Police will soon rely on tougher tools to monitor traffic as the trial use of new license plate scanners begins in the northern city of Oulu. Sponsored by Finland’s major insurance companies, the device will soon be installed in patrol cars around the country.
“Police officers currently have to enter license plate numbers manually into their system to see if there is anything they should be aware of about the car or its driver. This new device will scan all of the license plates in the immediate area and instantly alert them if there is reason to stop a certain vehicle,” explains senior officer Timo Vihervaara.
“The idea is to use a normal video camera to capture an image. When the image shows a license plate, the computer identifies it, compares it with the police register, and informs the officers if the car has missed its yearly inspection, if vehicle taxes haven’t been paid or if it has possibly been stolen.”
Police departments expressed enthusiasm about the device years ago, but money could not be found for the project. Now several insurance companies have pitched in to contribute a 140,000 euro donation.
“We donated the money to secure the first 100 devices,” says Jukka Kinnunen, chair of the Finnish Motor Insurers’ Centre board.
Insurance companies hope to use the devices to cash in on unpaid premiums payments and prevent accidents. The companies estimate that reckless drivers cost them a total of 15 million euros each year. Inspector Heikki Ihalainen of the Police Board says the donation does not give the insurance companies any kind of special position, as the police are also funding the project themselves.
“There’s nothing to worry about, as long as we make it clear what the situation is. As long as the police are working in a transparent and straightforward manner, there will be no problems with the funding in terms of us being somehow beholden,” he says.
The devices have already been judged not to put citizen’s data security at risk. Ihalainen says only data leading to a police action of some kind will be stored.
“Everything else is removed from the database completely. The only problem would be if we were using information we weren’t supposed to be using, but this possibility does not exist,” he insists.
Source: YLE
http://yle.fi/uutiset/license_plate_scanning_begins_in_oulu/7055138