That's every phonecall, email and website visited by every citizen, kept on record for 12 months. And now it's after vehicle records too.
The UK's Home Office is to integrate surveillance cameras with police databases nationwide as well as the Automatic Number Place Recognition system (ANPR), technology that automatically reads car registration plates.
Vehicle #Seized in #EllesmerePort for no insurance. We will find you #ANPR #Intercept pic.twitter.com/S6PhSUEVrw
— CheshPol taskforce (@CPTaskforce) November 5, 2016
The UK has currently has a network of around 8,000 cameras that capture up to 30 million ANPR read-outs every day. The information about the vehicle, its journey and its destination is then retained on the National ANPR Data Center for two years.
The first Automatic Number Place Recognition (ANPR) cameras is now in place @huddersfield pic.twitter.com/xtnFt1RbHF
— lane wiggan (@saxonaxe) August 25, 2015
ANPR is used by the police to help track down criminals, organized crime groups and terrorists across the UK. The ANPR camera can instantly read and check a car registration place against other police databases and records the data, including unsuspected vehicles too and stores it on the National ANPR Data Center (NADC) for up to two years.
#DataRetention and the #ANPR System: A Gap in the Oversight Regime https://t.co/DmgaLz7H7p | Lorna Woods (@EssexLawSchool) | #surveillance
— Owen Boswarva (@owenboswarva) September 22, 2016
It's since emerged that this system of surveillance of vehicles across the UK is to be included under the UK Law Enforcement Data Service, leading to accusations that the Home Office is operating a "burgeoning surveillance capability" as it expands, immune to any parliamentary oversight.
ANPR, "is not subject to any parliamentary oversight, yet it is one of the largest intelligence gathering tools in the world," Tony Porter, the UK's surveillance camera commissioner said in his recent annual report.
"Its use as an intelligence tool is self-evident in that there are now approximately 8,500 cameras in use, capable of 35 million and 40 million 'reads' a day and storing upwards of 30 billion 'reads' a year."
Mr. Porter also pointed out that ANPR has progressed and expanded from just being used to track suspect vehicles involved in terrorism or extremist activity in the 1980's, 90's and early 2000's to now tracing insurance claims, vehicle theft and car tax.
New guidance in place over police & local authority use of CCTV & Automatic Number Plate Recognition http://t.co/MhMMSFChbj
— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) June 4, 2013
The UK's surveillance camera commissioner remains concerned that the system, believed to be integrated with the Law Enforcement Data Service (LEDS), will not function on behalf of citizens in the UK and progess unchecked and without any scrutiny from parliament.
Meanwhile the Snoopers' Charter awaits Royal Assent after passing through the House of Lords, before it becomes law, possibly by the end of 2016.
