The city uses a network of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras to scan the roads for vehicles entering and exiting the road’s charging zones. The UK road system is covered with these cameras. Each day, about 13,000 take 55 million “reads,” as license plate IDs are known, according to data from the National Council of Chiefs of Police. But nowhere are they more densely packed than the capital, which is believed to have around 2,000 cameras, sending tens of millions of readings a day back to their operator, Transport for London. Now London’s mayor has given police access to more data from more cameras, and privacy campaigners are up in arms. “It’s kind of scary,” says London Assembly member Sian Berry, who along with privacy campaigners the Open Rights Group is launching a legal challenge against the mayor’s decision. They warn that while scans of car number plates may seem innocent, they are not. First, because recording a vehicle’s route is an intimate picture of the driver’s or passenger’s movements. Second, because ANPR cameras don’t just scan numbers and letters, they also scan photos, including a “front-of-the-vehicle photo” that captures what’s happening when the image is taken. This includes the color and make of vehicles, and potentially the faces of drivers and pedestrians passing by – what is known by London authorities as “enhanced content data”. Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 2:39 Are you being followed? Rise in ANPR Previously, the Metropolitan Police only had access to data from ANPR cameras in central London and received no images, only ‘reading’ where and when a number plate was received. Now the force has full access to cameras in inner London, an area where far more people live than central London (3.8 million compared to 200,000), and will be able to see pictures too. City Hall did not respond to a request for comment, but the Metropolitan Police defended the need for the data, saying it helped police protect the public and avoid errors in vehicle identification. The ANPR images were “highly unlikely to be of sufficient quality to identify the driver or passengers”, the force said, adding that in any case Londoners can have “little expectation of privacy” when driving their cars. Image: Sadiq Khan’s decision has been criticized by campaign groups Ms. Berry is more specific. He says the added access raises the prospect of a privacy campaigner’s worst nightmare: a database filled with deeply personal data that can be searched by police at will. “We know there have been police disciplinary actions and dismissals for stalking ex-partners using data held by the police,” he says. “When proper internal controls are not in place, it really increases the risk of this type of harm.” Ms Berry points out that the police can obtain data from ANPR cameras for investigation, a power used 33,000 times by the Metropolitan Police in 2020 alone, but must request and justify the use of the data. The access granted by the mayor could create a database for police to “play with,” he says, noting that it would be simple to run facial recognition scans on the photos. In a letter to the mayor informing him they intend to take legal action, Ms Berry and the Open Rights Group argue that the decision to extend the Metropolitan Police’s powers in this way was unlawful because it was granted without proper consultation. When Sadiq Khan authorized access in May this year, he cited a public consultation held in 2014, an exercise which campaigners and their lawyers at Bindmans argue cannot explain such a large-scale increase in police access. Read more from Sky News: How was Sarah Everard’s killer caught? “In one move, Sadiq Khan has taken a decision that violates the basic privacy rights of millions of Londoners,” says Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, which is calling on the mayor to conduct a full scale crackdown. public consultation on the move. Mr Killock fears worse could be to come as the mayor plans to extend the ultra-low emission zone to cover the whole of Greater London from the end of 2023, significantly increasing the number and range of ANPR cameras. If that happens, he says, “every car, driver and pedestrian in Greater London will be subject to surveillance by the Metropolitan Police, yet Londoners have no say in this.”
