Worried about being watched? You already are

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk>
Date: February 15, 2007 12:17:02 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Worried about being watched? You already are

Dave:

This article, from today's (UK) Guardian, about the extent of  
existing and planned use of automatic car number plate recognition in  
the UK, might be of interest to IP.

cheers

Brian


> Worried about being watched? You already are
>
> Objections to road pricing include fears about privacy. But number- 
> plate recognition is in use now
>
> SA Mathieson
> Thursday February 15, 2007
> The Guardian
>
> More than 1.3m people have signed an online petition against road- 
> pricing - part of the objection to it being that it would require  
> the government to track all vehicle journeys. But police forces  
> have been tracking motorists for a decade - and are in the process  
> of joining up their systems nationally.
>
> In 1997, the City of London Police introduced automatic number- 
> plate recognition (ANPR) cameras on roads at the edge of the City.  
> These cameras are now used by police nationwide, both in vehicles  
> and at fixed locations. Forces use ANPR for anti-terrorism work and  
> it is also used to enforce London's congestion charge.
>
> The National ANPR Data Centre, run by the Association of Chief  
> Police Officers with funding from the Home Office, will centralise  
> all ANPR data from the 43 forces in England and Wales - although  
> not from the London congestion charge - and the system is set to go  
> live in stages between April and July.
>
> Checks on numberplates
>
> It will draw on several thousand cameras, according to John Dean,  
> the association's national co-ordinator on ANPR. Individual forces  
> already run real-time checks on every plate read. The City of  
> London police use 20 fixed ANPR sites and three mobile units:  
> "We're reasonably content that everything gets covered in the  
> City," says chief superintendent Alex Robertson of around 100,000  
> daily vehicle movements. Registrations are checked against hotlists  
> from the Police National Computer, including vehicles of interest  
> to the police for crimes such as burglary or theft of petrol. The  
> check takes four seconds. "If we get a match, that comes back to  
> our control room," says Robertson. "We assess it, and decide if  
> it's a priority at that time."
>
> The data is also stored for later analysis: if a vehicle is used  
> for a crime in the City, the force should have an image of it  
> entering the area, which may also show the driver and passenger.  
> Robertson says this can help both include and exclude people and  
> vehicles from an inquiry.
>
> Given the way ANPR works, the national centre will not know about  
> every vehicle journey from start to finish, and those that do not  
> pass a camera will not be traced. What it will have is around 9m  
> sightings a day initially, with the capacity for 50m a day. The  
> details will be kept for two years, both at the data centre and by  
> the force concerned.
>
> The central system uses an Oracle database, with data for analysis  
> extracted to a Postgres database to avoid affecting core  
> performance, and custom-written Java software with specific police  
> networks rather than the internet used to send and receive data.
>
> For every sighting, a "plate patch" - a photo of the numberplate -  
> is also stored as a check: the technology aims to be 95% reliable  
> for UK plates, although this falls slightly in adverse conditions  
> and with foreign plates. Plate patches can be used as corroborative  
> evidence in court.
>
> The national centre will allow analysis that has been difficult to  
> do across police force boundaries. Dean gives the example of three  
> similar crimes that have been committed within one force's area,  
> all of which took place near ANPR cameras. The police checked the  
> vehicles scanned around the times of the crimes and were compared:  
> "There were two vehicles that were seen in the vicinity at those  
> times," Dean says, adding: "One was responsible for that crime."
>
> It will also carry out automated data-mining, including a search  
> for cloned vehicles: these can result in an innocent person  
> receiving speeding fines or worse. The software will look for  
> impossibly quick journeys: if the same plate is read in London,  
> then 10 minutes later in Liverpool, it will be added immediately to  
> a hotlist. "The clone will be identified even before an innocent  
> person is targeted, we hope," says Peter Wilson, assistant national  
> ANPR co-ordinator.

. . .

full article at:

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2012729,00.html

Cheers

Brian

--
School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/


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