Bedford Driving Lessons

The average motorist has the details of 200 of their journeys stored on the Government’s controversial vehicle surveillance database, new figures have shown. The records, which include photographs of private cars, can be secretly handed by ministers to the governments of other European countries or the United States. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act disclosed that 7.6 billion entries are currently stored on the police automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) database. The database is constantly fed pictures and details of journeys by Britain’s 38 million motorists as they drive past thousands of cameras across the country. It was also disclosed that the records can be stored “for as long as is operationally necessary”. It was previously thought most were destroyed after a month and none was kept for more than five years. Civil liberties campaigners last night called for the system to be scaled back and for a one-month limit on storing records. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it was “in discussions” with chief police officers over reducing the limit. However Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, who were sharply critical of the system before joining the Coalition government, declined to comment. ANPR was originally developed in the 1990s to monitor traffic and congestion charging. However under the Labour government it was gradually adapted for policing and anti-terrorism surveillance. More