Over recent years, a network of 18,000 state-of-the-art police surveillance cameras has sprung up on Britain’s highways.
Privacy campaigners complain the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system is too intrusive, but senior officers insist it is invaluable in preventing and solving serious crimes.
Police can track offenders in real time as they flee a crime scene or run a number plate through a database to identify wanted or suspicious cars, vans or motorbikes.
This should be a dream for law enforcement. But as a Daily Mail investigation today reveals, the technology is being grievously undermined by a vehicle registration regime wide open to exploitation.
Unscrupulous businesses are selling rogue motorists ‘ghost plates’ which cannot be read by ANPR cameras – meaning wrongdoers can easily avoid detection.
Suppliers can use various methods to obscure number plates. While appearing normal to the human eye, raised 3D or 4D lettering or reflective plastic film can render a plate invisible to cameras. Even though it is illegal to use them on the roads, an estimated one in 15 plates is modified.
Some are bought by motorists determined to avoid costly congestion zone charges or drop-off fees at airports. More troublingly, they have been used by crime syndicates, drug traffickers and grooming gangs. Terrorists could also take advantage to give security services the slip.
Part of the problem is that the market is hopelessly unregulated. Having paid a fee of just £40, a staggering 34,000 number plate sellers are registered with the DVLA. Yet the quango has insufficient staff to weed out dodgy traders.
Different sets of ghost plates which although appearing to be normal in daylight, deflect infra-red light, leaving them invisible to many speed cameras (file photo)
Unscrupulous businesses are selling rogue motorists ‘ghost plates’ which cannot be read by ANPR cameras – meaning wrongdoers can easily avoid detection (file photo)
So what can be done? For a start, 3D and 4D number plates should be banned.
Tougher penalties must be introduced for using or selling ‘ghost plates’. The DVLA could beef up enforcement and make it harder to become a seller.
Finally, given how integral number plates are to road safety, law and order, and national security, the Government should allow only trusted and scrupulously-vetted companies to produce them.
For obvious reasons, we wouldn’t let any Tom, Dick or Harry produce passports or driving licences. Why should registration plates be any different?
Volodymyr Zelensky will meet the US President tomorrow amid hopes peace can be achieved in Ukraine before the New Year (file photo)
A chance for peace?
Following constructive talks with Donald Trump’s envoys on Christmas Day, Volodymyr Zelensky will meet the US President tomorrow amid hopes peace can be achieved in Ukraine before the New Year.
The Ukrainian president suggests creating a demilitarised zone in Donbas, with both Ukraine and Russia withdrawing troops. He also seeks US security guarantees.
How Mr Trump will react is anyone’s guess. It normally depends on how he feels – or who he last spoke to. In his heart, he just wants a deal.
The question is, can Mr Trump be persuaded that Mr Zelensky is willing to broker a just peace – and that Vladimir Putin has no intention of negotiating a deal?
Our sympathies to public sector workers at the Pensions Regulator, who are feeling ‘fatigued’ due to marking too many diversity days. At the last count, the quango had a gruelling 225 events on the calendar – including the pagan harvest of Lughnasadh and a ‘piers and queers history walk’. Fearful of ‘oversaturation’, woke bosses are whittling this virtue-signalling down to three events a month. Perhaps staff will now have time to concentrate on their actual jobs – protecting our nest eggs.
