UK Indymedia | Automatic Numberplate Recognition Cameras creating a 'total police state'

Automatic Numberplate Recognition Cameras creating a 'total police state'

Philip Hollobone, Conservative MP for Kettering wants the system extended. Why not tell him what you think of that idea on his blog?:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2007-07-19a.149607.h

FreshandGreen

Comments

Hide the following 10 comments

The arm gets longer!!

07.08.2007 20:29

Man, doesn't this just friggin' amaze you?

What's wrong here that the tories just don't get it, just don't connect the dots. Perhaps they are wilfully complicit. Are the Lib-Dems likely to be different?

Perhaps it would be worth to suddenly and unilaterally vote for Lib-Dems merely to upset the entire system with a surprise tip towards that party which is not yet ready to run the country. Its as democratic as it gets under an-democratic system, is legal so we can't be arrested, and is likely to catch everyone off guard. A system off-guard has to really pull its weight to re-stabilise, and while it is doing that, it cannot be concentrating on all of the countless laws that neo-Labour have set up.

Just a thought ...

Mr Toasty

the company that makes them

07.08.2007 21:06

on it's website has a car with the reg plate high lighted.When your do a check on the reg at rac it comes back as belonging to a moped.So much for them.

boundah

Please

07.08.2007 22:23

when you post something please dont just post a link. At least write some sort of a wee article to go with the news source.
Cheers.

Grrrrrrr

Lib Dems are actually not much better

08.08.2007 00:17

We have a Lib Dem Council in Southwark and:

We are getting talking CCTV cameras
We have a permanent curfew for under 16s in my area

They are a total bunch of hypocrites. It feels like they are behaving just like the Labour Party. I voted for them but I won't again.

anonymous coward

2 networks

08.08.2007 01:32

There are actually two companies who run two different number-plate recognition systems.

Whacko-conspiraloon that I am, I reposted info on one of them here before. However it is worth adding that the first offical confirmation that these are indeed used by MI5 was during the recent failed bomb attacks in London. Before the Prestwick attack it was mentioned that the number plate of one of the cars was spotted by the TM system in Scotland the day before it was parked in London.

I've quite a bit more info on them now, but nothing I'll discuss here and nothing that you can't find out for yourselves.

Danny
Homepage: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2006/09/350057.html

supporting the use of CCTV for the defence of freedom

08.08.2007 01:33

by installing them in every single room of the palace of westminster. every room. nothing to fear nothing to hide. and they are public servants. put it all on the web. twentyfour hour big brother of big brother. the same for all those police stations - avoiding the police state by wathcing the state police. if they have nothing to hide they have nothing to fear.

a supporter of CCTV

on yer bike

08.08.2007 07:54

Another good reason to ride a bicycle

How UK vehicle tracking really works

08.08.2007 19:57

The press exists to mislead. In the UK the majority of road vehicle tracking is done via RFID chips inserted into the tires of the vehicle at the time of manufacture of these tires.

The government places incredibly simple and robust RFID reading strips beneath the road, a system that has the advantage of being cheap, near invisible, and vastly better in collecting information for computer processing.

Now, those of you without any quality education in logic will immediately protest that even if the tires of a vehicle can be identified, how does the government know who owns the tires or the vehicle to which they provide a fingerprint. The clue to the answer lies in the word 'fingerprint'.

Real fingerprints are collected at crime scenes (well, admittedly, not if you are an ordinary person robbed of your precious property) so that they can both be checked against existing databases, and (here's the important point) compared with possible suspects at a later date.

The connection between the vehicle RFID 'fingerprint' and the actual vehicle itself (including license plate and hence ownership) occurs when the vehicle (at any time in the past or future, if still using some of the same tires) passes over an RFID reader used in conjunction with a camera (even if the camera does not use automatic license plate recognition software). You see, it is just as easy for a computer database to link an RFID 'fingerprint' to an actual photograph, and have a human read that photograph if interest in an actual vehicle occurs at some point.

The information above is only secret by obscurity (ie., people not understanding the significance of information in the public domain). The tire companies swear the RFID chips are for internal tracking only. Unlike cameras, the RFID reader systems installed under the roads are neither marked nor visible, are are not refered to in court cases (same reason that the majority of secret surveillance evidence is not used to gain conviction in the vast majority of open court trials). Most people, as i mentioned above, cannot grasp how reading a tire 'number' helps the state track vehicles and their owners.

The situation with vehicle tracking by RFID is exactly the same as mobile phone tracking by signal triangulation (and more recently by inbuilt GPS systems). Periodically, UK newspapers will express outrage the 'terrorists' can obtain the use of mobile phones (legally) without providing full identification (so-called 'pay-as-you-go'). However, because the security services track the movement of all mobile phones, when the phones have any ability to connect to their network (ie., switching the phone 'off' usually is not enough- a faraday cage or or physical removal of the battery is the only sure method of disconnecting the phone from a network), the security services are able to use plausibility tests to identify probable owners of any given phone.

Having people think their mobile phone can be made 'safe' is thus a major weapon in the armoury of the security services. Think about your own phone, where that phone travels on a daily basis, and what a person would conclude, if given a detailed map marked with the position of that phone on a minute-by-minute basis.

There is very good reason while government supporting outlets bang on about nonsense like face recognition, or voice recognition, but never discuss the very real, and more importantly, very do-able forms of total surveillance. Most anti-government types experience their position as a hobby, and sci-fi bullshit makes that hobby seem more exciting. The reality is much more mundane, down-to-earth, and dangerous.

>All vehicle movement on the road network (passing over RFID reader strips or by cameras) is tracked
>All movement of all network-connected mobile phones is tracked
>All Instant-messages sent on the various internet services are recorded
>All mobile phone 'texts' are recorded
>The vast majority of external emails are recorded (although, obviously, emails with strong encryption protect their content).

The above lists not the theoretical availability of data, but the actual data collected and available immediately to the ranked security services of the UK. When any of the above data is used in court cases (usually phone 'text' messages), the police are made to go through the pretence of gaining access via the co-operation of the particular phone-network. Why? Because there is a protocol covering the method by which evidence presented in court must follow. Remember, surveillance carried out by the security services is not for the purpose of ordinary law inforcement.

If you know anything about computers, and data storage/processing, you will understand that the above types of data are very easily processed, stored, and more importantly, available for 'data-mining'. You see, the biggest lie sold to the public is so called surveillance to a specific purpose. Actually the very opposite happens. When a society loses democratic accountability, the security services collect all the information the current technology allows in a cheap and reliable way. The use of this data always comes later. Knowledge is power, and if you cannot perceive of dozens of ways in which the 'bad guys' would use the above information databases to build their power bases, you were short changed when they were handing out brains.

Finally, think about this. Paranoia is used to make people think that an oppressive police state is about the targetting of individuals or groups. Nothing could be further from the truth. They will fall victim, of course, but the real targets are all of us. When a politician (or journalist) spouts a carefully concocted mouthful of race hate, and war love, they want to know, as soon as possible, what we think- how we respond. What we do as a population determines who has real power, and who does not. If a speech goes down badly (in the opinion of the people employed to data-mine the texts, emails, and instant messages that are sent in the following hours), the manipulators will seek to perfect a better control message for the next speech.

for your information

RFI

11.08.2007 10:47

Do you have any more information or links specifically about the RFID road tracking ? There are certainly plenty of roadside solar-panel/transmitters without a visible camera but close to dug up strip of tarmac, and a buried strip-reader would explain that. So would cats-eye cameras though as trialled in some English county for the last two years - I wasn't able to dig up the motorway to find out for myself ! So I don't doubt your article but I'd like to know more about it. I'd assumed they were there to clock something else (phones or bugs) and so haven't considered the technicalities. One of my friends has a good set of RFID readers so next time I visit I'll get him to check my tyres out.

Both number plates and tires can be swapped so it would make sense to employ both methods. RFID can be blocked by a more powerful RFID transmitter which can be programmed to suit. The fact they obviously still rely on the visible transmitters and solar panels when not near existing mains means they can still be taken out of service.

Danny

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