You might have already seen them driving around: scan cars. A replacement of human parking attendants. With Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), they drive around the city and find cars that have not paid parking fees. When a car hasn’t, a fine is ‘automatically’ sent to the owners’ house (sigmax.nl, n.d.).
In Rotterdam, these scan cars it has already proven to be a very profitable solution, an increase of 86% in the number of fines between 2014 (before scan cars) and 2016. Since 2016, they have tripled the amount of cars driving around, so this number has most likely significantly increased since then (ad.nl, 2019).
Nieuwsuur (2019) reported something very interesting about these scan cars last Sunday (22-09-2019). While there were already privacy concerns when the first cars started driving around, we could live with it because the car was only reading license plates. Now municipalities wants to start using the car for more than just ANPR. Amsterdam wants to start looking for stolen cars and Utrecht wants to start fighting the enormous amount of litter and bicycle wrecks. In the range of possibilities there is also fighting graffiti crime and recognizing public disturbance (fights). Guess the other country that already does this: China.
Looking for stolen cars is not necessarily creating big privacy concerns, the privacy concern here is that we are slowly seeing an increase in what the scan cars are allowed to do. This is what we see time and time again. What is next? Perhaps scan cars can do facial recognition to look for people with a warrant out for their arrest, but they’ll also search for missing people so it would be ‘fine’.
Do we really want to become a country similar to 1984? Similar to Person of Interest? Similar to China’s Big Brother system? I’m not too worried now, but will be in the future.
Sources:
- https://www.ad.nl/auto/scanwagens-als-boetefuik-spekken-gemeentekas-met-miljoenen~aa0f4b9c/
- https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2302813-opsporingsdiensten-ontdekken-nieuw-wapen-de-scanauto.html
- https://www.sigmax.nl/en/solution/scan-car/
Hi Sander,
Interesting article! I agree that scan cars can be highly efficient. Using the scan cars to identify stolen cars seems like a great solution, considering the amount of license plates the scan cars can scan while driving around. However, it might happen to be difficult to use the scan cars in the search for people, as this is against the European privacy legislation that has been enforced since 25 May 2018. The privacy legislation implies that there are certain rules for the automated processing carried out on personal data. As China’s privacy legislation is lacking, China is able to employ facial recognition for various purposes.
Thanks for sharing this post, the reason I got interested in reading this post is because the picture of the scan car reminded me of the cars I see driving to my street every day. I have always wandered when they would give their camera’s a wider purpose then just finding cars which have not paid for their parking ticket. Walking past a car with that much camera’s mounted on it surely feels a bit watched. The new purposes described in your post, stolen cars and bicycle wrecks, all seem legit to me and do not give me privacy concerns. However, I do think that we are creating a camera infrastructure in which slowly everyone could always be located and monitored. If power will ever fall into wrong hands, this infrastructure will definitely help in controlling people. For me, this brings up the question of do we think power will not fall into wrong hands or shouldn’t we proceed in laying this infrastructure. I have not decided on the answer for myself yet.
Hey Sander,
I really enjoyed reading your interesting post! I agree with you that we should maintain a skeptical attitude towards all the possible features that could be integrated in these scan cars. At first, relatively small functions will get added on top of the ANPR. Such as your example where scan cars in Amsterdam are as well able to search for stolen cars. As these are relatively small enhancements where mostly only the positive outcomes are highlighted, people often do not see the potential danger in these added functionalities. This gradual increase of what scan cars are allowed to do, which taps into people’s unawareness that it could eventually concerns their privacy, is according to me one of the biggest dangers that we should overcome. I believe that we should continue to discuss the development of these scan cars openly and that we should highlight to what extent the risks could grow in the future. As people get more informed about the possible (future) side effects, public opinions and discussions gain a greater power in influencing the strict commitments that are made regarding privacy concerns.
Thank you for the interesting blog. I have been seeing these scanning cars quite a lot of times but I couldn’t image they are also using for recognizing stolen cars or even face recognition. I think that is a brilliant idea and it will contribute a lot to identify criminal events. So basically, they will be used as both scan cars to check parking and police officers going on patrol. There will be definitely privacy concerns in the future if more functions they are performing. However, I think it’s a good start and during the future development people will figure out how the privacy will be protected. Actually I have some other concerns about the parking check. It is not mentions that what if I stopped my car temporarily to pick someone up. Is it also counting into a fine? Or I have to stop my car temporarily due to emergency. Would the scan cars recognize all the situations to avoid incorrect judgement? I think currently it’s important for them to make the examinations correct. Otherwise it’s causing inconvenience to people.