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Police using new automated technology to help find stolen Wellington cars
News from NZ Police
A pilot project using Automated Number Plate Recognition technology has seen the discovery of a number of stolen vehicles and vehicles of interest in Wellington.
Wellington Police District became part of a pilot project in August. The Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology identifies any vehicles of interest to Police, by running number plates through a specialised computer programme.
Senior Sergeant Simon Feltham of the Wellington Police says people may have seen a van driving around suburban streets in Wellington city in recent weeks, which has the ANPR technology onboard. This has led to the location of a number of vehicles, which had previously been reported stolen.
“This new technology gives Police a greater ability to locate any vehicles of interest, from stolen vehicles to vehicles being driven by a disqualified driver.”
The ANPR van has been deployed to all parts of the Wellington Police District in recent months – the Wairarapa, Kapiti Mana and the Hutt Valley.
“The community also has a role to play in assisting us with identifying any suspicious vehicles in their neighbourhoods.”
Senior Sergeant Feltham says if a car has been parked in your street for a couple of weeks, give Police a call with the registration number.
Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz
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Guilt by Machine! Roll over George O. If the public seriously believe the hype being given to ‘stolen vehicles,’ maybe the media should inquire, where are the beneficiaries of this technology, all the happy original owners? This is nothing more or less than watered down face recognition by proxy.
The Police can track (and trace) anyone ‘of interest’… without a search warrant. There need be no intervention at the time, only a record of speed and direction. We need look no further than this inane quest to create the ‘silent’ policeman. Number recognition of plates can be done (and logged) from existing surveillance camera technology we see over every controlled intersection with no more computational power than is in an IPad/Cellphone.
The question is, should we?
This is not about ‘tear up the protections of the Magna Carta… and the right to travel unimpeded upon the Kings Highway.’ Rather the right of the state to maintain ‘absolute transparency’ just in case it may need to and all predicated on ‘fears’ where there should be none. Chomsky and manufactured consent comes to mind. We are creating, yet again, a recipe for more ‘deviancy amplification’ – remember Len Snee and Gage the dog! We are (by our silence closely resembling stupidity) creating the very problem we set out to solve… and at our expense, no accounting required.
I’m intrigued by the “vehicles being driven by a disqualified driver” part of the report. This indicates that there is some face-recognition software going on here, and that it’s not just registration number recognition.
On another tack, why don’t the council incorporate this sort of technology into their “illegal parking” car, and kill two birds with one stone?
The council should install webcams in SteveW’s home too so that checks can be made to make sure everything is above board there too. Can’t see there would be a problem as he seems to subscribe to the theory that no-one is entitled to privacy in the pursuit of the odd lawbreaker.