Under a new, far-reaching legislative proposal, the Dutch Minister for Security and Justice Ivo Opstelten aims to enhance criminal investigation by introducing a four week storage period of the number plates of all cars through camera surveillance. Current rules dictate that these data have to be deleted within 24 hours. Last year the previous Minister of Justice (Hirsch Ballin) planned to make a similar proposal with a storage period of 10 days. However, the Dutch House of Representatives then declared this topic to be controversial. In his current proposal, Opstelten takes things a few steps further. Already in 2008 the Dutch Data Protection Authority (College Bescherming Persoonsgegevens, CBP) ruled that police forces were not adhering to Dutch privacy rules by storing number plates for a greater period than was legally permitted. According to the CBP, all number plates that are not suspect (so-called ‘no-hits’) are to be removed from relevant databases immediately. Opstelten’s plan to also store the number plates of unsuspected citizens for four weeks directly flies in the face of this.  

Listen to what Privacy First had to say (in Dutch) about this on Radio 2 (NCRV, Knooppunt Kranenbarg, 11 January 2011):



Read more about Opstelten's plans in Computerworld , Tweakers  and on the weblog of SOLV.