Was not the proposal for the scheme given birth some time before the current escalation of the Gulf Problem and George William coming to office which places the security aspect out of the frame?.
However with it in being it will be an added bonus to the Emmeye people and the security of London. More so after todays revelation of security cordons to isolate smallpox outbreaks etc.
Truth is IMHO we only know a minute portion of what is going on in the background. T'wood frighten us all to death if we knew all.
DVD
(Not far from Fylindales Star Wars)
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HJ
It must also be noted that the cameras were in position BEFORE the congestion charging scheme had been given final approval.
Now, I wonder what sort of idiot spends £200 million on installing equipment before the legality has been OK'd?
Unless, of course they'd been tipped the wink that they were dual-purpose and that Tiny Blur would pick up the tab if the scheme was turned down?
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And you thought I wouldn´t notice a discussion on politics and terrorism, even though I´m on holiday ??
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Just testing Mark, just testing ! Got to keep you on your toes ;-)
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I bet Mrs RLBS is happy with you...I get in loads of trouble with SWMBO for taking work calls during holidays...
Enjoy!
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Mrs RLBS unhappy ? Listen, our 11 month old daughter splashed out two months of my salary on a necklace for her Mother´s Christmas Present and I spent goodness knows how much flying her out here as a surprise New Year with her family - I have brownie points coming out of my ears !
More than enough to risk the odd 10 minutes watching over you lot !!
If I don´t manage to get back here before, then I wish you all a Happy New year and many thanks for all the interest you´ve added to my last year.
And thanks to HJ, Martyn and Stephen for giving us an interesting place to be. (and sorry about side-tracking your thread, HJ).
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>>If I don´t manage to get back here before, then Iwish you all a Happy New year and many thanks for all the interest you´ve added to my last year.
Happy New Year to you and yours, Mark(Chile!) as well as to everyone else here - although I have the feeling I will be saying the same thing again at some point on this site.
HF
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- I have brownie points coming out of my ears!
Mark: look up the original meaning of "brownie points" at
phrases.shu.ac.uk/meanings/
Did you really mean that? Many people wrongly assume it has to do with Brownies.
As for presents, I support the upper-class tradition. (Buy token low-cost presents, not expensive ones which only prove which class you come from).
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Now I wonder what acronims can be made from Chile? :o)
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When the Bishopsgate Bomb went off in 1993 the City of London erected the "ring of steel" (plastic) around the City with just 8 entry and exit points manned by police.
A short while later they introduced fixed cameras at these points which did several things.
1. The cameras filmed the index plate of the incoming vehicle, this was converted digitally and the data sent to the DVLC, the Police National Computer, and the City Police local intelligence computer. In the space of a couple of seconds the control room at Wood street Police Station received the details of the Registered Keeper, Any Police information i.e. Lost or Stolen etc. from the PNC, and any local information the City Police may have.
2. The second camera filmed the driver and front seat passenger.
3. They have exit cameras which can tell where the vehicle has left the City and in what direction it is going.
I understand that Person recognition software may now be installed which can ID the driver and passenger.
All the cameras work at night and it doesn't matter how close you drive to the car/lorry/bus in front it will film you.
The City Police has had many arrests, recovered many stolen cars, and arrested many wanted criminals from this system.
And this was started nearly 10 years ago.
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To my knowledge Person Recognition software does not YET work accurately enough for handling mass data. There was an aborted pilot some time back in some American airport.
Although I am all FOR tighter security and arresting criminals etc, how does this kind of thing square with the DPA, which someone said on a different post prevents you putting up your own webcam to monitor and record (illegal) activity on and around your own property?
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In May 1999 Newham borough council installed over 40 CCTVs in the Green Street area.
Over 168 CCTVs in other parts of the borough.
These cameras are linked to a control room computer that operates a Facial recognition software,
This software has so far had a 98% success rate, even with deliberate facial disguise.
That was in 1999.
British Airports Authority intend to install the latest version of this programme in all of its Airports.
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Seatbelt,
Do you know where I can get more information on-line about these technologies? Sounds very interesting, but comes in the class of "if you have not done anything wrong you have nothing to fear" sort of area.
Bill
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Rubbish.
Doesn't work. Including phrases like "it doesn't matter if how close you drive to the bus/etc in front.. it will film you" makes it sound like you need to sit down and take a deep breath. This isn't 'Terminator'.
It has been tested in city centres and it doesn't work. However it may well at some point in the near future so l'll book my hat in for a good eating in say 5 years, Seatbelt?
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I would imagine you wear a baseball cap back to front, I hope it tastes OK?
I worked from 1991 until 1999 in the City of London Police Control Room 5th floor Wood St EC2.
The system not only works but has been exported to over 24 foreign countries.
The Met Police have the system installed at Canary Wharf and in certain areas of the West End.
The facial recognition system is a fact, it was trialled at Newham and like I said BAA are installing it at their Airports, I understand that British Transport Police have/are installed the system on the all their London Underground Stations too.
It may be wishful thinking, that you consider it doesn't work, but you do not speak from knowledge only ignorance.
www.cityoflondon.police.uk/performance/performance...m
Go to this site download the Counter terrorist pdf and benefit from the knowledge
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Face recognition one of the biggest is "Trueface" by the Miros Inc
Also
www.imagistechnologies.com/
www.identix.com/
www.citysync.co.uk/pagedef.htm
www.nics.gov.uk/press/env/020115k-env.htm
If you google on Automatic Number Plate Reader you will get a list of all the companies that do the software.
www.epic.org/privacy/facerecognition/
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Yes try to understand that by offering to eat my hat, l was partly extending the caveat that l would probably be wrong in a few years, it wasn't an open invitation for some hackneyed insult.
The police link is a nice homepage, not something l want to trawl through. Do you have anything more precise.
www.imagistechnologies.com/
www.identix.com/
Both product sites selling a product...
www.citysync.co.uk/pagedef.htm
www.nics.gov.uk/press/env/020115k-env.htm
Numberplate/disk recognition.
I agree that numberplate recognition exists. It relies on the plate being very easily formatted and readable hence the crackdown on variations from the DVLA plate format. (You mean the same tech that can accurately id faces in football crowds gets thrown by a numberplate screw cover in the wrong place?)
I agree that face recognition exists. It doesn't work...in the sense that it IS easily fooled and in everyday use would produce so many false positives that 1 in 10 flyers would have armed police jumping all over them when they entered an airport. Not practical.
I have read a report about the Newham trial (an independent one too!) and it concluded that it didn't work. I do not know of any other but would be EXTREMELY interested if your were to provide an independent link.
My other reasons for doubting the current technology (despite Newham's CC apparent enthusaism) are my peers who work in AI development and image recognition. (including one who was part of a project trying to teach computers to recognise genetalia for censorship purposes...added for amusement rather than weight of argument!) They all say it doesn't work either.
I think stuff is being live tested but currently doesn't work well enough to make me eat that baseball cap just yet.
Happy New Year by the way!
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By Miros, I assueme you mean the Miros division of eTrue - which went bust in August 2002.
The technology has now been aquired by Viisage who, like Miros, base their systems on the MIT Eigenvector AI research from the mid 90's (see Sandy Pentland's profile at MIT Media Lab). I suspect both licenced their code from Facia Reco Inc (MA).
I can assure you this does work, computing requirements are high (64 bit floating point vector multiplication - uugh!), and often achieves 99% plus on authentication (is this really John).
In Identification (who is this?) the ratios are similar but are ranked in order of probability, thus quite good for (say) looking at people boarding aircraft for 'who's most worth a second look' or 'keep a look out for anyone looking like saddam', but not so good for scanning millions of people entering london.
Keep a look out for the results of the Facial Recognition Vendor Test 2002 results (NIST, CESG etc.) due out this month on www.frvt.org
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Wow! We have come a long way from the Kodak Brownie box camera.
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"This software has so far had a 98% success rate, even with deliberate facial disguise."
Unfortunately, this is of no use whatsoever. Due to the small proportion of people who are terrorists, this 98% sounds good, but isn't. Please follow the maths - it's worth it.
Let's assume there are, say 600 active terrorists in the UK, all on a database with accurate pictures, in a population of 60M. If the system was let loose on the whole population, we'd get 588 of the terrorists flagged as questionable (98% of the 600). Then, out of the rest, we'd get 2% wrong, i.e. around 1.2M people. So, we sieve 60M people with the system and get 1.2M people highlighted as possible terrorists, of whom 588 are actuallly terrorists, So, this is hardly a help, is it, as you'd question 2039 innocents for every true terrorist.
Remember, the people talking 98% accuracy are trying to sell the project, not be statistically accurate.
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My sources tell me that, pre-11Sept2001, the Govt. would not have paid to install these cameras as the threat vs security-benefits were not seen to be that great.
However, now that they are there, they will happily take them over if Ken's experiment fails (likely if large numbers of people ignore the charges, and refuse to pay fines).
They may now be used 24/7 rather than just the peak charging hours for security reasons.
The cameras may soon be extended to Docklands, and other vulnerable areas, solely for the security benefit.
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If it's for the country's security, then is it such a bad thing?
HF
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Ignoring the privicy apsect of it, counter terrorist measures should be paid for from general taxation not just motorists.
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Can someone tell me what happens when I find an identical car to mine, copy its number plate and stick it onto my car when I drive into the congestion charge area (having not paid)?
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Yep.
The owner of the identical car has to prove (s)he wasn't there.
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"Can someone tell me what happens when I find an identical car to mine, copy its number plate and stick it onto my car when I drive into the congestion charge area (having not paid)?"
I had exactly this happen to me. I got an NIP for speeding in London when myself and car were in another country. Someone had cloned my car and put my number plate on an identical car that turned out to have been stolen.
On the speeding NIP form I refused to give my alibi and simply stated that they had made an error and they replied saying they would not proceed with the case. At the time I thought that they had misread the VRN. However the cloned car was eventually towed away for a parking offence and the police got involved.
Apparently when the police realise the car has been cloned they record this and it is listed along with stolen cars etc that police should look out for. Of course they normally only get to know about cloning if the cloned car has committed some offence.
There has been considerable speculation about methods huge numbers of motorists will use to avoid the London congestion charge. For example motorists residing inside the zone are to pay a fixed annual charge. If someone cloned the VRN of one of their cars and drove into the zone the computer system would recognise it as an authorised vehicle and take no action. They would need to be careful they didn't get picked up for an offence. However if they cloned a car with the 'knowledge' of the real owner of that VRN, he could warn them if he got an NIP - and that's the time to get your plate changed and clone another VRN.
Even if the system did detect that a VRN had been cloned, there is again considerable speculation about how much effort the Met police will expend tracking down the culprit - especially as they are very likely to be stopping the 'real' car a lot of the time.
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The regulations on the making up of numberplates has been tightened up from 1/1/03, probably partly in response to the expected increase in cloning, you now need proof of ownership etc.
Much easier to go out armed with a screwdriver and nick the plates. The owner will get a new set made up without trouble and you've got a genuine set too!
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This number plate legislation is a waste of time. I know where i could buy the machines to make number plates and any criminal will.
Fake driving licences/Passports/V5's are readily available in most inner city areas so obtaining false number plates is unlikely to scupper criminals.
One suggetion i have heard of to avoid the congestion charging is buying a cheap foreign car and simply not change the plates or where its registered.I bet Ken's 'highwaymen' will be put off when chasing fines from a car registered in Poland ;-)
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www.hondavfrclub.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threa...a
Go to this thread for a bikers story of a cloned plate.
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Who needs a machine? Just go into a car bits retailer/repair outlet (like a fast fit with bells on) and ask for some plates with the number you've scribbled on a piece of scrap. Hey presto, cloned car.
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>>>Who needs a machine? Just go into a car bits retailer/repair outlet (like a fast fit with bells on) and ask for some plates with the number you've scribbled on a piece of scrap. Hey presto, cloned car.<<<
Dan, the new legislation (feb 2003) makes it a legal requirement for these companies to have licence to sell number plates. Anyone who wants a replacement number plate will have to provide personal id (passport/drivers licence/Utility bill) plus proof of ownership - V5 (photocopies will not be accepted).
The licenced seller will have to record all sales so that any number plate can be traced to where it was purchased and who bought it.
IMO it will probably deter some criminals it wont be that difficult to get round. Like i said in a earlier post the machines themselves are available second hand e.t.c...
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So in other words, stock up now?
Always thought it seemed a bit lax...
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7 days away now. I can't wait to see what happens when all the arguments about cloned plates arise. Likewise, what will happen with all the plates which still abound with wacky fonts, wacky character separation, 13's made to look like B's, reflective plates, muddy/obliterated plates (which may have been clean at start of journey), etc. etc.
Oz (as was)
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The aspect that intrigues me is what will happen when people reach the congestion zone and decide that they do not want to pay but will go round.
Watch out for a helluva lot of sudden stops, U turns and suchlike wherever there's a red C on the road.
I wonder how close you have to be to be registered? I can see a lot of vehicles that turn round being fined, even though they never entered the zone.
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Cardew: Interested in your experience re cloned numberplates. Drop us an email at nick.gibbs@btinternet.com if you can. Thanks
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