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Crakka
Joined: 07 Aug 2008
Posts: 1853
Location: The Wild West
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 10:20 pm Post Subject: Unmarked Police "Camera Car" |
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Anyone else seen this around? Was just passed these photos. This was parked at the top of the hill on Border Road, Henderson just after midday sometime on Tuesday 5 July 2011. At the bottom of the hill was a large contingent of police with road cones out doing vehicle checks. Further on up the road at the junction of Forest Hill & Parr's Cross Roads was another bunch of police with cones out and a booze bus parked on the side of the road. Back in Glen Eden around the same time was some cops stopping people on West Coast Road. It was a pretty heavy presence by all accounts. It appeared they were targetting commercial vehicles by observations made so it could've been linked to this truck driver thing they were doing but apparently it looked possibly a little more than that given the presence of this unmarked white vehicle with the weird looking cameras on board.
Is this vehicle checking licence plates (cameras seem to be aimed low) or something else? It had heavily tinted windows, a bunch of little aerials on top and from the second shot it looks like you can just make out a cop's hi-vis jacket or vest inside. Let us know if you know anything about it...
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Majortom
Joined: 15 Aug 2009
Posts: 29
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| Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 12:05 pm Post Subject: |
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| It's not very covert! The 'cameras' mounted on the roof are most certainly angled to capture oncoming traffic in both directions. The aerials are curious. Me thinks this is no ordinary speed camera van...... |
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Crakka
Joined: 07 Aug 2008
Posts: 1853
Location: The Wild West
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| Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 7:28 pm Post Subject: |
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| Majortom wrote: | | The 'cameras' mounted on the roof are most certainly angled to capture oncoming traffic in both directions. |
Yeah that's what got me thinking. If it was simply a "speed" camera setup used in conjunction with a road block further down/up the road then why have it facing both ways? There's obviously communication between this vehicle with it's "all-scanning" cameras and somewhere else hence all the aerials - that could be either police at a nearby road stop or a central database or probably both.
Licence plate cameras are being used overseas so there's no reason why they're not here. One could assume that anybody scanned by a licence plate camera who's not registered would be filtered out very quickly and stopped further on down the road, or worse, at some stage soon just sent a ticket in the mail for driving/allowing to be driven an unregistered vehicle.
Solution? Is that clear sticker for your licence plate that makes it unreadable still available anywhere? Is it still legal or did they change the law to get rid of that "protection"? Actually I just did a quick search while I was typing and heaps of sites came up with all kinds of measures for blocking licence plate readers! Go check 8) This one looks interesting - http://loover.com/
The all-seeing eye(s) is everywhere! :shock: |
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Crakka
Joined: 07 Aug 2008
Posts: 1853
Location: The Wild West
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| Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 7:30 pm Post Subject: |
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| And I wasn't suggesting doing anything "illegal" above - just suggesting that if you've done nothing "wrong" then you have every right to protect your privacy!!! |
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Majortom
Joined: 15 Aug 2009
Posts: 29
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 10:50 am Post Subject: |
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| What bothers me the most is that all this expensive technology is being deployed just to catch a few people without current WOFs or Regos and/or driving at 5km over the speed limit. I realise it's revenue gathering but it just seems like an extravagant, over the top waste of money and resources. The cost of a new 'surveillance' van and all of it's hi tech fittings and equipment would probably exceed the annual salary of three MOT traffic cops (the original Black and White patrol car and bike cops). I'd much rather see 'real' traffic cops on the streets applying 'human' common sense and judgment with regads to minor traffic infringements than these roadside electronic tax collectors! |
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steve clougher
Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 976
Location: north-east victoria
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steve clougher
Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 976
Location: north-east victoria
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 1:03 pm Post Subject: |
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This'll go real quiet real soon, betcha boots
If they can scratch energy like that, how easy will it be to scavenge the data riding on it? |
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Crakka
Joined: 07 Aug 2008
Posts: 1853
Location: The Wild West
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 1:34 pm Post Subject: |
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| Majortom wrote: | | I'd much rather see 'real' traffic cops on the streets applying 'human' common sense and judgment with regads to minor traffic infringements than these roadside electronic tax collectors! |
Nail on the head, well said! Unfortunately technology is being applied to EVERYTHING in a very blanket way these days as if high-tech is the superior answer to everything. We know for a fact IT IS NOT!!! But it very obviously closes loopholes in "legal" revenue collection & suits corporate interests and that's all that matters right? :roll:
| steve clougher wrote: | | Yeah, here comes the nano-government |
Interesting but all I'm reading really is further justification for more & more electromagnetic pollution in our environment. You can be sure some fake greenie troll will soon be extolling the virtues of this because it'll save energy and cut down CO2 emissions due to less reliance on fossil fuels, etc, etc, whinge, whinge, moan, moan! FA-A-A-A-A-A-ART!  |
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Crakka
Joined: 07 Aug 2008
Posts: 1853
Location: The Wild West
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 1:35 pm Post Subject: |
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| steve clougher wrote: | This'll go real quiet real soon, betcha boots
If they can scratch energy like that, how easy will it be to scavenge the data riding on it? |
Yep :wink:
Btw steve, that your 666th post :twisted: |
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Crakka
Joined: 07 Aug 2008
Posts: 1853
Location: The Wild West
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 8:31 pm Post Subject: |
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Just from doing a quick search it would appear this is almost certainly an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) or Licence Plate Recognition (LPR) equipped vehicle judging by the cameras it's using. Looks like the trials are long gone and it's in full use on our roads now.
Haven't had time to look around too much but go do a NZ search using those terms and you'll see heaps of local entries about the technology and local firms making it available now for commercial customers.
This from a Hawkes Bay Today news article dated 31 Jan 2011 -
Number plate reading camera a success - police
Wellington police say a number plate reading camera has successfully discovered stolen vehicles and identified "vehicles of interest".
A van carries the camera, which can photograph every passing vehicle - up to 3000 images an hour, or nearly one a second. It can read the number plate and record the location, date, time and sometimes images of the driver and passengers.
A pilot project runs number plates through a specialised computer programme and matches them against a police database using automated number plate recognition (ANPR) technology.
The first trial camera was in use in Auckland. People may have seen a van driving around streets in Hawke's Bay, Wairarapa, Kapiti, Mana and the Hutt Valley since August last year, Senior Sergeant Simon Feltham of Wellington police said.
"This new technology gives police a greater ability to locate any vehicles of interest, from stolen vehicles to vehicles being driven by a disqualified driver."
ANPR is already used in the United States and parts of Australia, but caused anger in Britain where the network logged more than 10 million vehicles a day - storing more than seven billion images for up to five years.
National road policing manager Superintendent Paula Rose last year said most local information was only kept for a few days to a few weeks.
"What we are looking at is people who have warrants out for their arrest, stolen vehicles, vehicles that have been complained of because of some very major event."
Riiiiiight...
Here are some local companies supplying ANPR technology -
http://www.corporatecam.co.nz/ANPR.html
http://www.directcontrol.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=71&Itemid=140
http://hsmsecurity.co.nz/commercial |
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steve clougher
Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 976
Location: north-east victoria
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 11:37 pm Post Subject: |
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Than x Crakka u bastard
This is 667 just to get off the evil number
Didn't I post something once that proved the real evil number to be 633 or something? |
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Niksta
Joined: 07 Mar 2007
Posts: 306
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| Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2011 1:08 pm Post Subject: |
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| Looks like the Police State party is here bring a "plate" :lol: |
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Crakka
Joined: 07 Aug 2008
Posts: 1853
Location: The Wild West
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 12:50 am Post Subject: |
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| steve clougher wrote: | | Than x Crakka u bastard... |
I have 2 parents I assure you :P But you're welcome mate :-) :wink:
| Niksta wrote: | | Looks like the Police State party is here bring a "plate" :lol: |
HAHAHA! You're a funny bastard :mrgreen: :thumbsup
Here's my plate -
Or maybe it's this one 8)
On the other hand, here's one I spied on a cop car the other day (gotta love the "Fraternal Order Of Police" bit right?) :|
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