Britain will be first country to monitor every car
journey
From 2006 Britain will be the first country where every journey by
every car will be monitored
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 22 December 2005
Britain is to become the first country in the world where the
movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national
surveillance system will hold the records for at least two
years.
Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every
passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of
vehicle movements so that the police and security services can
analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.
The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV cameras
which are being converted to read number plates automatically night
and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main roads,
as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station
forecourts.
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.
But others concerned about civil liberties will be worried that the
movements of millions of law-abiding people will soon be routinely
recorded and kept on a central computer database for years.
The new national data centre of vehicle movements will form the
basis of a sophisticated surveillance tool that lies at the heart
of an operation designed to drive criminals off the road.
In the process, the data centre will provide unrivalled
opportunities to gather intelligence data on the movements and
associations of organised gangs and terrorist suspects whenever
they use cars, vans or motorcycles.
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. Criminals, for
instance, will drive somewhere in a lawful vehicle, steal a car and
then drive back in convoy to commit further crimes "You're not
necessarily interested in the stolen vehicle. You're interested in
what's moving with the stolen vehicle," Mr Whiteley
explained.
According to a strategy document drawn up by Acpo, the national
data centre in Hendon will be at the heart of a surveillance
operation that should deny criminals the use of the roads.
"The intention is to create a comprehensive ANPR camera and reader
infrastructure across the country to stop displacement of crime
from area to area and to allow a comprehensive picture of vehicle
movements to be captured," the Acpo strategy says.
"This development forms the basis of a 24/7 vehicle movement
database that will revolutionise arrest, intelligence and crime
investigation opportunities on a national basis," it says.
Mr Whiteley said MI5 will also use the database. "Clearly there are
values for this in counter-terrorism," he said.
"The security services will use it for purposes that I frankly
don't have access to. It's part of public protection. If the
security services did not have access to this, we'd be
negligent."
*****
Sooner or later, Singapore will follow
ba??