The town where EVERY car is tracked by police cameras

A sleepy Home Counties market town has become the first in Britain to have every car passing through it tracked by police cameras. Royston, in Hertfordshire, has had a set of police cameras installed on every road leading in and out of it, recording the numberplate of every vehicle that passes them. The automatic number-plate recognition system will check the plates against a variety of databases, studying them for links to crimes, and insurance and tax records, and alerting police accordingly. There were just seven incidents of vehicle crime in the town last month, and residents believe the unmarked cameras are an invasion of their privacy. The system, due to be switched on in the next few days, also allows police to compile 'hotlists' of vehicles that they are interested in and which will be flagged up when the ANPR system Details of the cars movements will stay on police records for two years, or five if the car is connected to a crime, the Guardian reported...more