The national police discovered last year that the longer storage of license plate photos can greatly help in the detection of suspects.
There are around 300 cameras with Automatic Number Plate Recognition scattered across the country’s roads. According to the national police, these ANPR cameras recorded an average of approximately 135 million passing license plates every month. Since last year, it has been permitted to keep ANPR license plate registrations over a period of 28 days, so that the police can check, if necessary, which license plates have been found at which locations. This should help with the detection of vehicles and / or persons who may have been involved in criminal offenses.
The police now report that this longer retention period last year has proven useful in tracing suspects. License plate data were requested about 1,100 times and that helped ‘in several cases’ with faster detection. For example, in a kidnapping case, the location of a suspect was quickly discovered. Illegal use of license plates has also been demonstrated when, for example, two different cars with the same license number appeared.
Privacy
The retention time of 28 days remains in force for at least two years. At that time, according to the police, further research is being done into the privacy and ethical aspects that are involved. The WODC (Scientific Research and Documentation Center) tests the ‘efficiency and care with which the police deal with this’. The license plate registrations are currently encrypted, so that the license plates cannot be read in the event of a potential leak to malicious parties. The occupants of the vehicles have also been made unrecognizable. 120 police officers are currently authorized to consult the ANPR database.