i think they are a great idea and there should be more of them,if people can not afford insurance ect they should not be on the road,and if they are caught thier cars should be confiscated on the spot and crushed because if they will not tax them ect they certainly wont maintain them

The quicker we have these removed the better - no government should feel a need to track their population like cattle, the growth of surveillance has risen without discussion and consultation with the electorate. We are all unjustly treated as potential criminals.

if you are doing no wrong then why worry about them

Number plate cameras may be illegal
HAMISH MACDONELL SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR
Her we go again the one of the green guys talking about the human rights. The sarcasm is we create these IT eyes then give a lot of publicity then we sell then EBay or otherwise till saturates the market and there are copies (fake) ones coming out. They work. All of these gizmos work. After the big marathon run, we have a bobby coming up from the corner talking of the INNOVATION. At times, I wonder if some people who talk against the right, wrongs ever have touched the keyboard of the computer, or do they know how to send an SMS?
The fight is of words. Carry on spying. If you do not some else is doing it.

POLICE cameras which use automatic number plate recognition could breach human rights legislation, a leading surveillance expert has warned.

Brave New World, 1984 here we come. The creep backwards towards totalitarianism may be slow, but it is there nonetheless. The question is: "why do we allow ourselves to do it to ourselves??"
Here is an exercise: watch 1984 every 5 years and then add up all the ways we are developing to track ourselves: public and private surveillance cameras, cellphone zones, in-carGPS, RFID tags (together with credit card information), hi-res satelites, numer plate cameras, intelligent houses linket to the internet. The movie becomes more relevant with each viewing I can assure you, I've been doing it for 20 years and it scares the crap out of me.

If you commit a crime, you have no "human right" not to be caught.

These cameras work in such a way that if you plug in a certain plate number and it flashes across a camera hooked to the database, there will be an alert flag triggered. They do NOT record plate numbers they are NOT programmed to search for that are whisked across their camera faces.

How is it a violation of anyone's human rights? It's not. If you commit a crime, be prepared to be caught and prosecuted.

I totally agree with Sam above, if you have nothing to hide, why worry?

Of course, I am going around Sam's house later today to install recording cameras in every room, and several in the bedrooms. Clearly if Sam complains he's up to no good, and I think we should arrest him "just in case". Oh, and I'll be keeping the tapes for a few years, in case I find that he's been talking too load (clearly noise abuse, potentially a criminal offence).

Again, if he's not doing anything wrong, what's the problem?

The problem is that "privacy" is being eroded, and without just cause. A land without privacy is *exactly* what you have in the book 1984, nothing more, nothing less.

The government makes laws for the good of all (or the vast majority) in the land.

How can taking away EVERYONES privacy be good for everyone?

Specific targetting is good, but dragnets are not in the best interest of UK citizens.

All those touting the `no crime, why worry?' line: so you would approve of having cameras in your bedrooms as well, would you? After all, if you're not committing a crime (and goodness knows it's possible to do so in one's own home), why worry?

Perhaps you should learn to distinguish between researching real crimes that have happened and actively seeking to find more crimes.

Ben, the real issue, and the reason RIPA is involved is the persistent recording of the data which will allow police to back track a persons movements. This becomes especially powerful when the network covering all the motorways and major roads, which is intended to roll out shortly, is finished. The briton will be being treated as guilty-until-proven-innocent, with evidence gathered whilst going avout their daily business.

What happens if the police flag a person as possible criminal-to-be and he goes shopping instead of to work, will the monitoring software have six cars following him within a mile of the deviation from his 'normal' route?