Spying On Garbage

Post From Nov 26, 2006:

Now there are spy cameras at the UK's rubbish dumps:

Spy cameras are being installed at household rubbish dumps to check what residents are throwing away and to fine those breaking recycling rules.

The sophisticated CCTV systems are capable of reading and storing car number plates to identify who is using the dump, how often, and what they are disposing of.

The Mail on Sunday has already exposed the electronic 'bugs' secretly planted in hundreds of thousands of household wheelie bins.

Now sophisticated internet-controlled cameras are being installed at waste sites across the country. Officially they are to improve security, but council chiefs admit they will also monitor who is visiting the tips.

Several councils also say they will use camera evidence to mount prosecutions - raising fears more householders will be taken to court over what they throw away. In Hertfordshire about 30 cameras have been installed at dumps, allowing council officials to check vehicle registration plates.

Cameras have been imposed after the Government last year introduced a penalty of £150 a tonne on local authorities that dump too much waste in landfill sites.

and someone with a brain over there said this...

Last night, Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said: "CCTV should only be used to protect high security installations - not to monitor a dump.

"This whole area is very poorly regulated. When you install an automatic number plate recognition system you are tracking people's movements.

"You need proper justification before you track people. I don't see how it is proportionate to use that kind of surveillance in the context of a recycling centre."