and join in with existing conversations or start your own.