[Nottingham] Is it theft to be live alive? (Was: Media Centre Linux distro?)

[Jason Irwin]

On 10/05/12 10:09, Camilo Mesias wrote:
> That's what I was thinking of when I said there were enough
> "reminders"... it's not really assuming that everyone is guilty at
> all. With TV licensing there's the assumption that a household must be
> using a TV but with ANPR it's spotting someone that is actually on the
> road when they shouldn't be.
ANPR is used for much more than detecting simple road fund/MOT evasion
and it is a blunt instrument.  The best is probably a traffic cop.  If
they pull a car with no road fund, they tend to find lots of other stuff
too.  Also a traffic cop can apply some intelligence to the situation,
often offering simple advice; something a camera cannot.  Just because
the state has a hammer, does not make us all nails.

> Also it's easy to buy insurance just to cover the point where you buy
> tax (once a year maybe). A realtime check is a far better way to
> verify that road users are legitimately insured.
There are other measures to avoid that issue that do not require a
surveillance society.  You know what happens when you watch people?
They get better at masking what they're up to.  Thus the increasing
surveillance can be counter-productive.

Jason