[privacy] Camera monitors for Center City Philly?

["Larry Seltzer" <Larry () larryseltzer com>]

According to this morning's Philadelphia Inquirer
(http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/16684768.htm) Congressman and mayoral
front-runner Chaka Fattah wants to study a congestion fee charge for
traffic in Center City Philadelphia. The article cites a program in
London that implements this, and says it does so through London's
(in?)famous network of cameras, which record license plates and charge
non-resident vehicle owners a fee.

Does anyone know about this specific function in London? Do the systems
actually parse the numbers off the license plates and automatically
charge? I have a hard time believing that could work here; there's so
much variety in the plate layouts, what with multiple states, colors,
new vehicle plates.

And then there's the privacy angle. Fattah didn't say anything about
cameras, but obviously something like that would be necessary to
implement the charge.

Larry Seltzer
eWEEK.com Security Center Editor
http://security.eweek.com/
http://blog.eweek.com/blogs/larry%5Fseltzer/
Contributing Editor, PC Magazine
larryseltzer () ziffdavis com 

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