I am writing to let you know that you can give the Mayor of London your views on his proposals to allow the Metropolitan Police to have access to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras for crime prevention reasons.
We use these cameras to monitor and enforce Congestion Charging and the Low Emission Zone.
To take part in this consultation, please use the link above. Any responses to this email will be passed to the Greater London Authority along with your name and email address, so that they can reply to you directly.
This consultation will close on Tuesday 8 April.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Cowperthwaite
General Manager Congestion Charging
My personal view is that scanning and checking against lists is fine but the data for any vehicles not believed to be wanted/committing an offence should then be immediately destroyed. I haven't fully signed up for the consultation to understand what question is being asked though.
> My personal view is that scanning and checking against lists is fine but the data for any vehicles not believed to be wanted/committing an offence should then be immediately destroyed. I haven't fully signed up for the consultation to understand what question is being asked though.
That's reasonable. I would add that at no point should any picture ever be committed to nonvolatile memory unless it has been confirmed to match one of the watchlists. If the license plate is not on a list at the time of scanning, it should never be stored outside of RAM.
How do you propose they handle the scenario then where a driver receives a bill for entering the zone on a particular day, but then claims they were never driving on that day? Ordinarily they could retrieve the photo and use that to confirm the charge.
They have a list of people that have (and therefore, those that haven't) paid the congestion charge for that day. So in keeping with the parent's suggestion that only images showing cars that have committed an offence should be stored, they'd still have the photo showing them driving on the day having not paid the charge.
You could handle it same way they handle people claiming that the radar gun is wrong or that the parking meter shorted someone on time: the instrument is calibrated so the burden is on you to prove it is defective.
Radar guns are terribly inaccurate. In about 1 in 100 readings they are wildly off. Even when calibrated. I know this because my dad - who has an IEEE medal for his work on the laser, has testified as an expert witness on lasers and drives like an old Chinese woman - was clicked doing 90 in a 55 by a laser gun. He did the research and found the test results showing that in 1 in 100 readings you should expect an outlier such as reading 90 when the car was going 55. Guess what, it doesn't matter. No judge in the world cares. They aren't going to allow people to question the accuracy of these devices because it would destroy their revenue stream. Anyway, that's my rant on radar guns.
I am writing to let you know that you can give the Mayor of London your views on his proposals to allow the Metropolitan Police to have access to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras for crime prevention reasons.
We use these cameras to monitor and enforce Congestion Charging and the Low Emission Zone.
For more information and to share your views, please click here:[http://talklondon.london.gov.uk/content/your-views-cutting-c...]
To take part in this consultation, please use the link above. Any responses to this email will be passed to the Greater London Authority along with your name and email address, so that they can reply to you directly.
This consultation will close on Tuesday 8 April. Yours sincerely,
Paul Cowperthwaite General Manager Congestion Charging
My personal view is that scanning and checking against lists is fine but the data for any vehicles not believed to be wanted/committing an offence should then be immediately destroyed. I haven't fully signed up for the consultation to understand what question is being asked though.