Massive Vehicle Tracking in Britain

As announced for some time now, Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. The car location will be made by a network of already existing CCTV cameras which are being converted to read plates automatically night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station forecourts. It is an excellent example of massive tracking system that relies on the network being aware of the device and not the other way around (the device not being location aware)

CCTV plays already a big part of Britain’s every day life, the difference is that, in future, the car’s index plates will be read and the system will store the details of 35 million number-plate “reads” per day. This surveillance network is part of so-called “public protection”. The claim is to cross-check each number plate against a stolen and suspect vehicles database and to do anti-terrorism. Like silly (costly and mainly useless) airport security procedures it seems that this system would bother more the regular people than the targeted persons, because of course the national data centre will mainly check whether each vehicle is lawfully licensed, insured and has a valid MoT test certificate, and why not calculate the speed of the vehicle. Senior police officers have described the surveillance network as possibly the biggest advance in the technology of crime detection and prevention since the introduction of DNA fingerprinting.

This makes me think of the IMOHO inappropriate parental behavior of wanting to track their kids on their way to school to “protect them”. Should a government act the same? It is really worth the step for a safer society?

Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey