Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was quick out of the blocks to join the condemnation of the Metropolitan Police following the publication of Louise Casey’s report. He even slapped down Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley for daring to question Casey’s assertion that the Met was ‘institutionally misogynistic, racist and homophobic’.
So does that mean that Khan will now revisit his decision to share with the Met data from hundreds of cameras set up to police his Ultra Low Emissions Zone (Ulez)? Alas, it seems not.
If we are going to use mass surveillance in this way, ought it not to be part of the public debate?
The Data Protection Impact Assessment carried out by TfL for the Ulez expansion due to come into force in August includes provision for the police to be granted access to the network for ‘law-enforcement or policing purposes’. In other words, to sum up Khan’s position one could, not unreasonably, write the headline: London mayor agrees to share pictures of our cars with misogynists, racists and homophobes.
The cameras, the impact assessment goes onto say, are not designed to capture faces of the occupants of vehicles (although it doesn’t say they won’t inadvertently capture this data), only the number plates, which can be read via automatic number plate reading (ANPR) technology. What
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