Image: Flikr/Rockman of Zymergy5th June 2010
Police To Track
People In Muslim Neighbourhoods
Mark Hanson
In recent comments made by Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister, the coalition Government has committed itself to bring in tighter regulation of CCTV cameras, yet there is an additional tool used by police forces across the UK: the automatic number plate recognition camera (ANPR).
The ANPR network gives the police an in-depth view of the movements of people throughout the UK if they use a vehicle. A recent report, featured on The Register website, says that there are more than 10,000 cameras relaying data to a central database run by the National Police Improvement Agency (who also run the National DNA Database) in association with the private limited company ACPO, or Association of Chief Police Officers.
The Information Commissioner has expressed concern over the retention of details of vehicle movements, which are currently held for 2 years and had been subject to a review in which it had been planned to increase the retention period to 5 years. Over 10 million images of number plates, and sometimes pictures of vehicle's occupants, are processed every day, gathered by all but two of England and Wales' police forces. The remaining two also collect images, but do not pass them on to the central database.
In a sign that civil liberties are still under grave threat in the UK, Birmingham has recently installed around 150 cameras under the reasoning that they will help fight anti-social behaviour and drug dealing.
Yet the new cameras, which are all in two predominately Muslim neighbourhoods, were paid for by a grant from the Terrorism and Allied Matters Fund, which is administered by the Association of Chief Police Officers (a private company under no accountability). The grant was to the sum of £3 million, and to be eligible a case must be made for anti-terrorism use.
Police sources said the initiative, code-named Project Champion, is the first of its kind in the UK that seeks to monitor a population seen as "at risk" of extremism.
When concerns were raised by Salma Yaqoob, a member of the Respect party and a local councillor, he was dismissed as being awkward and possibly paranoid.
In the two Muslim neighbourhoods, Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook, the 150 cameras will track the precise movements of anyone who enters the areas. Of these 150 cameras, 40 are classed as “covert”, which means that the public will have no indication that they are being filmed.
Steve Jolly, a local activist leading a campaign to have the cameras removed, is calling on Nick Clegg to intervene: "[He] has made a real point of emphatically drawing attention to the surveillance society and promising to stop unnecessary infringements of privacy," he said. "I think we should hold him to his word, and say, 'Look at what is happening in Birmingham – are you going to allow it to go ahead?'"
