Smart Cameras Blog

[From Fla. police cameras analyze thousands of license tags via Sun-Sentinel]

ALPR data provides police with the location of a specific car. This data is typically used to identify stolen vehicles, vehicles associated with an Amber Alert, parking tickets, and congestion charges.

One issue the article raises is how long should this information be stored (and who should have access to it over the long term). After all, the Broward Sheriff’s Office has 35 systems located on patrols cars and fixed locations and scans an average of 300,000 plates a month. The resulting data over a period of months and years can provide significant details about the use of a car.

As the article notes, some cities are storing this data permanently. They may also be sharing this information. This means any police officer can type in a license plate and then have a location history of the vehicle.

There is no bright line between the value of this data for later investigative police work versus its encroachment on privacy. From a gut level, I believe this information should be deleted after 30 days or at most 1 year (depending on what its being used for, e.g. finding stolen cars versus congestion charges) unless it is needed for an investigation. I also think access to this information should be limited, e.g., reasonable suspicion requirement.

rshah ALPR

[From Traffic cameras could help wipe out city's projected deficit :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: City Hall]

Insurenet proposes that Chicago could make “well in excess of $100 million. We think at least $200 million.” All they would have to do is use traffic cameras to collect license plate numbers and then match the numbers with those of uninsured motorists. A traffic camera would then read a license plate, if it was uninsured, it would then send a ticket in the mail. To accomplish this, Chicago would also need to compel insurance companies to report the names and license plates of insured motorists into the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (NLETS), the information-sharing network that links federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

Does anybody see any problems in this scheme? The readers of the Sun-Times offered quite a few.

1. The numbers don’t seem to add up. Frankly, I couldn’t understand the figures from the newspaper article. But basically, the city would need on the order of 700,000 tickets per year to generate this revenue. Thats a lot of tickets.

2. The levied fines seem disproportional. Fining someone that doesn’t have insurance on the car a $1000? What are the odds that they could either afford to pay or be willing to pay the fine?

This brings me to something called unintended consequences.

People without insurance (they know who they are) will now have a bullseye on their car (aka the license plate). They will have a $1000 incentive to make sure they do not receive a fine. They may try to disguise their plate or avoid traffic cameras. Or they might be willing to go down the slippery slope of illegality by telling the city an incorrect address for their car registration or making sure the license plate on their car isn’t theirs. This is a slope the city doesn’t want people to venture. Once citizens muck with the connection between license plates and their registration, it throws the whole enforcement mechanism for many sorts of issues awry.

I think fines for uninsured motorists are a good use of traffic cameras. But lets use it as a tool to push people to buy insurance and not as a way to unfairly punish people, who will likely become even harder to catch.

rshah ALPR, Red Light Cameras

[From Photo Enforced: License Plate Hunter Cameras]

A post describing ELSAG North America’s Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology.

A network of fixed LPR systems, which can be mounted to structures such as bridges and overpasses, as well as mobile LPR systems, which are mounted to police vehicles that can capture up to 3,000 license plates per hour, help keep a tight watch on cities, ports, borders and other sensitive areas. The MPH-900® LPR technology is being used by hundreds of agencies all across the United States to assist with interdiction, the capturing criminal intelligence data.

rshah ALPR, Vendors

[From theexpiredmeter.com » Red Light Cameras Help With Amber Alerts In Oak Forest]

When red light cameras arrived, many of us recognized it was only a matter of time before they would be used for other purposes. Recently, Gatso USA tested red light cameras that can read license plates in Oak Forest. It uses an 11 megapixel to capture enough detail for license plate recognition. The technology is ostensibly for identifying cars during an Amber Alert. Here is a clip from their press release.

Gatso USA, a leading photo enforcement systems provider, announced today that after one year of development, testing and customer evaluation, its flagship GS11 red light and speed camera now carries an AMBER Alert feature that can help ensure the safety of abducted children by decreasing law enforcement’s response time in locating suspected criminals. . . . The camera’s AMBER Alert feature enables police departments to search in real time for wanted or suspect vehicles at intersections or locations within a city’s network of compatible red light or speed photo enforcement cameras. When a suspect vehicle passes a camera location, the camera immediately reports the information back to the police department.

In a recent evaluation of Gatso USA’s GS11 AMBER Alert capability conducted in a south suburb of Chicago, Deputy Chief David DeMarco of the Oak Forest Police Department, the chief coordinator of the evaluation, stated, “I was amazed. Within 20 seconds of passing a camera location, we were notified in the field with a message and a photo that my car was detected at the camera location when the AMBER Alert feature was activated. It’s a priceless tool for law enforcement when looking for a suspect vehicle involved in an abduction or serious crime. We consider the evaluation to be highly successful.”

The evaluation was coordinated after the city of Oak Forest installed several of Gatso’s GS11 red light photo enforcement solutions for designated intersections within the city. The city of Oak Forest conducted an extensive evaluation of five red light camera photo enforcement solutions and selected Gatso based on product performance as well as the beneficial cost structure provided, which does not require any capital expenditure from the City or the police department.

rshah ALPR, Chicago, Red Light Cameras

[From theNewspaper.com Photo Ticket Cameras to Track Drivers Nationwide]

The vendors of red light cameras and speed cameras are planning to add more features that expand the ability to track motorists. Redflex is planning to add OCR to their cameras in the next few months, which is also known as automatic license plate recognition technology. This could allow them to keep tabs on every car that passes through a particular intersection. “Imagine if you had 1500 or 2000 cameras out there that could look out for the partial plate or full plate number across the 21 states where we do business today,” Elsadek said. “This is the next step for our technology.”

The article also points out that these technologies can be abused. A recent example the article mentions:

In the past, police databases have been used to intimidate innocent motorists. An Edmonton, Canada police sergeant, for example, found himself outraged after he read columnist Kerry Diotte criticize his city’s photo radar operation in the Edmonton Sun newspaper. The sergeant looked up Diotte’s personal information, and, without the assistance of electronic scanners, ordered his subordinates to “be on the lookout” for Diotte’s BMW. Eventually a team of officers followed Diotte to a local bar where they hoped to trap the journalist and accuse him of driving under the influence of alcohol. Diotte took a cab home and the officers’ plan was exposed after tapes of radio traffic were leaked to the press. Police later cleared themselves of any serious wrong-doing following an extensive investigation.

rshah ALPR, Applications, Red Light Cameras, Traffic Congestion

From City’s roving cameras rapidly scan license plates – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Some interesting nuggets on the integration of license plate recognition with other systems:

Pittsburgh bought the license plate scanning technology with $25,000 from the Pennsylvania Auto Theft Prevention Authority, an organization established by the Legislature in 1994 and funded by auto insurance companies. In two years of its use, police have recovered 180 stolen cars.
. . .
The system is used by Pennsylvania State Police, and license plate scanners are mounted at toll booths along the Pennsylvania Turnpike to watch for stolen and wanted vehicles and those who avoid paying tolls, officials said. The Pittsburgh Parking Authority uses a similar scanner to look for vehicles whose owners have outstanding parking violations, officials said.
Harper has visited other U.S. cities that combine the license-plate technology with surveillance cameras mounted throughout neighborhoods and hopes Pittsburgh can do the same. The technology allows police to enter specific query information into the database.
“If we have a bank robbery or other crime Downtown and we have these cameras with this technology mounted on bridges that connect to Downtown, we can enter the suspect vehicle information and the cameras will alert us if they scan a license plate that leads to the same car or make and model of a car that we’re looking for,” Harper said.

rshah ALPR

A couple of overdue items for Chicago

CTA Bus Cameras – A Tribune story with much more detail, they use the DriveCam system that was previously discussed here (use the search feature)

Alderman wants to ban cameras sensing devices from SunTimes- basically trying to outlaw devices that will provide warnings of red light cameras or speed cameras – as the article notes, its not going to happen, for more information on the technology, see this article in the SunTimes on the technology developed by Cobra

Finally, the city is using ANPR for parking tickets. Lots of cities have done this, but now Chicago is testing it out, see the Tribune article:

The van drivers make only one trip on a street because the paired cameras simultaneously read license plates of vehicles parked along both curbs. A beeping noise is emitted when license recognition software identifies a vehicle plate that is boot-eligible.

rshah ALPR, Chicago

From Spy Blog:

Spy Blog has a post on the growing uses of the surveillance data in London. This data concerns the cameras (about 1,500) and the ANPR data that comes from the congestion charge system:

Police are to be given live access to London’s congestion charge cameras – allowing them to track all vehicles entering and leaving the zone. Anti-terror officers will be exempted from parts of the Data Protection Act to allow them to see the date, time and location of vehicles in real time. They previously had to apply for access on a case-by-case basis.

“The Met requires bulk ANPR data from TfL’s camera network in London specifically for terrorism intelligence purposes and to prevent and investigate such offences. “The infrastructure will allow the real-time flow of data between TfL and the Met.” Mr McNulty said the home secretary had signed a certificate exempting the two organisations from some provisions of the 1998 Data Protection Act.

The Met will produce an annual report for the Information Commissioner, the government’s data protection watchdog who oversees how material from CCTV cameras is used.

Spy Blog goes on the criticize this function creep.

What is being proposed is real time data on everyone simply being slurped into who knows what sort of Metropolitan Police and passed on to who knows which other agencies anti-terrorism databases, both in the UK and overseas.

What safeguards are there for the millions of innocent people’s vehicle movements which will be stored and analysed ?

rshah ALPR, Policy

From New York Times:

A short article on CCTV, video surveillance, and smart cameras in London contained a few interesting points.

The next wave in CCTV, experts say, is to marry traditional surveillance with computer software to make cameras better at detecting suspicious behavior that can be the precursor to a crime.

The police are believed to have used a rudimentary form of such technology to make the first arrest in this plot — Mohammed Asha, a Palestinian of Jordanian descent, who was captured on a motorway after his license plate was recognized by roadside cameras.

I don’t know if anyone has confirmed that it was ANPR that caught the suspect. Other news articles mention it may be cell phone traces that led the police to the suspect. The article also mentions future uses for smart cameras:

More advanced applications include cameras that can be programmed to search for specific objects — say, an unattended bag in a subway station — or for people with suspicious mannerisms. Cameras that recognize facial characteristics are also being developed, though their effectiveness has been hampered by the unpredictable lighting in outdoor spaces. “Some people are looking very hard at suicide bombers,” said Peter Fry, director of the CCTV User Group, a trade association. “You can possibly pick up mannerisms, facial tics and so on. If that works, it would be a tremendous help in cases like these.”

rshah ALPR

More than 40,000 sets of number plates were stolen in 2006, a rise of almost 25%, according to police estimates.

Acpo wants a central issuing body for the registration numbers, and all cars to have tamper-proof plates fitted.

rshah ALPR, Policy, Red Light Cameras, Traffic Congestion