Several police forces are breaking privacy laws by keeping lists of car number plates using certain roads for longer than permitted, the Dutch privacy watchdog CBP said on Thursday.
Police are allowed to use automatic recognition systems to spot car number plates which match people with criminal connections. But they are supposed to destroy details of the rest. However, the police in both the Rotterdam and IJsselland regions keep a list of all cars using certain roads for up to three months, the watchdog said.
‘This means every driver is being treated as a possible suspect,’ the CBP’s acting chairwoman Jannette Beuving told news agency ANP.
Police records
‘A large number of ordinary citizens are being placed in police records even though they have done nothing wrong… this is a major infringement of privacy and of the rights of ordinary people.’
In total, 23 out of 26 police forces use an automatic number plate registration system. Rotterdam, for example, records the number plate of every car using five roads on the outskirts of the city. IJsselland records every car using the A28 and A50 near Zwolle.
One of the main objections to the government’s plans to introduce a kilometer tax on motoring is the privacy aspect. The government has assured opponents of the tax that the GPS monitoring system will only register the distance, not when and where cars had traveled.
