Safe Speed Forums

A secret 'Big Brother' operation is allowing officials to pinpoint the exact location of thousands of vehicles with satellite navigation systems.

The controversial scheme is built into the small print of a contract between the Department for Transport and the satnav company Trafficmaster.

As for users of SmartNav today, they can relax a little; but only a little. The bulk data sold to the DfT isn't used to detect crime. You can break the speed limit, and your SmartNav gear will tell the DfT, but for now all they'll do is maybe put a speed camera in locations where a lot of people speed. They won't come after you personally.

"We have no interest in knowing where people are travelling to and from," a spokesman told the Mail.

That said, if a copper or a spook is investigating you and he notices that your car has SmartNav, he can - probably without a warrant from a judge or a politician - get full details of your movements from the DfT, who get them automatically from TrafficMaster. If the Mail has its details right, the location slugs are identifiable by unique vehicle number, so all the watchers need is one known time and location to kick off with. The plod or spy could possibly track you anyway in a major case by having your car bugged or followed, but it might be a bit galling to pay his bills for him and remove his oversight procedures.

In November 2006 the Commission called on Member States that had not signed the eCall Memorandum by then (see IP/06/1720), to reinforce their efforts and to mobilise all stakeholders to make eCall a reality sooner rather than later. Industry was also asked to renew its commitment to eCall and to set 2010 as the target date for fitting eCall devices to all new cars in Europe.

Trafficmaster is providing hardware in the form of smart-nav that can be used for road priicng, pay as you go insurance etc. But fitment is optional based on customer needs.

Seems to me they’re bringing in satellite tracking by the back door. All they have to do is ensure any newly manufactured cars are fitted with satellite navigation which they can track and they’ll be able to monitor everyone.

Perhaps they should rename this product the SpyNav.

It'll be killed dead if everyone refuses to buy a product that can report movement & location.

Trafficmaster is a commercial company & if they think they'll lose business they'll soon renege on the DfT deal.

The UK company Trafficmaster has used ANPR since 1998 to estimate average traffic speeds on non-motorway roads without the results being skewed by local fluctuations caused by traffic lights and similar. The company now operates a network of over 4000 ANPR cameras

The little blue boxes at the side of the road and on bridges that look a bit like speed cameras are also Trafficmaster units. They read number plates to track traffic and work our where congestion is. This means that EVERY car that goes through the network is tracked.

.... it is (or at least was) designed not to store data that could be used for tracking - IIRC each camera records an extract of the registration rather than the whole thing.

Exactly right. A 'vehicle ID is derived 'on the spot' by each camera by taking the middle four digits of the numberplate. No camera is permitted to transmit a full numberplate under perfectly sensible and necessary rules defined by the government of the day in about 1993.

But the middle four digits provide a good match to evaluate speed of traffic on a segment between cameras. Reasonable privacy is ensured.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmtran/692/692w1e35.htm

I guess the notifications that the cameras are trafficmaster and not speed cams can be removed then ?

6. Use of Trafficmaster "blue pole" traffic monitoring network as part of an enforcement system.