Britain to log all vehicle movement 914
dubbayu_d_40 writes "Using a network of cameras that can record license plates, Britain plans to build a database of vehicle movement for police and security services: rollout begins in March. Can't someone just swap/steal/disable the tracking device? Seems to me just another way to track the average citizen and not those wishing to avoid authorities."
Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just like gun legislation (Score:2, Informative)
Then again, if guns were banned for psycho's in the US then I guess profits would take a serious hit.
Re:future interrogation (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Speedtraps (Score:3, Informative)
I know I'm being pedantic, but it's my nature - I'm an ex-physicist programmer, I've been trained and am paid (in part) to be pedantic...
Hire cars (Score:5, Informative)
When a police woman was recently shot dead in Bradford [bbc.co.uk], the gang who were responsible had bullied a man into hiring a car in his name [bbc.co.uk]. The man went to the police before the murder had been committed, but the police just filed his complaint and didn't link it to the murder until too late.
The car was tracked on the camera network (it already partly works), but as it had been hired in his name the police arrested him instead of hunting down the gang.
As this network becomes more widely known, this is going to become more common - gangs will bully and blackmail people with no criminal record into hiring cars, and may even, to prevent them going to the policeabduct or kill them.
And, of course, criminals will habitually carry several sets of false number plates, so that they can change the 'identity' of their vehicle several times in the course of a journey.
Re:Speedtraps (Score:3, Informative)
The OP said:
The time it takes to move between cameras can tell exactly how fast you're going. (Emphasis mine)
You said:
If your average speed is above the speed limit (Emphasis mine)
In what way is your average speed your exact speed?
So the idea of a "point" measure of speed is silly _and_ technically violates quantum theory.
I wasn't entirely clear perhaps, but I didn't say anything about a point measure of speed - when I said "point", I didn't mean in the mathematical sense, I meant it in the general sense, ie in this case a short stretch of road. (You know, how people talk of "a point in time" meaning a general time, anything from a few minutes to a few years, not something precise down to the nanosecond)
As for violating quantum theory, now you're being silly. We have yet to extend QM to macroscopic objects, so the uncertainty principle doesn't really apply when talking about cars. Yes, every particle that makes up the car is governed by QM, but no-one would seriously start talking about its wavefunction.
Spray-On Mud (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Big whoop (Score:5, Informative)
1) Give you a traffic ticket.
2) Track your every move.
3) Run your plates every 5 seconds.
4) Use the above things to get a mistaken police report and hunt you down at any moment while you are on the street. (These things happen in nornal police work; I expect Britain's cameras to amplify this problem.)
5) Force you to participate in the system whether you like it or not.
6) Force you to pay for the system if you disagree with it. (IE-Taxes paying for cameras.)
People need to understand the difference between a business and a government. Businesses have no power over you; government does. Government can and will do all the above things with their own systems. OnStar provides a service, and if you don't like it then you don't pay for it and you don't participate in it. Try that with the government and they take away your driving rights and through you in jail. And of course if the government does start reglating OnStar, forcing them to provide the cops with an OnStar backdoor, you can always cancel the service.
So in summary:
OnStar / private business == Voluntary services
Government == Involuntary coersive force
More Information (Score:5, Informative)
Moving forward they need to really start working hard at defeating the uninsured, untaxed cars from the roads. Its not that hard to do have several big crack downs. At the end of the day it will reduce the overall cost of motoring in the UK as there will be less risk of being hit by an uninsured/untaxed motorist which costs everyone more.
Some of the implications of the system they are implementing is that they will be able to calculate distances between cameras and KNOW if people are speeding, They will also be able to proove that particular cars/trucks/bikes are in certain areas at certain times. That in itself is a great benefit for tracing criminal activity.
In many places in the UK they already have the CCTV cameras in action and they do record the cars going along the roads. However they are just adding the ability to track the number plates.
GPS toll is about tracking every vehicle in Europe (Score:3, Informative)
The documents for the GPS system [dft.gov.uk] all claim that it's about reducing road congestion, but I do not find this justification to be credible.
Firstly, there are ways for charging tolls on congested roads that are far cheaper and easier to implement than putting a "Little Brother" in everyones car. A mandatory RFID unit in the number plate and a pickup loop in the road come to mine. And secondly, it's not credible that road pricing is any more effective at reducing congestion on roads that are the only viable option for a particular commute, in the light that the far more obvious negative motivator of the unpleasantness of driving in a traffic jam does not have a similar effect.
The disadvantage of this method is that it can only track you in areas with the infrastructure. Of course, this is not a disadvantage of your only goal (as stated) is to reduce congestion. On the other hand, it's a real downer if your real aim is to track the whereabouts of every vehicle in Britain, whether they be on the motorway or the moors. Since the alternative is so much cheaper to implement (by their own estimates, a GPS onboard unit would cost £100, without the labour to fit it, some £3 billion pounds to fit to the UK fleet of 30 million vehicles), one has to conclude that this is their aim.
Once you note the EU directives quoted in these documents that refer to an EU-wide standard for GPS road-tolling, it's not difficult to see that this is something that has had widespread approval for some time.
And you have to start wondering about the real reasons for Galileo. They can claim they want independance from the US, and the way the US has been acting, this is more credible now. But one of the features of Galileo is that it has been designed to operate far better than GPS in urban areas, which would seem ideal for the purpose of vehicular tracking. I can't help but make the association.
Re:Where do I complain (Score:2, Informative)
Well you could ride a bike instead. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:2, Informative)
The easy option would be to get a foreign number plate, and stick that on instead -- it wouldn't be in the database and I hardly think they're going to flag every foreign number for inspection given the number of foreign trucks etc in the UK.
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:1, Informative)
All car owners, including fleets, are required to submit details to be held on a central EU wide database (usually via insurers). Whether that includes Switzerland or any other Non-EU country I don't know.
I would certainly think that UK Police will have access to that database as well as the UK DVLA database and would automatically stop anyone who doesn't show up on either one.
So having a foreign number plate is no panacea.
Cloning is sophisticated. (Score:3, Informative)
Criminals will travel around looking for a car which perfectly matches the colour and model of the car they want to disguise. They will then note the registration and clone the plate.
Hence when the registration of the criminal's car is put through the PNC or ANPR systems, it shows an 'innocent' car of the correct make, model and colour matched to an apparently correct plate.
Re:Another tremendous CCTV victory. (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't refer to reported crime for exactly the reason you state. I'm way ahead of you.
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:2, Informative)
Number plates in the UK aren't some officially supplied thing, they're plastic strips that garages make themselves. I think that if you get a set made up they're now supposed to ask for proof that the registration number is yours but in practice noone bothers.
Can anyone deny we are heading to 1984? (Score:5, Informative)
I wrote [slashdot.org] about this yesterday.
Oh, did you also know this Government passed an identical law to Hitler's Enablement Act [blogspot.com]? This law enabled Hitler to assume absolute power after he burned down the Reichstag and blamed it on communists.
My Grandfather fought Hitler across two continents to protect Britain from this kind of totalitarianism. The least we can do is help the resistance campaigns at Privacy International [privacyinternational.org] and No2ID [no2id.net].
Well, then here's something to complain about (Score:5, Informative)
Another victim of the new tyranny, John Catt [guardian.co.uk], was subjected to a stop-and-search by police, who recorded the purpose of the search as 'terrorism' and grounds for their intervention as 'carrying plackard and T-shirt with anti-Blair info'. There you go, then: an anti-Blair slogan on your T-shirt is grounds for suspicion of terrorism, even if you're 80 years old.
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:2, Informative)
Well, I don't know how Brittish law operates, but this is a big problem in Stockholm, Sweden.
The city has just had a traffic toll system installed, similar to that in London. And because of that, number plate theft has increased dramatically.
Problem is, if your plates are stolen and you report the theft, you are still responsible for paying the toll fees whenever your plates are photographed at a toll point/node/place/whatever.
How does this work in London?
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:1, Informative)
Good lord! Once again,
live in the real world.
Hint: steal/borrow/duplicate a plate from a car which is parked in a garage most of the
time, or one that's in the repair shop.
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:3, Informative)
*shakes head* What part of "Duh!" do the bureaucrats not understand?
Re:Just like gun legislation (Score:3, Informative)
In the meantime average Joe-middle-class gets the shaft, picks up the tab, and sends his son/daughter off to die in Iraq/Afganistan.
Re:Why are we discussing this... (Score:3, Informative)
The main problem is that the Ames searches happened before the law was changed to permit physical searches. The law was modified as a result of the Ames case.
Were the actions of the Clinton administration correct? No, not really. Does that excuse any of the current actions? Of course not.
What's most hilarious is that the GOPists are hiding behind a goddamn SPY AND TRAITOR as some sort of defense for the current actions.
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:3, Informative)
Not very nice, but cheaper.
If you have a suitable printer (not all are), you can print to non-absorbent paper in reverse and then apply the ink directly to the T-shirt. Ironing it from the back of the paper will fix it so that it doesn't come off when you take the paper away.
I haven't tried this, but it should work on any inkjet printer where the head doesn't make contact with the paper.
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:5, Informative)
Hmmmm. PC Sharon Beshenivsky was shot around the 18th November, and there was the story about the fab new CCTV system that tracked the car to London [bbc.co.uk], but then the story all went cold.
Come the 25th of Nov there's a story about how they appear to have lost the car [bbc.co.uk] and are appealing to the public for info on it's whereabouts. But hang on, I hear you ask, there was all that news about how great the system was and they caught the purps? Hmmmm.
Now it's 13th Dec and the public are again asked to help find a suspect [bbc.co.uk]. But you had the car right? You told us your fancy new system followed it to London right?
How's this any different from just looking up the owner of the car and going and knocking on their door?
I submitted a story to Slashdot (that didn't get accepted) about this very thing. There was the story (referenced in the parent) about how great this new system was, but it had privacy issues, then it turns out all it has is privacy issues, because it didn't actually work in the first place.
Also funny how the Gov. were shouting from the rooftops about how this new APNR system was going to keep us safe in our beds, but nothing, zip, zilch, nada, to say Ooooops - actually we fumbled that one and we didn't catch them in the car in London after all!
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fake license plates... (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps this would be the case where you live. Here, you're expected to watch for hazards in front of you, and though they may be driving dangerously, the only real evidence of what happened will be the damage to the back of their car/front of your car. If you failed to notice what might happen and take action (i.e. slow down) then you'd be responsible.
Hell, I know one guy who was on a motorcycle in the outside lane on the motorway, and a guy on the inside lane decided he needed to take the offramp, so he swerved across, knocked the guy off the bike, and drove off. The police did track him down eventually. Then what? They charged the guy on the motorcycle for reckless driving because the only damage they could see was to the back of the other guy's vehicle.