Blurs

For decades, a car's number plate was little more than an identifier. Police could photograph it. A camera could record it. An officer could check it against a database. But what if a computer could reconstruct where your car has been, who it may have travelled alongside, and the places it repeatedly visits — without you ever being suspected of a crime? That possibility is becoming increasingly real. A new generation of artificial intelligence is transforming automated number-plate recognition from a system that finds specific vehicles into something potentially much broader: a searchable map of vehicle movements. And one of the most controversial examples is being developed by US surveillance technology company Flock Safety. From reading plates to understanding patterns Traditional automatic licence plate recognition, or ALPR, is relatively straightforward. A camera sees a vehicle. The system reads its registration number. The time and location are recorded. Police can then search...