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Here's an interesting thing if you're a bit bored. The Daily Mail's web site reported on Sunday that the bright green Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras installed by the Highways Agency to monitor journey times have been linked into "a police database", according to an unnamed Agency official.
However, the Highways Agency page detailing its camera types claims that "The data is anonymised and transmitted to the [National Traffic Control Centre] at least every 5 minutes. Once this has been matched to a record from an adjacent camera or a defined period has lapsed the data is deleted. The only information being retained being the average journey time for that section at that time. No one has access to the full number plate data." So, it's anonymous and used only for the purposes of measuring traffic flow. Am I the only one to think that something doesn't add up here?
However, at the time of writing, this story hasn't been reported anywhere else that I can find, and has been removed from the Daily Mail's RSS feed. But if, as the Mail reported, "Thousands of CCTV cameras across the country have also been converted to read numberplates – as have mobile cameras. Police helicopters can spot plates from the air and officers have live access to London’s Congestion Charge cameras," then there's a major scandal brewing here. It's a huge worry for the vast majority of us law-abiding people to be spied on wholesale, and 29 predictably indignant Mail readers have already left comments on the story.
So, is this story, by Jason Lewis, mere speculation? After all, it contains little hard factual content. Who was this official who seems to have spilt the beans, for instance? What would the Association of Chief Police Officers be doing with $32 million of "government cash" for the project? Is the newspaper simply stirring the pot or is the Highways Agency saying one thing while allowing its ANPL cameras to secretly be used for something quite different?
I think we should be told.
