The government may for the time being continue to scan the license plates of cars to see if the owner has not yet paid fines, or is wanted by the judiciary. Interest group Privacy First demanded in summary proceedings that the investigative method be prohibited, but the court in The Hague rejected that claim.
Since last summer there has been a lot of work to support the automatic scanning of license plates by cameras above the highways. Partly because these cameras would also record occupants. Privacy First initiated summary proceedings, but the judge does not rule on Automatic Number Plate Recognition, abbreviated ANPR. There is no ‘urgent interest’, the judge declared on Wednesday, because the system has been in use since 2019. Therefore, there is no urgent need to make a decision in the short term and the claim has been rejected.
Privacy First believes that ANPR violates the privacy of citizens. The foundation calls the investigative method ‘totally unnecessary, completely disproportionate and, moreover, ineffective’. Incidentally, scanning license plates for investigative purposes has been going on for much longer than it has been since 2019. The specific pain point that Privacy First is concerned about is the scale at which this happens and that it is not about ‘real-time surveillance’. On average, 5 million license plates are scanned and stored per day. A form of ‘disproportionate mass surveillance’, says Privacy First. “What we are concerned with is that all scanned license plates have also been stored for several years. That is millions a day of mainly innocent citizens,” said Vincent Böhre of Privacy First at the beginning of last month. One today.
The Public Prosecution Service says that scanned license plates will be removed immediately if they are not on the search list, unless the information for criminal investigation is longer needed. This is allowed if someone is suspected of a serious crime. The public prosecutor must then give permission for this and the registration number may be kept for a maximum of four weeks.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl