« Do Cameras Reduce Crime? | Main | Chicago Focuses on Homeland Security »

July 18, 2007

Surveillance State Function Creep - London Congestion Charge

From Spy Blog:

Spy Blog has a post on the growing uses of the surveillance data in London. This data concerns the cameras (about 1,500) and the ANPR data that comes from the congestion charge system:

Police are to be given live access to London's congestion charge cameras - allowing them to track all vehicles entering and leaving the zone. Anti-terror officers will be exempted from parts of the Data Protection Act to allow them to see the date, time and location of vehicles in real time. They previously had to apply for access on a case-by-case basis.

"The Met requires bulk ANPR data from TfL's camera network in London specifically for terrorism intelligence purposes and to prevent and investigate such offences. "The infrastructure will allow the real-time flow of data between TfL and the Met." Mr McNulty said the home secretary had signed a certificate exempting the two organisations from some provisions of the 1998 Data Protection Act.

The Met will produce an annual report for the Information Commissioner, the government's data protection watchdog who oversees how material from CCTV cameras is used.

Spy Blog goes on the criticize this function creep.

What is being proposed is real time data on everyone simply being slurped into who knows what sort of Metropolitan Police and passed on to who knows which other agencies anti-terrorism databases, both in the UK and overseas.

What safeguards are there for the millions of innocent people's vehicle movements which will be stored and analysed ?

Posted by rshah at July 18, 2007 07:17 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.rajivshah.com/~rshah/directory/mt-tb.cgi/300

Comments

Post a comment