Surveillance is being taken to the next level next year, as the UK's network of traffic monitoring cameras undergo upgrades which will allow ever car journey to be tracked and recorded, the number plate of each vehicle read and stored.
The move is an easy one for the police to pull off, given that the work involves, for the most part, the upgrade of existing CCTV cameras. They'll all be tied into to a computer that will store some 35 million number plate recognitions per day, keeping track of where everybody's going. Of course, the Police are heralding the system as a breakthrough in crime fighting; we're the first country to implement such a scheme. From The Independent:
"Every time you make a car journey already, you'll be on CCTV somewhere. The difference is that, in future, the car's index plates will be read as well," said Frank Whiteley, Chief Constable of Hertfordshire and chairman of the Acpo steering committee on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR).
"What the data centre should be able to tell you is where a vehicle was in the past and where it is now, whether it was or wasn't at a particular location, and the routes taken to and from those crime scenes. Particularly important are associated vehicles," Mr Whiteley said.
But what about that oh so precious thing, privacy? Millions of innocent people are having their lives tracked and possibly analysed every day as it is, through existing CCTV. The new measures introduce an even closer level of monitoring. Of course, there's always the good old 'war on terror' to use as a reason for such measures, and that the innocent people have nothing to hide, but is it right that we're being watched all the time? Is the system not making us all feel like we're guilty of something, and thus need our every move to be watched?
What's most worrying is that we don't really know where all this will end. Do the authorities have any reason to stop at monitor car journeys? As technology advances more sophisticated surveillance can take place, so they will know where we are all the time, even if we're not in cars. Is that right? Just because the technology is there, and just because it can be used for good in some cases, does that mean that we must sacrifice our privacy?
No doubt by writing this I'm not on some list somewhere. In fact, watch out, you're now on the list of people that read this story. Better not make any car journeys tonight - the system might be looking out for you.
