{"id":1081,"date":"2010-06-30T08:55:55","date_gmt":"2010-06-30T07:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/?p=1081"},"modified":"2010-06-30T08:55:55","modified_gmt":"2010-06-30T07:55:55","slug":"eye-spy-a-number-plates-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/2010\/06\/eye-spy-a-number-plates-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"Eye spy a number plates scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spy cameras, which can track car number plates<\/a>, are in the government’s firing line, following a ‘scandal’ in Birmingham.<\/p>\n

Home secretary, Theresa May, announced she had expanded a review into the huge expansion of CCTV to include the use of automatic number plate <\/a>recognition (ANPR) cameras.<\/p>\n

The move follows uproar after the cameras were secretly installed in Birmingham neighbourhoods with large Muslim populations – using \u00a33m of ‘counterterrorism’ cash.<\/p>\n

A network of 150-odd ANPR cameras was planned, to track residents entering or leaving Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook, under a scheme dubbed Project Champion.<\/p>\n

A Birmingham MP has called for 200 cameras, which he says are to monitor extremists, not to be activated.<\/p>\n

Roger Godsiff, Labour MP for Hall Green, said he was going to raise the issue in the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

Cameras have been installed in the inner city areas of Sparkbrook and Washwood Heath with some automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras put up in Kings Heath and Moseley.<\/p>\n

The council said the cameras were to detect all crimes, including terrorism.<\/p>\n

Mr Godsiff said not telling people where the cameras are was “unacceptable”.<\/p>\n

Some Birmingham city councillors complained to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, alleging the council was deliberately misled by West Midlands police.<\/p>\n

The police were accused of pretending the project was for run-of-the-mill crime-fighting – when, in fact, the cash came a Terrorism and Allied Matters fund, intended to ‘deter or prevent terrorism’.<\/p>\n

Answering Home Office questions, Mrs May told MPs: “A discussion is now taking place between the local police force and local communities about automatic number plate recognition cameras in Birmingham.<\/p>\n

“That is one reason why we intend, in looking at regulation on CCTV, to include automatic number plate recognition.”<\/p>\n

In Opposition, the Tories attacked the revelation that more and more councils were setting up APNR cameras – apparently to spy on rubbish tips.<\/p>\n

Up to ten councils were found to be checking if families were flouting waste rules, potentially opening the way for illegal dumpers to be hit by huge fines.<\/p>\n

Each camera can snap up to 15 shots of a number plate<\/a> on a passing vehicle, reaching up to 100 yards up the road.<\/p>\n

The “reads” are then compared almost instantaneously against a number of databases, a system which can handle no fewer than 50 million checks every day.<\/p>\n

More seriously, there was no public consultation over Project Champion, believed to be the first of its kind in the UK, targeting a population ‘at risk’ of extremism.<\/p>\n

The initiative had already triggered protests at Westminster, where four MPs have signed a parliamentary motion condemning it as ‘a grave infringement of civil liberties’.<\/p>\n

The motion said 40 of the APNR cameras were officially classified as covert and were thought to be concealed in walls and trees by the side of the road.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Project Champion has turned into a farce, with the \u00a33m cameras now covered by plastic bags – to convince residents they are NOT being spied upon.<\/p>\n

One of the first acts of the Con-Lib coalition was to announce an overhaul of the explosion in CCTV use, as part of rolling back Labour’s so-called ‘surveillance state’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spy cameras, which can track car number plates, are in the government’s firing line, following a ‘scandal’ in Birmingham. Home secretary, Theresa May, announced she had expanded a review into the huge expansion of CCTV to include the use of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras. The move follows uproar after the cameras were secretly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123457,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123457"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1082,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions\/1082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedyreg.co.uk\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}