June 18, 2005

London Congestion Charge advanced ANPR camera test

Transport for London seem to be testing some more advanced Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras, controversially ahead of the actual decision to proceed with the proposed westward extension of the London Congestion Charge zone.

Thanks to the C.N.U.T. - Congestion charge Nefarious Underhand Tax for drawing this Evening Standard article to our attention:

Trials for super-spy cameras By David Williams Motoring Editor, Evening Standard 17 June 2005

Secret trials of cameras for the extension to the congestion charge zone are under way.

Powerful new digital cameras are being tested at two sites.

They can read thousands of number plates in minutes

Officials say the trials are vital to ensure that if the westward extension is approved by Mayor Ken Livingstone, the new cameras are ready to go.

But critics say the scale of the trials suggest the extension is poised to proceed despite widespread opposition.

Critics question why the trials are going ahead when the decision on extending the zone will not be made until September.

They say the earliest it can be rolled out to Kensington and Chelsea is 2007 - by which time the technology could be dated.

One Transport for London (TfL) insider said: "The extension-might not have been approved but it looks as though it is going to go ahead. These are heavy-duty trials. It seems it is being steamrollered through."

[see photos below]

The cameras have been installed in west London on the A312 Hampton Road West near Apex Corner and on Commercial Street in east London, between Wentworth Street and Pomell Way.

Note how neither of these Automatic Number Plate recognition camera test sites is located in the actual Westward Expansion Zone, in Kensington and Chelsea, which seems to be a sneaky way of not consulting the local residents and commuters.

They are more powerful than the CCTV cameras enforcing the ?5 charge - soon to rise to ?8 - in central London. Officials are testing accuracy as the cameras read thousands of number plates in quick succession; they are said to be highly impressed.

The units use digital technology instead of the analogue system in the existing zone. They are more accurate and are not affected by the weather. Insiders say they can zoom in with far greater clarity than any previous-traffic camera, and they are believed to be able to read foreign plates.

TfL insists it has no plan to charge for motorcycles but the devices are better at reading the square plates on two-wheelers.

The cameras are linked to computer software that analyses images quickly.

It will reduce the time officials spend visually scanning images of number plates, to check that the computer has correctly read them.

It is not "officials" who do this, it is private sector employees of Crapita plc, which earns as much revenue from its cut of the Fixed Penalty Notice fines as it does from the £5 daily charge itself - a financial disincentive to provide proper levels of customer service and to run the scheme fairly and compassionately. The system design for the orginal Congestion Charge Scheme is flawed in so many ways, especially the reliance on centralised processing of the images, which leads to lots of potential privacy and security problems.

A TfL spokesman insisted that no decision had been made on extending the congestion charge westwards.

He said: "We started the procurement for the western zone should it get the go-ahead, and we are seeing what technology is available. We have to make sure it works in practice."

TfL confirmed the cameras were filming, but all images were deleted immediately."

The usual Transport for London weasel words.

Just as with the controversial existing London Congestion Charge scheme they claim not to store theimages of number plates and vehicles/drivers. Note how they do not say anything about the number plate, time, date and location logfiles, which are produced after the ANPR equipment has done its image recognition. How long are these logfiles retained for ? Are they anonymised or are they looked up on the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency database ? Who has access to this data ?

Click on the images for a larger version West London test site: Hampton Road West near Apex corner
3)sets_of_cameras_1.jpg Three sets of cameras. The rightmost set is just a pair of forward and backward facing traffic cameras
ANPR_Siemens_1.jpg First set of Automatic Number Plate Recogintion cameras, with Siemens marked on the housings
ANPR_B_!.jpg Second set of Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras. The top most object on the pole is a wind speed monitor. The top two cameras in rectangular housings have infrared (Light Emitting Diode ?) spotlights mounted under them. The leftmost camera housing either has a blanking plate and might contain the image processing computer or it just might be temporarily non-functional
ANPR_B_2.jpg There are no obvious pavement side control cabinets as with the existing Congestion Charge system.

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June 05, 2005

Alistair Darling hypes up his mass surveillance road toll plans, again

Several Sunday newspapers have picked up on The Independent on Sunday's interview with Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport, who is again hyping up his plan revealed last July for "satellite tracking road tolls" over the whole country.

Yet again a NuLabour Minister is grasping at unproven technology as a magic fix for social problems.

See our comments on this plan when it was revealed last July: "Alistair Darling's satellite tracking road toll plans - another Big Brother surveillance system"

The Road Pricing Feasibility Study is available on the Department of Transport's website.

Where are the privacy safeguards with this plan ? Where is the consultation with the people ? Where are the alternative plans and solutions to traffic congestion ?

The media has only ever reported this plan from a transport or environmental viewpoint, and not from the very obvious dangers to privacy and civil liberties of the vast majority of law abiding motorists.

Nobody can be trusted with such a powerful mass surveillance infrastructure.

The Germans have had huge difficulties with their lorries only, motorways only, toll scheme using a combination of GPS and roadside radio beacons.

The London Congestion Charge shows the incompetence of the privatised back end payment and enforcement operators - over a million unpaid penalty tickets for a tiny area of central London !

GPS signals certainly do not cover all of the road network, there are lots of "black spots" where the direct view to 4 satellites is blocked by buildings or trees.

The media have also consistently given the misleading impression that the "satellite tracking" somehow involves sending a signal up to a satellite in orbit, when the only signals are beamed down from orbit. The GPS satellite knows nothing of your GPS receiver's actual position.

Any "offline" In-Car-Unit which decrements the amount of pre-paid road toll according to GPS signals will:

  1. be defrauded by simple devices which re-broadcast much stronger spoof GPS location signals, pretending to be stationary or in a low charge zone. These are much simpler devices than the ones people already pay money for to get pirate satellite or cable TV programs, so a new black market will be created.

  2. be vulnerable to rogue transmitters sending out spoofing signals which fool the In-Car-Unit into assuming that it is in a high toll charge zone - how are most people ever going to be able to dispute such false toll charges ?

Any "online" combined GPS/Mobile phone type In-Car-Unit is directly equivalent to the technology of Electronic Tagging of Criminals, which does seem to be the attitude of the Government to the public.

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April 30, 2005

M4 motorway speed camera protest

Many people doubt that so called "Safety Cameras" (usually doppler radar activated speed cameras) on roads, are solely, or even primarily, intended to reduce the number of road accidents. The suspicion is that they are very often a "stealth tax" revenue raising measure.

That is certainly the view of the reported 180 or so participants in a "go slow" protest on the M4 Motorway in Wiltshire today.

Unlike, say, the camera controlled variable speed limit on the M25 motorway near Heathrow Airport, the Wiltshire scheme is using far less visible mobile units parked on bridges, so the emphasis seems to be on enforcement and revenue generation, rather than actual long term speed reduction deterrence.

It is unclear if any Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology is to be used during this campaign by the Wiltshire and Swindon Road Safety Partnership


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April 20, 2005

Sainsburys petrol stations and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR)

Manfred Roxon has emailed us with an article on Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) at Sainsburys supermarket petrol stations.

Additional issues for concern include the Data Retention period and policy for these systems.

Whilst the theory is that they merely do a lookup of a customer's vehicle Number Plate against a "blacklist" of convicted or previous "driven off without paying" records, it is hard to believe that there are no log files or engineering test modes in such equipment which can also keep a tab on legitimate customers time, date and location information.

How long is such data retained for, and is is ever passed on to other people, such as market research companies or even to the Police etc ?

Sainsburys’ bogus "Big Brother"
© 2005 Manfred Roxon
Sainsburys is to take down bogus "police" warnings from its petrol stations all over the country – because they’re untrue. Bold yellow warnings tell drivers that Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras "linked to the police" have recorded their car’s number to foil non-payers. The ANPR warning signs imply the police and security services scan every car that drives in, enabling them to track people (not cars) for a variety of reasons. Sainsburys also now admits there may be no cameras at all, only scary warnings. As the company’s Civil Rights Officer, Jillian Hardwick concedes, "No Sainsbury's ANPR systems are linked directly to the police. In some stores we have notices up as a deterrent but do not actually use the scheme."

The civil rights campaign, Liberty says, "The use of false cameras and misleading notices is not acceptable," because people have "the right to know when they are, and are not, under surveillance". In Devon and Cornwall, for example, the police say Sainsburys has never approached the force to discuss a computer link, while the Information Commissioners Office, the watchdog supervising overt surveillance, says ANPR signs "should reflect the accurate picture" – which Sainsburys' warnings do not.

Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras check number plate images against a privately operated computer blacklist. A buzzer sounds if potential non-payers, known as 'drive-outs' or bilkers appear. Sainsburys wants eighty ANPR stations by the end of the year and eventually plans to have them all on-line.

Now, following enquiries about its Devon stores, Sainsburys says its fake "police" warning signs are "in the process of being changed" at filling stations in across the country. Many have been up for more than a year, and yet today the company "cannot give (you) a timescale" for lifting its bogus police threat. Even so the Information Commissioners Office is "pleased Sainsburys has given an assurance that its signs will reflect the accurate picture in future".

Sainsburys won’t give any figures for stolen petrol, calling them "commercially sensitive". No comment either on whether any losses are insured. A manager at an Exeter store told a customer non-payers are to blame for petrol price rises! Not the Chancellor or blown-up pipelines. The lack of transparency means it’s hard to tell if Sainsburys ANPR cameras are even justified in crime-fighting and business terms. Customers might be being snooped on for no reason.

Honest and accurate warning signs are required under the 1998 Data Protection Act and company directors can be charged for negligence – a point which even the British Petroleum Retailers Association highlights on its website. The regulator, the ICO, says warnings should show "members of the law-abiding public were being treated civilly and respectfully, as was their due." The civil rights organisation Liberty says misleading or deceiving the public clearly falls short of that objective. "Surveillance technology can play a partial role in making areas safer and dealing with criminal acts. However there are also big potential dangers and a fundamental part of protecting against these is allowing people the right to know when they are, and are not, under surveillance. The use of false cameras and misleading notices is not acceptable."

But does it really matter? Anyone can install a fake burglar alarm box without having to prove it’s needed. But a wall box or a bell are a long way from the computerised vigilantism of Automatic Number Plate Recognition – especially when it involves pretending Big Brother is watching as customers fill up their tanks. Sainsburys says its safeguards mean the data won’t be abused, and after so much deception that’s a great relief to know.

© 2005 Manfred Roxon email: roxarama3@mac.com

NOTES FOR EDITORS

Sainsburys PRO – 0207 695 6500 / 0207 695 7295

Devon & Cornwall Constabulary PRO – 01392 452151

Information Commissioners PRO – 0207 282 2960

Liberty Human Rights PRO – 0207 403 3888

STORE ANPR INSTALLED (Source: Sainsburys Press Office)
Rugby 03 August 2004
Alperton 04 August 2004
Darnley 11 February 2005
Warren Heath 07 September 2004
Pepper Hill 27 September 2004
Becton 02 November 2004
Castle Boulivard 03 November 2004
Reedswood 27 October 2004
Dunstable 12 October 2004
Courthouse Green 01 November 2004
Weedon Road 07 February 2005
Water Lane 08 November 2004
Bramigham Park 22 February 2005
Enfield 10 November 2004
London Colney 24 November 2004
Whitechapel 13 December 2004
Purley Way 01 December 2004
Nine Elms 30 November 2004
Cobham 23 November 2004
East Mayne 08 December 2004
Heaton Park 06 December 2004
Leigh 22 November 2004
Denton 07 December 2004
West Hove 30 November 2004
Harlow 08 March 2005
Marsh Mills 21 March 2005
Hornsey Rise 29 March 2005
Castle Court 24 March 2005
Watchmore 13 September 2004
So far Sainsburys hasn’t supplied any info about its Exeter (Alphingon) store which therefore may just have signs and no real ANPR cameras."

Sainsbury's Store Locator web page (tick the box marked "Petrol") for maps of where these supermarket petrol stations are located.

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March 25, 2005

Automatic Number Plate Recognition national network and centralised database for the UK Police ?

Is the United Kingdom really set to have Yet Another National Police Database ?

Automatic Number Plate Recognition seems to be a rapidlly expanding technology amongst the 43 or so UK Police Forces, according to a press release from the Association of Chief Police Officers

John Lettice has a good article in The Register which cites a Police Information Technology Organisation web page which lists the history of ANPR schemes.

Given the 25 to 30 million vehicles on the roads, it makes sense to use this sort of technology to try to clamp down on stolen or untaxed vehicles.

The use of mobile or fixed CCTV camera systems combined with a roadside police intercept team to conduct legal "stops and searches" of vehicles, where the grounds of "reasonable suspicion" have been provided by the ANPR lookup on the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency and Police Intelligence databases, should be a proportionate use of the technology and is to be welcomed.

However, we really do have serious concerns about using ANPR for "intelligence" rather than for "reasonable suspicion" stops and searches.

"Key points from the Strategy include:
  • Development of a national infrastructure of ANPR enabled cameras and readers to cover strategic sites

  • Developing a National ANPR Data Centre to analyse intelligence from ANPR readers from across the country"

Will this be a new infrastructure of roadside cameras, or will existing systems be hijacked ? Either these existing cameras are not properly justified and are under utilised, or the ANPR tasks will compete with the primary function e.g. traffic queue management

Who exactly pays for this national infrastructure ? The local council tax payers ?

Will the private sector Trafficmaster system be used or will the controversial National Roads Teleccomunications Services Project ?

  • "All police forces in England and Wales having at least one dedicated ANPR intercept team by October 2005, with more to follow"

According to thus report in The Guardian, the Police Federation are worried about the decrease in Traffic Police numbers:

"He feels the new officers will be an excuse to whittle down the already dwindling ranks of traffic police, which dropped in manpower from 7,500 to 6,200 between 1998 and 2002"

whose duties, powers and training, especially for "stop and search", cannot be substituted by lower paid civilian auxilaries employed by the Highways Agency.

More ANPR camera technology is unjustifiable if there are even fewer actual Traffic Police patrols on the road.

  • "Using hypothecated income from Fixed Penalty Notices resulting from ANPR activity to fund further ANPR development"

      • Hypothecated taxes ? No ! As John Lettice points out, this looks to be as controversial as Speed Cameras or Privatised Car Clamping, where there is plenty of evidence of abuses caused by financial income targets.

      • "Using ANPR data within force intelligence and investigative strategies"

      The PITO webpage also includes the chilling phrase:

      "In addition, PITO’s Central Customer is identifying future ANPR requirements, such as the development of a national database to store all ANPR ‘reads’ and analytical tools to mine this."

      This implies collecting and collating ANPR time and location data on millions of innocent vehicles, which are not on any "wanted list".

      All the same questions we asked (and failed to get answers about) in our London Congestion Charge Concerns such as Data Retention and other Data Privacy policies comes to mind.

      We have extreme privacy concerns about these hidden "intelligence" uses for a national mass surveillance system.

      This needs to be invesigated by the Information Commissioner needs to investigate probable breaches of the Data Protection Act, as does the Surveillance Commissioner, for disproportionate use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, before the specifications for the system are finalised.

      Posted by wtwu at 08:52 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

      November 03, 2004

      £15 million to be spent on more Police Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) systems

      The Home Office has announced more funding to the tune of £15 million to expand the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems throughout the UK's Police Forces.

      The pilot projects are claimed as a success, and have resulted in 9 times the arrests by roadside patrols than for similar teams not equipped with ANPR and data links to the Police National Computer, and local Firearms and Drugs intelligence databases.

      All well and good, this is the 21st Century and it is impossible to use purely manual methods to catch Road Tax evaders, disqualified drivers etc.when there are nearly 30 million vehicles on the roads.

      However, as with all Home Office technology initiatives, there is a danger of throwing away precious civil liberties and individual privacy, in the rush to make headline grabbing crime statistics.

      The very short "Case Studies" examples in the "Notes to Editors" (as if the general public are incapable of understanding these themselves) included in the Home Office Press Release show some potential danger areas in the more widespread use of ANPR.

      Already prevalent in London, where the ANPR enforced Congestion Charge has led to a large increase in the number of vehicles using false "cloned" number plates based on innocent vehicles with of a similar or identical model and colour, so that any £80 Penalty Notices for not paying the Congestion Charge are sent to the address of an innoocent Registered Keeper of the vehicle with the genuine Number Plate. This will only increase as more road tolling and congestion charge schemes spread through the country, which is what the Department of Transport seems to be planning to encourage.

      The Home Office press release cites two "case studies":

      "In December 2003 during an ANPR operation, a CCTV camera registered a PNC hit on a 4x4 vehicle. The vehicle was suspected of using clone plates having previously gone through a speed camera in Surrey"

      and also

      "In June 2004, a Golf TDi drove through a check site and activated a PNC warning that the vehicle may be using false number plates"

      When the ANPR system is made even more widespread, the chances ofa roadside patrol stopping and harrassing the innocent vehicle which the cloned or faked number plates are trying to throw suspicion on increases substantially.

      If the criminals are also flagged as "Occupant suspected of possession of drugs" or "Occupant suspected of carrying Firearms", then this will be a potentially terryfying experience for the innocent driver of the vehicle, involving armed police officers and perhaps police dogs.

      The current Operation Laser equipment only stores information locally within the roadside unit. However, function creep being what it is with IT projects, one can already detect the temptation for widespread automated database trawling in another of the "case studies". It is a short step on the road to hell from:

      "A Mini Metro passed through an ANPR intercept site and showed as a hit on a local database. Intelligence suggested that this vehicle had been spotted the previous week in suspicious circumstances and that it was likely to be used by a gang of local shoplifters. The vehicle was stopped and checks made on the occupants"

      to 24/7 ANPR linked to the CCTV systems in town centres, ports, airports etc. and to other ANPR systems like the UK Army's Glutton system (used to track vehicle movements to and from Northern Ireland), perhaps in conjunction with Trafficmaster being used to log the movements of the 30 million innocent vehicles over a period of time.

      Once such ANPR systems start getting linked together, then the opportunities for corrupt or ideologically motivated police or civilians with access to the database to stalk or track potential victims is huge.

      The Home Office report "Driving down crime" (170 page .pdf), which gives more details about the ANPR pilot schemes, also contains the worrying reccommendation to create yet another massive national database.

      "There is a need for a national data warehouse to hold all vehicle intelligence to be read in real time by all ANPR users nationally. In turn, this data warehouse would also hold ANPR reads and hits as a further source of vehicle intelligence, providing great benefits to major crime and terrorism enquiries."

      Even though this very same report criticises the innaccuracy of the Driver Vehicle Licesnsing Agency records, it assumes that somehow the same problems would not affect this new system.

      Any increase in the use of ANPR by the Police must only happen within a framework of privacy checks and balances to protect the the innocent and must not become part of a generalised state surveillance system.

      Posted by wtwu at 04:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

      October 27, 2004

      DVLA database compromised by animal rights extremists

      The BBC reports that "DVLA man helped animal activists"

      "A vehicle registration official who gave drivers' addresses to animal rights activists has been jailed for five months.
      Barry Saul Dickinson, 34, of Manor Forstal, New Ash Green, Kent, was convicted at Stafford Crown Court of misconduct in a public office.

      He had enabled protesters to find people connected to a guinea pig farm in Staffordshire.

      A police spokesman said information had been used to "terrorise" families."

      Just as with the case of the corrupt Metropolitan police constable Ghazi Kassim, the question must be asked, why this person was not charged under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act - Collection of Information ?

      "58. - (1) A person commits an offence if-

      (a) he collects or makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or
      (b) he possesses a document or record containing information of that kind.

      (2) In this section "record" includes a photographic or electronic record."

      Why is he not serving a 10 year jail sentence instead of 5 months ?


      Despite the media hype, Al Quaeda are not the only terrorist threat that we face, the particularly nasty minority of so called animal rights extremists are also a terroist threat, albeit on a smaller scale.

      The Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority database is also routinely handed over to insurance companies and to the London Congestion Charge scheme to enforce its Automatic Number Plate Recognition system. The chances are that this data is available for a fee on the backstreets of Bangalore in India, which is where Capita, the notorious Government IT sub-contractor has outsiurced all its database software development, in order to exploit cheap labour in India.

      Posted by wtwu at 01:06 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

      July 04, 2004

      Annual Report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner

      Sir Andrew Leggatt has published his "Annual Report of the Chief Surveillance Commissioner to the Prime Minister and to Scottish Ministers for 2003-2004" (.pdf)

      We note with interest, that although the Office of Surveillance Commissioners does not deal with the wider privacy issues of CCTV surveillance cameras per se:

      "I shall continue to monitor technological developments closely, such as body scanners, facial recognition and Automatic Number Plate Recognition to ensure that their use does not transgress legislation for the protection of privacy."

      We hope that the Surveillance Commissioner will double check that any deployments of the new "see through walls" or "see under your clothes" technologies which are supposed to detect hidden weapons or elosives e.g. Passive Millimetre Wave Radar imagers or Low Intensity X-Ray scanners or Ultra Wide Band devices do not breach either the Voyeurism offence of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 or are capable of "making or distributing" unclothed images of children i.e. kiddie porn. The potential to cause harassment to individuals (one's inside leg measurement or bra size is , after all, very personal data) and to entire ethnic or religous minority communities through the use of such technologies, especially if deployed in a covert manner, should not be underestimated.

      The report also mentions the fact that new Guidance has had to be issued to the Police regarding the planting of CCTV and other surveillance devices in private residences or premises which are being subjected to "Repeat Burglaries". The issue is one of informed consent of other innocent visitors and residents who will not be aware that they are under CCTV surveillance, and for whom there is no surveillance warrant.

      This principle should really also apply to any public CCTV surveillance system, but of course, the terms of reference for the Surveillance Commissioner are very tightly drawn and only deal with where the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act applies to public authorities. Private sector snooping is not covered or regulated at all.

      The report also publishes some Annexes which give figures for the number authorisations for the planting of electronic bugging or tracking devices in vehicles in what are presumably active terrorism investigations are interesting e.g. under the Terrorism Act 2000:

      2000 - 2001: 117
      2001 - 2002: 185
      2002 - 2003: 176
      2003 - 2004: 126

      and similar figures under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1997 relating to terrorism (vehicles and premises)

      1999 - 2000: 224
      2000 - 2001: 136
      2001 - 2002: 116
      2002 - 2003: 170
      2003 - 2004: 177

      These are tiny numbers of what must be properely targeted investigations, compared with the arbitary and racially biased stops and searches under the Terrorism Act 2000 s 44(1) which we commented on previously:

      2001 - 2002: 7804 stops and searches leading to only 20 arrests connected with terrorism

      2002 - 2003: 16,641 stops and searches leading to only 11 arrests connected with terrorism


      The massive number of searches compared with actual arrests or with authorisations to conduct intrusive or directed surveillance highlights that there is something very wrong in the way that the exceptional, draconian, Police powers under the Terrorism Act are being used.

      Being stoped and searched in a vehicle or as a pedestrian under the Terrorism Act 2000 is not a trivial matter - it is a mass punishment in itself, which is potentially life threatening to anybody who panics and then gets chased by armed police.

      The fact that you have been stopped and searched as a "suspected terrorist" is a huge black mark on your secret police record, and could easily have a bad effect on your employment prospects and will almost certainly cause you extra hassle and delay at airports etc.

      Posted by wtwu at 09:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

      July 02, 2004

      Why so few arrests with supposedly "intelligence led" Terrorism Act stops and searches ?

      How many times have Home Secretaries stood up in Parliament and assured the public that the draconian anti-terrorist laws are "proportionate" and are only intended to be used in exceptional cases, where there are clear "intelligence led policing" grounds for suspicion ?

      The official Home Office figures (.pdf) show a vastly different picture of what actually happens in practice (no figures given for Scotland and Northern Ireland)

      Text of the Terrorism Act 2000

      "Vehicle searches under Terrorism Act 2000 s 44(1)

      2001/2002: 7804 searches leading to only 20 arrests connected with terrorism and 149 for other reasons

      2002/2003: 16761 searches leading to only 11 arrests connected with terrorism and 280 for other reasons

      Pedestrians searched under Terrorism Act 2000 s 44(2)

      2001/2002: 946 searches leading to zero arrests connected with terrorism and 20 for other reasons

      2002/2003: 4774 searches leading to only 7 arrests connected with terrorism and 79 for other reasons"

      These figures are available in more detail, and show the disproportionate concentration of stops and searches involving various ethnic minorities, and the more explainable prominence of urban city police forces covering the highest population densities.

      If tens of thousands of stops and searches lead to only a handful of arrests for terrorist related offences, all that this policy is doing is alienating the public, especially, young Muslims, and helping to recruit them into extremist groups. This policy is playing into the hands of the terrorists and is actually a threat to our national security and must be stopped. Has nothing been learned from Northern Ireland ?

      The police force with the worst record of abusing the Terrorism Act powers
      appears to be the City of London Police:

      "Vehicle searches under Terrorism Act 2000 s 44(1)

      2001/2002: 3408 searches leading to only 9 arrests connected with terrorism and 83 arrests for other reasons.

      2002/2003: 4327 searches leading to zero arrests connected with terrorism and 96 arrests for other reasons.

      Pedestrians searched under Terrorism Act 2000 s 44(2)

      2001/2002: 86 searches leading to zero arrests connected with terrorism and 8 arrests for other reasons.

      2002/2003: 275 searches leading to zero arrests connected with terrorism and 11 arrests for other reasons."

      How many of the Vehicle Searches, especially those by the City of London Police, are prompted by Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) systems ?

      There do not seem to be any figures for the number of "lucky" terrorism related arrests which are a result of a "normal" stop and search under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act or other legislation. Is this due to the "elite" Special Branch anti-terrorism squads "nicking the credit" from lucky or observant police officers who were not looking specifically for terrorism related activity when they conducted the stop and search ? Or are there simply very few or possibly none of these cases ?

      N.B. the rate of actual conviction of those arrested for Terrorism Act offences is tiny, well below the average for other serious crimes. The official statistics would look even worse, if they were simply for actual Terrorism Act offences and not "arrests connected with terrorism"

      So what does the Home Office propose to do to rectify this situation ? They plan too extend the limited scheme whereby every stop and search is recorded and a wriiten or printed note is given to the person who is being searched, giving details of when, where, why and by whom someone has been stopped. The fact that this is not already a national scheme, means that the actual number of stops and searches conducted by the police could be even higher than the figures show, as there are likely to be many stops and searches which are not recorded at all.

      This has massive implications for the proposed Compulsory Biometric National ID Register and ID Card and the IMPACT and PLX national "soft intelligence" sharing plans.

      On the one hand a proper ID Registry audit trail, where a person has access to the full version of their own records, could be used to prove or disprove allegations of racially biased harrassment. It seems more likely that this, together with IMPACT and PLX will be used to put a permanent "terrorist suspect" black mark on the electronic secret police records of the vast majority of innocent peoplewho are being caught up in these Terrorism Act stops and searches.

      This will have dire consequences for their employment prospects in various sensitive jobs, and when they choose to travel abroad.

      Posted by wtwu at 02:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

      April 07, 2004

      Passive Millimetre Wave Radar Cameras - Floodlights on every Lamp Post ?

      Guy Kewney reports from the London Wireless LAN Event trade show that Last Mile Communications / TIVIS (Total In Vehicle Information System) Limited seem, somehow, to have done a monopoly deal with the notorious Highways Agency of the Department of Transport to install microwave beacons on 150,000 lamp posts as part of the National Roads Telecommunications Services Project. Where was the public consultation on this massive project ?

      N.B. these are the same beaureaucrats who allowed the Trafficmaster Automatic Number Plate Recognition surveillance network to appear on public land without any public debate.

      The National Roads Telecommunications Services Project promises all sorts of high speed telecomms network access, which is all well and good, however, the system is apparently going to work at 63 to 65 GigaHerz.

      63 to 65 GigaHerz is well into the Passive Millimetre Wave Radar Camera operating range.

      Are we now, thanks to this proposed massive network of external Millimetre Wave Radar spotlights, going to have our privacy further eroded by "see through walls" and "see under your children's clothes" Passive Millimetre Wave Radar Cameras and imaging systems which will now be able to snoop at longer range or through thicker obstacles, then they would normally capable of when only working with "background radiation" illumination ?

      All the reassurances that Passive Millimetre Wave Radar Cameras only use "natural background" radiation and must therefore be "safe" will be nonsense if this system is deployed on our streets.

      What are the health risks, if any, of constant exposure to 63 or 65 GHz millimetre wave radar radiation ? What about any harmonics which are produced by the actual equipment, at lower and higher frequencies ? Where are the health studies which prove that the proposed power levels are safe ? It is not fair to compare the alleged effect on health by using results or experience from Mobile Phone frequencies (0.9GHz and 1.8 GHz) and power levels, with a system which uses frequencies an order of magnitude higher (63 GHz).

      If there have been no such health studies, then a "safe" level of power output cannot be set arbitrarily. The proposed level of 200mW has more to do with not interfering with satellite and military communications systems than with respect for human health or privacy.

      We should not be repeating the mistakes made with Mobile Phone microwave frequencies and infrastructure. Show the public that these technologies are safe and will not impinge on their privacy, before the equipment is deployed at tens of thousands of locations all over the country.

      Posted by wtwu at 07:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

      September 24, 2003

      ANPR

      David Carr on the White Rose blog raises the issue of Automatic Number Plate Recognition following this article by John Lettice in The Register

      Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology has a legitimate place as a useful law enforcement tool. Its use by mobile police patrols who are then in a position to stop and examine a suspicious vehicle is not much of a privacy problem.

      The real privacy problems with ANPR come from public systems which monitor all the vehicles in view, e.g.

      Posted by wtwu at 05:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack