Sheffield Council to decide the fate of your ANPR data

[esme]

Who said anything about faint hopes? I agree that this data is potentially dangerous in the wrong (or even right) hands but please keep this in perspective. It is not tracking every movement as it only covers certain roads, and does not know where you ended up or even where you came from. It can't tell if you were out shopping, dropping the kids off or where you work.

 

I was replying to sierramans comment regarding the CCTV coverage in Torbay and how he thought it was a good idea, I thought quoting his post would be sufficient to make that clear

 

I agree the road usage cameras do not have the same function or have the same capabilities as the CCTV cameras I was describing

[hsb98c]

In that case I agree with you :-)

[garrence]

Hello,

 

If your vehicle is legally allowed to be on the road, taxed, Mot'd and insured, why would anyone be intimidated by a camera monitoring traffic movement.

 

A network of fixed cameras is a very poor way to catch road tax evaders because the guilty will just avoid them. It's far more effective and far cheaper to use a single mobile camera and have the cops waiting a little further down the road - which is exactly what they do.

 

I've been in Torbay last week, cctv camera's everywhere and do you know what, I think its a good idea in today's present climate. If you've nothing to hide and are legally going about your business where is the problem? Just making the streets safer for law abiding citizens.

 

I didn't know Torbay was such a violent place - I'll make a note to not go there!

 

You seem to have got the council's vehicle tracking database mixed up with CCTV in general.

 

Though did you know that the CCTV makes very little difference to crime levels, particularly spontaneous crime such as assault against the person?

 

And remember when they started installing CCTV - they said it was watching out for criminals and would never be used to snoop on people in some spooky Big Brother way?

 

Well now the Home Office wants to link up all the cameras - public and private - into one huge national network they can watch from everywhere. They're also adding facial recognition to them - it doesn't work very well but is getting more accurate. And, in future, when you renew your passport or get an ID card, you'll have your facial biometrics taken. Viola! A huge national people tracking system that can recognise your face and log your movements!

 

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" (Benjamin Franklin). This is giving up liberty to obtain no difference in safety!

 

Anyway - back to this thread. This council system purports to be intended for monitoring journey times. Those participating are keen to ensure that this is done so with respect to individual's privacy, and to stop it following the path of CCTV.

 

And I do have something to hide -- my privacy and my liberty. I quite like them.

Edited April 29, 2009 by garrence

[garrence]

We want to retain the number plate information so that we can distinguish buses and other vehicles (such as taxis) which can make use of bus lanes and gates and so will have different journey times and routes from general traffic. The Council and the PTE have records of the number plates of all buses, taxis etc. - we will only use the number plate and vehicle class information for this work, no data that could be used to identify any person will be incorporated. We will not be looking at individual journeys, the kinds of question we want to answer are "of those vehicles arriving at point C what proportion came from point A and what proportion from point B, and what were the average journey times".

 

Thanks to your man for his message and yourself for posting it.

 

All of that is equally feasible using anonymised data!

 

This algorithm will anonymise all plates that have not been seen for 12 hours, connecting together all the reads from one plate where the gap between reads is less than 12 hours. The stream of data is kept in temporary working store, this works over it, finds the journeys and puts them in the journey store.

 

I hope it makes sense...

 

Once per hour, starting at the oldest plate in the list and 
working towards the most recent
Repeat {
  Get the next number plate from the working store. 
  Find all occurrences of it in the working store. 
  If there are no occurrences in the previous 12 hours, 
  or the first occurrence is 24 hours ago or more, then:
  {
      Lookup the plate in the list of buses and taxis.
      Replace the number plate with unique journey identifier J on every read.
      Store every read in the journey store as (J, timestamp, location, vehicle_type)
      Remove all reads for the plate from the working store.
      Set J to its last value + 1.
  }
} until we reach reads that are only 12 hours old (then stop)

 

You can vary 12 hours to whatever is the sensible figure. Obviously, too long and someone who stays over en-route is going to appear to have a very long journey! The 24 hours bit is so that vehicles that are constantly on the road (taxis) do get moved into the journey store.

 

It's dead simple to program - don't let the supplier kid you into believing it's expensive.

 

Yes you can banish those RIPA, DPA and human rights issues!

 

Edit:

 

We want to retain the number plate information so that we can distinguish buses and other vehicles (such as taxis)

 

I just realised that my method above is a better way to do this because it looks up the vehicle type within hours of the read being done. If you store raw number plates and only lookup the vehicle type when you do your analysis, you will get incorrect results from vehicles that have change to/from a private hire vehicle since the read.

 

The algorithm above doesn't do real-time journey times for the public info system, but that's easy to do with a second algorithm running over the working store.

Edited April 29, 2009 by garrence

[Cyclone]

If your vehicle is legally allowed to be on the road, taxed, Mot'd and insured, why would anyone be intimidated by a camera monitoring traffic movement. I've been in Torbay last week, cctv camera's everywhere and do you know what, I think its a good idea in today's present climate. If you've nothing to hide and are legally going about your business where is the problem? Just making the streets safer for law abiding citizens.

 

Todays present climate being one of fear inspired by the government and media.

And I'm sure that George Orwell would be proud of your stunning use of the 'if you've got nothing to hide' argument.

[Captain_Scarlet]

If your vehicle is legally allowed to be on the road, taxed, Mot'd and insured, why would anyone be intimidated by a camera monitoring traffic movement. I've been in Torbay last week, cctv camera's everywhere and do you know what, I think its a good idea in today's present climate. If you've nothing to hide and are legally going about your business where is the problem? Just making the streets safer for law abiding citizens.

Just because I drive legally doesn't mean I'm willing to have some >removed< association take my vehicle details without my agreement. Being legal doesn't mean I should let associations use personal data. Were I a delinquent I'd be in the same situation.

I go about my business legally and I don't want my car's detail used at my expense.

Torbay isn't the only town under the watchful eye of big Brother, Sheffield's got its spy cams in town, money spent in maintaining this system that could be use for keeping us secure; with policemen, not cameras, not security guards, actual policemen.

It's not personal because the user does not link it to an individual's personal information. A vehicle registration number is not considered personal information when no attempt is made to establish who it belongs to or who is diving it.

 

The people running the scheme have to think the issue through carefully because they will have to justify their stance if there is any challenge.

It's personal because it belongs to someone. Your values are those of the associations who willingly take personal data. The holders of this data, the roadtax payer has a different opinion.

It will need to be a big memory stick as the system is expected to record over 2 million number plate records per day when fully operational.

pure text data requires little storage space. It's 2009, isn't hard to have a few tera bytes of storage space and I doubt this project has more than a couple, if that. A personal computer is capable of holding all this spying.

Message from the SYITS Project Manager:

 

"The syITS ANPR system is currently being installed, final decisions have not yet been made about how long data will be retained or how it will used after its initial use to calculate real-time journey times.

 

However, the principles have already been agreed that all data will he held and transferred securely and that no attempt will be made to link number plates to any personal data such as registered keepers. Comments made on this forum are being taken into account in preparing the protocol which will govern how the data is used.

 

We want to retain the number plate information so that we can distinguish buses and other vehicles (such as taxis) which can make use of bus lanes and gates and so will have different journey times and routes from general traffic. The Council and the PTE have records of the number plates of all buses, taxis etc. - we will only use the number plate and vehicle class information for this work, no data that could be used to identify any person will be incorporated. We will not be looking at individual journeys, the kinds of question we want to answer are "of those vehicles arriving at point C what proportion came from point A and what proportion from point B, and what were the average journey times".

 

This kind of information is essential for planning new transport investment and we have to provide it in order to get funding from central government. It is expensive to obtain by means of normal transport surveys - ANPR data offers a potentially much more economical and comprehensive way of collecting it, which will save costs to council tax payers and improve the quality of decision making."

 

I can confirm that the issues that have been raised on this thread have been discussed at length at an SYITS steering group meeting yesterday. SYITS officers have gone away to consider what, if anything, needs to be done to respond to the concerns expressed.

All this want, want, from an association miss-using public money. where are the would likes, have asked the public, hopes that? Just simple want, grab, grab. As usual, the goal is thought of before expenditure and everything is done to justify the spending rather than justifying the project. Their minds are made up already, it's now a matter to calm the public, not ask the public what they'd like to see. This information is not essential, not at all, the association is fighting for its existence and the only way it's found to justify its agenda is to get yet more data, spying and miss-using it then manipulating it to justify decisions it's already made. Off course the Council and PTA, and the DVLA have buses and taxi number plates, one needs to apply for the right to run taxis and buses, what a shocker. How much did the SY.... spend to make that announcement?

 

I do not care if the plate details are not linked to individual, I don't want the numbers used at all. More roads, wider roads, better surfacing, higher speeds; easy.

Edited May 3, 2009 by Ms Macbeth
removed offensive wording

[Cyclone]

I've had a response from the ICO by email today.

 

It seems that they have no record of the SCC contacting them regarding the implications of a council run ANPR system, contrary to what Planner1 lead us to believe.

 

Thank you for your enquiry to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regarding Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and Sheffield City Council (Sheffield CC).

 

 

 

You ask whether the ICO have been consulted about the ANPR scheme detailed in the link to Contract Notice 2007/S 216-262619 from November 2007 (http://www.publictechnology.net/print.php?sid=12588), which was tendered by Sheffield CC.

 

 

 

We have consulted our records and conferred with our Policy Department. I can confirm that the ICO have had no substantive consultation or discussion with Sheffield CC relating to ANPR, either regarding Contract Notice 2007/S 216-262619 in particular or more general engagement over the issues surrounding ANPR.

 

 

 

If you have any further queries, please contact me at: Casework@ico.gsi.gov.uk. Please quote your case reference number, ENQ0245231, in any future correspondence.

[Planner1]

I've had a response from the ICO by email today.

 

It seems that they have no record of the SCC contacting them regarding the implications of a council run ANPR system, contrary to what Planner1 lead us to believe.

 

I don't recall saying they'd contacted the ICO.

 

In fact I said in post #113:

 

"The people running the system are well aware of all statutory requirements."

[Cyclone]

Maybe I misunderstood then, I don't have time to read through all the weaselling right now.

[prettygood]

Can you point out where the regulation is that states number plate data can only be stored for 2 years? I've seen articles which say they keep it for 5 years or longer.

 

The depressing truth is that there is no legislation concerning ANPR. It was never introduced by any act of Parliament; the government and police just went ahead and did it. The current data retention limit of 2 years by the police is merely an entirely arbitrary limit that they themselves have set. When they talk about extending it to five years, there's nothing to stop them doing this because no law exists for ANPR.

 

When Planner1 says that the council haven't decided how long they'll be retaining their ANPR data for, he's essentially correct because there is no limit defined for ANPR. If Sheffield council wanted to keep their ANPR data for 10 years, 20 years or even indefinitely, there's nothing to stop them from doing so. It's an incredible situation in a supposedly democratic country that gross invasions of privacy can be undertaken by fiat, not by law.

 

ANPR is an absolute disgrace, whether by the police or by local councils. It's information that the authorities simply aren't entitled to and as far as I'm concerned it's completely illegitimate. Schemes that involve a significant change without being introduced by law are equivalent to me marking out an area of pavement outside my home and then refusing to let people walk across it unless they pay me money. It's not the actions of a democracy.

 

It may be the dream of unaccountable statist bureaucrats such as Planner1 to have extensive journey information on the general public but that doesn't mean they should get it. Information is the currency of bureaucracy and is entirely for their convenience, not ours. Function creep inevitably means that ANPR will be used for many other things besides "traffic modelling".