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Comment by omh | Hacker News Reader

The London Congestion Charging scheme is an interesting example of this.

There is a network of number plate recognition cameras to enforce the congestion charge. But there were initially assurances that this wouldn't lead to a blanket database for policing, they can just request particular images.

Pretty rapidly there was an exception for "national security" purposes, and more recently the mayor has proposed giving the police full access to the camera network[1].

[1] http://www.london.gov.uk/media/mayor-press-releases/2014/02/...

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Another data point: Toll Collect in Germany. A fee is collected from Trucks for using the Autobahn, with compliance being monitored via plate-scanning cameras on all Autobahnen. We were assured that the data for cars would not be used for policing, even though it exists (the system scans all plates and only later finds out whether or not the plate belongs to a truck).

The data in the system is legally protected and cannot be used by the police. In the ten years that have passed, "security politicians" have been relentlessly hammering this restriction in the hope that it will fall[1].

So far they haven't been successful, but who knows what the future brings. You can be certain they won't stop to try.

[1] http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...

Greetings from your next-door-neighbour. in the Netherlands we scan everything that crosses the border from Germany/Belgium. All highways have camera's as well but that's not the worst: we also track your unique bluetooth signal all across the big cities and when you park in one of those big parking towers they will sell your licenceplate data to everybody inclusing the tax man... Yes this is the same country that also sells TomTom traffic/speed data to the police so they know just where to photograph you for maximum profit... (Not maximum safery).

Exactly. There are no guarantees that abuse-prevention policies will remain in existence, since such provisions can be ignored by secret policy (national security) or overturned by political football.

I've just had an invite to the consultation:

I am writing to let you know that you can give the Mayor of London your views on his proposals to allow the Metropolitan Police to have access to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras for crime prevention reasons.

We use these cameras to monitor and enforce Congestion Charging and the Low Emission Zone.

For more information and to share your views, please click here:[http://talklondon.london.gov.uk/content/your-views-cutting-c...]

To take part in this consultation, please use the link above. Any responses to this email will be passed to the Greater London Authority along with your name and email address, so that they can reply to you directly.

This consultation will close on Tuesday 8 April. Yours sincerely,

Paul Cowperthwaite General Manager Congestion Charging

My personal view is that scanning and checking against lists is fine but the data for any vehicles not believed to be wanted/committing an offence should then be immediately destroyed. I haven't fully signed up for the consultation to understand what question is being asked though.

> My personal view is that scanning and checking against lists is fine but the data for any vehicles not believed to be wanted/committing an offence should then be immediately destroyed. I haven't fully signed up for the consultation to understand what question is being asked though.

That's reasonable. I would add that at no point should any picture ever be committed to nonvolatile memory unless it has been confirmed to match one of the watchlists. If the license plate is not on a list at the time of scanning, it should never be stored outside of RAM.

How do you propose they handle the scenario then where a driver receives a bill for entering the zone on a particular day, but then claims they were never driving on that day? Ordinarily they could retrieve the photo and use that to confirm the charge.

They have a list of people that have (and therefore, those that haven't) paid the congestion charge for that day. So in keeping with the parent's suggestion that only images showing cars that have committed an offence should be stored, they'd still have the photo showing them driving on the day having not paid the charge.

You could handle it same way they handle people claiming that the radar gun is wrong or that the parking meter shorted someone on time: the instrument is calibrated so the burden is on you to prove it is defective.

Radar guns are terribly inaccurate. In about 1 in 100 readings they are wildly off. Even when calibrated. I know this because my dad - who has an IEEE medal for his work on the laser, has testified as an expert witness on lasers and drives like an old Chinese woman - was clicked doing 90 in a 55 by a laser gun. He did the research and found the test results showing that in 1 in 100 readings you should expect an outlier such as reading 90 when the car was going 55. Guess what, it doesn't matter. No judge in the world cares. They aren't going to allow people to question the accuracy of these devices because it would destroy their revenue stream. Anyway, that's my rant on radar guns.

Same goes here in Germany, where the trucks have to pay a highway toll. When this system was installed, every politician promised that the data would only be used for collecting the toll. Nowadays every license-plate is scanned and police in most federal states have access.

Do you have a citation for this? I'm genuinely interested as last year the police cleared a case where they had to install their own scanners as they weren't allowed to use toll collect data.

Related: (traffic camera map of london) http://www.livingwithdragons.com/maps/tfl-cams/

I've picked up on this theme in my reply to another post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435043

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