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[NB: ANPR = Automatic Number Plate Recognition]
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You know they have a point. No society really needs “rights” or such… because I mean, if you’re “not guilty what do you have to hide” – right?
Seriously, though, technically its hard to make a privacy argument against these, since license plates are meant to be publically displayed anyway. Not that it matters… UK subjects seem to not have many rights anyway.
I think most western nations are going for a number plate recognition system to catch unregistered and stolen vehicles – it’s just too easy to ‘hook’ into a centralised database
there’s a system we have here were they can hook into the system remoted even in a moving police car
you will be scanned and a fine sent in the mail
it’s hardly surprisingly England being the first; they are the country with the most cameras by any measure and they long given up any semblence of ‘personal privacy’… all in the guise of security in a post 9/11 society
Twenty years from now, when we’re all wearing grey coveralls, keeping our mouths shut for fear of everything from snitches to overhead Predator drones, and crouching in one-litre shitboxes doing a terrified 5mph under a constantly-changing speed limit… I can at least say that I got mine while I could. The rest of you can say that you got what you wanted.
It’s called death by a thousand cuts. Remind me again when the revolution starts?
Perhaps I’ve lived in the US too long and had my head filled with too much nonsense about this being the home of the brave, land of the free etc. because whenever I speak to my friends back in the UK about these kinds of erosions of privacies and civil liberties, they just seem to shrug it off as no big deal with a trite “If I’ve done nothing wrong I have nothing to fear, besides, it makes us safer”. I often think they started putting something in the water sometime after I left the UK in 1997.
@thebanana. I used to like to think that if this were to happen in the US there’d be a revolution, only to be reminded every time I went to an airport and stood in line with dozens of other people, each with our little clear bags of little bottles of shampoo, soap and mouthwash that the revolution wasn’t coming anytime soon. The license plate recognition cameras are already in use in NYC where I work, I see them mounted on the trunklids of NYPD cars every day. Nobody cares -after all, they’ve done nothing wrong and y’know, it makes us safer from the terrorists…
This reminds me of the article a short while back re. the RFID passports and driver’s licenses. And yes, that of course will be tied into the centralized databases too….to track you not only when you are in an automobile, but when you are on public transportation (ie, bus, train, etc) as well as on foot.
The airport is becoming a joke. I had to toss a perfectly fine tube of Tom’s of Maine toothpaste not long ago. And the people who man those booths….you can just tell they were recruited from inner city ghettos etc. Mentally they just are not there. It’s very frightening they allow them to carry a gun. I’d never allow a retard a permit to carry a weapon. This whole “terrorism” thing is a joke- until you come to the conclusion that you …if you value any sort of freedom whatsoever …are the “terrorist”.
Now they want to scan and digitize your entire body along with your genitals…which of course is ALSO stored in “the” centralized database (they’ve got all the bases covered):
http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/article.aspx?articleID=20081001_45_E1_Michae884565
Hell, I got sniped at for parking my own car on my own driveway.
Apparently I can park it on the street, in the neighbor’s driveway, on the back of my house (if it’s on a paved surface) or in my garage. But not on my driveway.
Isn’t a driveway a place where you should be able to park your car? You would think so wouldn’t you.
Apparently, the code enforcement official levied nine violations on my street to other miscreants and criminals who pay her salary.
One of which was for a small gardening trailer used for plantings. Apparently you can’t park that on the grass for gardening. Only on the street. Why? Who the hell knows. All I know is a good friend of mine got fined over $100 for having the nerve to use it for it’s intended purpose.
Cobb County, Georgia. A place where phys ed teachers are given laptop computers and the attorneys are given millions to fight evolution. Yet the schools have a hiring freeze. Gotta love it.
That’s an absolute disgrace there Steve. Moving violations are one thing…but parking your own vehicle in your driveway is quite another.
Like I said, the war isn’t against some lunatic hiding in a cave somewhere…the war is against anyone who values freedom.
When you can’t even park your own vehicle in your own driveway- that’s too much. If you ask me, it’s all about conditioning people to obey, to submit, to never EVER question a damn thing…to just “do as you are told”.
I hate to see this regressive devolution. Every thug nowadays is legitimized with a badge and a gun. It’s disgraceful.
PS, you can pass this info onto your neighbor gardener:
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6726
Yes, not only will your neighbor be busted and fined for having a trailer of plants growing, he/she will be busted for the plants alone!
I am of two minds when it comes to the UK.
On one hand, I see the country as being stocked full of perfectly nice people who have laid down like hindu cows to their government out of fear or laziness or something. I don’t quite know why. One must note though, that it ALL started when they allowed their firearms to be confiscated whole heartedly. This makes me despise UK subjects to no end.
On the other hand, my god… was that not a beautifully shot and edited BBC report or what? The people producing the news over there sure know how to make the downfall into government servitude look damn good.
@Mr Lang:
Your part of the county didn’t recently have a string of unsolved homicides, did it?
I think his employment as a code enforcement officer, a job he got less than four months after his last known murder in 1991, provided him with a badge, a gun and the power and control over others that he once derived as a serial killer.
I think one should distinguish between instant use of the ANPR system, and retention of the records.
Instant use is — more or less — defensible. If the police use ANPR to find stolen vehicles, or to do a plate search for a vehicle last seeing fleeing a murder scene or abducting a child, then that’s reasonable. It’s no different than a dragnet search by uniformed officers, except that it’s much quicker, far cheaper, and less dangerous to the officers involved.
The real problem is in the retention of driving records for two years. That is an invitation to abuses of power by the police, by the Home Office, by anyone who wants to grind an axe. Stalking anti-war protesters is only the tip of the iceberg. Consider any behaviour that might be legal but morally ambiguous, and a government tracking database becomes a weapon of blackmail. Retaining records for more than 48 hours (a sufficient time to trace a vehicle driven by an actual criminal suspect) should be illegal.
One of these days, and it won’t be long, one too many government agents will visit me, and he’ll be gone. I don’t celebrate independence day anymore, because we haven’t lived in a FREE country for years. I don’t salute the flag, or respect the law or the cops anymore. We are just prisoners and sources of revenue to them.
“Innocent People Have Nothing To Fear”
but how do you know you got nothing to fear?
The BBC are masters at propaganda; very subtle nothing you can put your finger on but ruinous to anyone who steps out of line.
Jack
doing a terrified 5mph under a constantly-changing speed limit
you mean Victoria, Australia