Responding to a freedom of information request from a member of the public [1], the National Policing Improvement Agency [2] has just revealed that a national police database currently holds records of 7,600,000,000 occasions on which the locations of motor vehicles cars have been automatically logged. The £500 million a year quango, which operates the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC), was answering questions put by blogger ‘HMP Britain’.

The information is collated from information taken from roadside cameras by police forces around the UK — 4,045 of them in the first full week of June, according to the same document — although the Association of Chief Police Officers earlier this year suggested there were over 10,000 cameras in active use [3]. Many such cameras also keep photographs of the driver and passenger of each passing car, though those are not collected centrally at the NADC.

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.”

-ENDS-

Notes:

1. Freedom of Information request on ‘Size and Scope of the National ANPR Data Centre’s Database’: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/size_and_scope_of_the_national_a
2. See http://www.npia.police.uk
3. See ‘The ANPR secret’, Kable, 3rd February 2010:http://www.kable.co.uk/automatic-numberplate-recognition-police-anpr-gc-feb10
4. NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net/dbstate for a list of ‘database state’ initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.

For further information, or for immediate or future interview, please contact:

• Phil Booth (National Co-ordinator, national.coordinator@no2id.net) on 07974 230 839
• Guy Herbert (General Secretary, general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308
• Michael Parker (Press Officer, press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166

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