The ANPR CCTV network
In 2005, the ''Independent'' reported that by the following year, most motorways, main roads, town centres, London's congestion charge zone, ports and petrol station forecourts have been covered by CCTV camera networks using"What we're trying to do as far as we can is to stitch together the existing camera network rather than install a huge number of new cameras," - Mr Whiteley chairman of the ANPR steering committee said.Some cameras may be disguised for covert operations but the majority will be ordinary CCTV traffic cameras converted to read
National ANPR Data Centre
The National ANPR Data Centre stores all ANPR data feed from the various police forces, currently it does not take data from CCTV networks in the UK. It is based at Hendon in north London, on the same site used for the existing Police National Computer. In March 2006 the National ANPR Data Centre could store 50 million number plate 'reads' per day, to be expanded to 100 million 'reads' per day within a couple of years. The time, date and place of each vehicle sighting will be stored for two years. At the present 27 million clocks a day, over 18 billion ANPR records would be recorded every year. According to theCrosschecks
The National ANPR Data Centre is connected to the Police National Computer to provide up-to-date lists of vehicles connected by the police to crimes such as burglary or theft of petrol. Other crosschecks will include insurance-industry data to identify uninsured drivers, vehicles without a valid MoT test certificates, vehicles who have failed to pay for validData mining
The National ANPR Data Centre will make it possible for software to data mine previous sightings of license plate to identify patterns in the data. Patterns can be used to build up intelligence of a vehicle's movements on the road network or to find cloned vehicles by searching the database for impossibly quick journeys."We can use ANPR on investigations or we can use it looking forward in a proactive, intelligence way. Things like building up the lifestyle of criminals - where they are going to be at certain times. We seek to link the criminal to the vehicle through intelligence. Vehicles moving on the roads are open to police scrutiny at any time. The Road Traffic Act gives us the right to stop vehicles at any time for any purpose" - Frank Whiteley, Chief Constable ofHertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...and Chair of the ACPO ANPR Steering Group
The database
The National ANPR Data Centre uses anData access
Police
All police forces have real-time access to ANPR camera data through direct links to the National ANPR Data Centre. Effectively, the police (and the security services) can track any car (technically any numberplate) around the country in close to real time. The current restraints on police use of ANPR data have been dictated by pragmatism rather than a concern forLegislation
In 2012, the government enacted theHistory
In August 2004 a presentation by John Dean, the Association of Chief Police Officers' (ACPO) National ANPR Co-ordinator at IFSEC revealed how ANPR was being used to 'deny criminals the use of the road'. On 18 November 2005 British policeProject Laser in the United Kingdom
In March 2005, plans were announced to set up a nationwide system of over 2,000 automatic number plate recognition cameras in the"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."
Bedfordshire Police
/blockquote> The project was seen as a success despite a Home Office report showing that theDriver and Vehicle Licensing Agency The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA; cy, Asiantaeth Trwyddedu Gyrwyr a Cherbydau) is the organisation of the UK government responsible for maintaining a database of drivers in Great Britain and a database of vehicles for the entire ...(DVLA) trial had an error rate of up to 40%, with claims that the system was contributing"…in excess of 100 arrests per officer per year – ten times the national average…"Further findings went on to show that the error rate dropped to 5% when infrared systems and more regular updates of information were used. During the second phase of the project around 28 million number plates were spotted in total, with 1.1 million (3.9%) of these matching an entry in one of the databases. 180,543 vehicles were stopped (101,775 directly because of the ANPR system), leading to 13,499 arrests (7.5% of the total) and the issue of 50,910 fines (28.2%). 1,152 stolen vehicles (worth £7.5 million in total), £380,000 worth ofdrugs A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalat ...and £640,000 worth of stolen goods were also recovered. The primary goal of the second phase was to see how well the costs of the ANPR system could be covered. The final conclusion was that less than 10% of the expenditure incurred was recouped, with the Home Office claiming that the failure of drivers to pay fines contributed to this low figure, and continued to recommend the system be deployed throughout the UK
Report (PDF)
Funding is now in place for the construction of the National ANPR Data Centre capable of holding 50 million ANPR reads per day, destined to form the basis of a vehicle movement database. There have been stories in the national press suggesting that the use of the network could be extended to catch drivers usingmobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...s illegally, and those failing to wear seat belts, although the current system only retains text-strings consisting of number, date, & time.
Project Champion
Project Champion is a project to install a £3m network of 169 ANPR cameras to monitor vehicles entering and leaving theSparkbrook Sparkbrook is an inner-city area in south-east Birmingham, England. It is one of the four wards forming the Hall Green formal district within Birmingham City Council. Etymology The area receives its name from Spark Brook, a small stream that f ...andWashwood Heath Washwood Heath is a ward in Birmingham, within the formal district of Hodge Hill, roughly two miles north-east of Birmingham city centre, England. Washwood Heath covers the areas of Birmingham that lie between Nechells, Bordesley Green, Stec ...neighbourhoods ofBirmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ..., both of which have largeMuslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...communities. Its implementation was frozen in June 2010 amid allegations that the police deliberately misled councillors about its purpose, after it was revealed that it was being funded as ananti-terrorism Counterterrorism (also spelled counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, incorporates the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, business, and intelligence agencies use to combat or el ...initiative, rather than for 'reassurance and crime prevention'.
Criticism
Speaking on 14 September 2008, Simon Davies, the director ofPrivacy International Privacy International (PI) is a UK-based registered charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world. First formed in 1990, registered as a non-profit company in 2002 and as a charity in 2012, PI is based in London. Its c ...stated that thedatabase In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...would give police "extraordinary powers of surveillance" and claimed that "this would never be allowed in any other democratic country". John Catt, an 80-year-old pensioner at the time and his daughter Linda (with no criminal record between them) - were stopped on 31 July 2005, had their vehicle searched under section 44 of theTerrorism Act 2000 The Terrorism Act 2000 (c.11) is the first of a number of general Terrorism Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It superseded and repealed the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 and the Northern Ireland (Emer ...byCity of London Police The City of London Police is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement within the City of London, including the Middle and Inner Temples. The force responsible for law enforcement within the remainder of the London region, ou ...and were threatened with arrest if they refused to answer police questions. After making formal police complaints, it was discovered they were stopped after their vehicle had been picked up by roadside ANPR CCTV cameras, after a marker had been placed against their vehicle in thePolice National Computer The Police National Computer (PNC) is a database used by law enforcement organisations across the United Kingdom and other Non-Law Enforcement Agencies. Originally developed in the early 1970s, PNC1 went 'live' in 1974 providing UK police forc ...database as a result of them being spotted attending EDO MBM demonstrations inBrighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A .... Supporters of the Catts highlight the fact that John and Linda Catt had been suspected of no crime, and argue that they were unfairly targeted due to their associations. Police spokesmen described the campaign Catt had been taking part in as a "campaign of illegality designed to pressurise EDO to cease its lawful business" which led to a series of convictions of campaigners, and argued that surveillance of Catt was necessary because "his voluntary association at the Smash EDO protests forms part of a far wider picture of information which it is necessary for the police to continue to monitor in order to plan to maintain the peace, minimise the risks of criminal offending and adequately to detect and prosecute offenders". Sussex Police refused to confirm or deny whether a tag exists on their car. As of February 2012 John Catt did not have a criminal record. Catt commented "That our participation in peaceful protest outside an arms factory led to our arbitrary stop-check for terrorist activities many miles away by another force is a very disturbing development of the 'police state'." ''The Register ''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information tec ...'' has noted that "in theory a system could be organised in such a way that records of law-abiding drivers weren't generated at all, but that hasn't been the way things have panned out."
Car cloning
The success of ANPR in detecting vehicles of interest to police has led to a new kind of crime - car cloning. Criminals target vehicles of the same make and model to copy these number plates so that ANPR systems will record a read on the make and model relating to a fake number plate. Any legal transgressions could then lead to the legitimate owner receiving notification of enforcement action instead of the criminal. There is very little monitoring of number plate manufacture, particularly websites offering "vanity plates" (plates that are supposedly usable only in off-road circumstances, such as car shows) and this gives criminals avenues to attempt to evade detection, however ANPR will often show that there are multiple vehicles using the same registration number and prove that the genuine owner is innocent as well as providing images to identify the culprits.Inside Car Cloning
at BBC Inside Out, 3 December 2009
See also
*Civil liberties in the United Kingdom Civil liberties in the United Kingdom are part of UK constitutional law and have a long and formative history. This is usually considered to have begun with Magna Carta of 1215, a landmark document in British constitutional history. Development o ...*Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom The use of electronic surveillance by the United Kingdom grew from the development of signal intelligence and pioneering code breaking during World War II. In the post-war period, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was formed an ...*Privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Police-Enforced Anpr in the Uk Applied data mining Automatic number plate recognition Information technology in the United Kingdom Automatic Numberplate Recognition in the UK Surveillance