19 billion cars a year caught on cops’ TV
COPS are snapping motorists with road cameras at a record rate of 610 a second, figures show.
The number of cars pictured by a network of CCTV devices annually has almost doubled in five years, up to 19.2 billion in 2019-20 from 11 billion in 2014-15.
And it is up nearly six times on the 3.7 billion registered a decade ago on the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system’s 8,000 cameras. Data uncovered by the Sunday Mirror reveals images of cars and their drivers are taken at the rate of 52.7 million every day.
Now privacy watchdogs have warned the technology could be used to film innocent people who are not breaking any traffic laws.
Big Brother Watch’s Madeleine Stone called it “a dangerously unregulated form of surveillance”.
She added: “These figures show the monitoring of millions of innocent motorists is growing at an alarming rate. Councils and police hold detailed records on virtually anyone who drives.
“It’s unacceptable that authorities are conducting mass-scale snooping in a legal vacuum and Parliament should take action.”
With around 35 million vehicles registered in the UK, a car is “captured” on the database about 10 times every week on average.
The records are said to be stored for up to two years on a national database used by detectives and intelligence services to track criminals, even when there is no evidence of any wrongdoing.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council said: “ANPR is an important tool to help police forces prevent crime, identify offenders and keep the public safe.
“When deploying it we take into account all relevant privacy and civil liberties concerns.”