ANPR network to cover UK

Two stories of interest in the Independent this morning. The headline on the front page, accompanied by a large picture of a fuzzy iris is:

You Are Being Watched

And on page two,

Surveillance UK: why this revolution is only the start

They cover the government's plans to turn the national network of CCTV cameras into a national automated number plate recognition network, which will record the whereabouts of every single car on the roads 24/7. No doubt the data will be stored for a number of years (the precise number as yet undetermined) and can be fished for patterns at will. I'm not going to even start on the consequences of false positives and false negatives.

Surprisingly only one sentence in the latter story really irritated me:

"Although the problems of facial recognition by computer are far more formidable than for car number plates, experts believe it is only a matter of time before machines can reliably pull a face out of a crowd of moving people."

Face recognition systems are nowhere near reliably pulling "a face out of a crowd of moving people" and don't be surprised if those so-called "experts" just happen to be the people selling face recognition systems.

As to the £24 million the government are going to spend on ANPR equipment next year, could it be used more effectively on other police resources? Probably. Will it be enough to get the system working nationwide. Almost certainly not.