I've written about this in New Haven, CT: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/license_plate_g.html This new story is from Scotland. Bruce **************************** Police use cameras to track vehicles of suspects http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/43417.html LUCY ADAMS, Home Affairs Correspondent July 20 2005 POLICE have created a database of more than 6000 vehicles of suspects which they can track on special cameras as they move around the country. On major roads across Scotland, the cameras, which look similar to the speed ones, record thousands of licence plates every hour and scan them against the database. Those on the list are flagged up with the local force control room with details of the direction in which they are travelling. Depending on the intelligence held on the motorist, the vehicle could be stopped immediately by officers or monitored during its journey. Senior police say there are a "substantial number" of cameras across the country aimed at detecting drugs traffickers, sex offenders, suspected terrorists and banned or unlicensed drivers. Owners on the list are not told, and civil rights campaigners have raised concerns about whether the scheme is compatible with human rights legislation. However, officers say Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), originally created for counter-terrorism, is a vital tool in collecting intelligence on criminals and suspected terrorists. Alan Burnett, spokesman on the system for the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, and assistant chief constable of Fife, said: "It is directed against detecting travelling housebreakers, potential terrorists, bogus callers and drug traffickers. This technology is very much geared towards disrupting criminals such as drug traffickers and it is not about prosecuting the motorist." He said it was nothing to do with speeding or Big Brother, adding that there were various lengths of time over which they could hold the information: "A stolen vehicle may be on the list for two days, but more serious intelligence may be kept on the list for up to 90 days." The Scottish Executive has spent ?1.5m on ANPR machines which can check up to 3000 licence plates an hour on vehicles travelling at speeds of up to 100mph. Forces are planning to connect this database to the Scottish Intelligence Database (SID) to allow every officer to be able to request that a vehicle of interest should be checked. It is managed by the Scottish Criminal Records Office where a sergeant is responsible for checking the information is held only for a certain time and that it is compliant with human rights legislation. John Scott, head of the Scottish Human Rights Centre, said he was concerned about the lack of judicial scrutiny. _______________________________________________ EPIC_IDOF mailing list EPIC_IDOF@mailman.epic.org https://mailman.epic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/epic_idof ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]