The United Kingdom may claim to have given the world the modern democracy, but we can only hope that nations do not learn or take advice from the English any more. A number plate recognition system is now to be tied up with those cameras that London is already famous for. Movements of vehicles will then be recorded and stored for upto 5 years.

The system works by using government and privately-owned closed-circuit cameras to read number plates and then send the data into the central database, where it can be used for surveillance purposes. When complete, the system will record over 50 million license plate locations each day.

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