According to an Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), a strategy document was leaked to the Sunday Times about a 24x7 national vehicle movement database that is now being built. It going to be able log everything on the UK's roads and retains the data for at least two years. The new system, which will use Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), will be overseen from a main control centre in Hendon, London. It is going to be like a 'Gatso 2' network, extending, enhancing and linking all existing CCTV, ANPR and speedcam systems and databases. Which perhaps explains why the egg heads in ACPO's tech section don't seem to have needed any kind of Parliamentary approval to begin the deployment of what promises to be one the most all-encompassing surveillance systems on our planet.
In April of next year the control centre is proposed to go live, it also intends to be able to process up to 50 million number plates per day by the end of the year. John Dean, the ACPO national ANPR co-ordinator told the Sunday Times that fixed ANPR cameras exist already on every motorway in the UK "at strategic points" and that the intention was to have "good nationwide coverage within the next 12 months." According to Meredydd Hughes Head of ACPO roads Policing, the ANPR systems are planned every 400 yards along motorways. There has already been a trial on the M42 near Birmingham, it will first be used to enforce variable speed limits, then to tackle more serious crime. Hughes also intends ANPR to go in whenever CCTV systems are installed, and cites the "complete system" around Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield, where every vehicle is already checked on the ANPR database, as the model.
The main aims for the system are tackling uninsured, untaxed vehicles and stolen cars. But unless the Times has got the wrong spacing, having a camera every quarter of a mile on motorways quite clearly means they will be used to enforce speed limits also, which would in effect make the current generation of Gatsos outmoded. Otherwise, checking a vehicle's insurance and tax position every 15 seconds or thereabouts.
From the view of the police, the major immediate payoffs wiil come via links with other databases. Already in place is a DVLA project to computerise MoT test centres, thus assisting the creation of a comprehensive tax database. And while the Home Office flagged the success of mobile ANPR unit trials earlier this year, claiming it has increased the arrest rates of up to 1,000 per cent. It failed to mention that the same trial uncovered major defects in the DVLA's existing databases. Also announced last week was the police ANPR system, it is however also being linked to a database of uninsured vehicles, and new offences, and police powers.
The previously harmless pastime of keeping an uninsured vehicle in a garage and not driving it becomes a criminal offence, and comes on top of the preceding the breakthrough of criminalising keeping an untaxed vehicle in a garage and not using it. The last, was dealt with by requiring owners to register the vehicle as off the road via a Statutory Off-Road Notification. The administrative pragmatism of not doing 'anything' wrong into a crime, will allow the Government to issue fixed penalty notices for not renewing insurance on time, while there's also now a fixed penalty for the late renewal of tax discs (before, you could pay this in arrears). The only people going to hit in both of these cases with penalties are clearly the ones who've previously been registered within the system. It is going require real-time alerts and pursuit to be able to cope with the extremely large numbers of unregistered and uninsured vehicles. They will also have to be distinguish these vehicles from the many foreign registered cars on the UK's roads. As we already know, it will be a lot easier and cheaper to target the law-abiding citizen, than it will be to deal with the usual hardline serial offenders. We can already see which way this is going to go!
As well as the tax and insurance 'benefits', the planned two year withholding period for the National Vehicle Movement Data Base, provides the police with a potentially effective source for future surveillance and investigations. Vehicles can be remotely followed, drivers' previous movements can be put together a lot more easily than in the case of just CCTV footage.The potential can already be seen in the ability to tie ANPR data with CCTV footage of the vehicle, which to some extent would number plate your face too.
Related Linkswww.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1869818,00.htmlwww.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/15/vehicle_movement_database
