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The Database State Is Alive And Well In UK
The amount of data collected by automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras has reached into the billions.
A Freedom of Information request by a member of the public known as HMP Britain has revealed that a national police database holds records of 7.6 billion occasions on which the locations of vehicles have been automatically logged.
The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which runs the National ANPR Data Centre, collates the data from roadside cameras across the UK. The official number of ANPR cameras in operation varies. The NPIA has claimed there are 4,045 by the first full week of June, but the Association of Chief Police Officers said in February that there may be over 10,000 cameras in use.
Each camera takes a photo of the number plate and the driver and passenger. The number plate is then stored in the data centre, but the image of the driver and any passengers are not collected centrally.
Guy Herbert, general secretary of NO2ID said: "There is nothing wrong, necessarily, with an automated system looking out for specific wanted vehicles in a way a human officer can't manage. But routine recording of where you've been and who you were with was used to intimidate dissidents in a police-state. It is the activity of stalkers, industrialised by database."
The sheer number of databases held by the government will also be a cause for concern. It has been revealed there are over 30 databases in the Home Office and its executive agencies alone with hundreds of thousands of records.
In a parliamentary written answer, Home Office minister James Brokenshire revealed that his department has 31 databases that hold information relating to at least 100,000 people.
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