Criminals' cars to be tracked by cameras

Thousands of registered sex offenders and violent criminals freed from prison will be watched under the new surveillance measure aimed at preventing and detecting abductions, assaults and murders.

The crackdown is an attempt to ensure paedophiles do not stray into areas from which they may be banned. It will also flag up to officers whether a known criminal is in a particular area when a crime is reported.

But critics last night expressed concerns about the growing use of surveillance technology.

The move is being rolled out through the the 8m Scottish Intelligence Database - a computer system which went live last October, linking all Scotland’s police forces.

This year, a register of violent and sex offenders will be added to the database to allow forces to monitor individuals freed from prison.

Hundreds of road cameras and mobile police cameras will be programmed to recognise certain car number plates registered to or used by certain sex or violent offenders equipped with automatic number plate recognition technology.

Detective Superintendent Ian McCandlish, the project manager, insisted that the move would step up public safety. He said:

"We can access full intelligence on individuals with the database.

"This means that if a sex offender travels into a particular area in a car he is known to use, his details will be clearly recognised. For the first time we will be able to proactively manage those individuals."

But a spokesman for the UK civil liberties monitor, Statewatch, said:

"This is part of the whole range of information being gathered about individuals for which accountability is totally lacking.

"This move to give the authorities more and more power is unprecedented from collecting DNA samples to CCTV monitoring. The problem with tracking certain individuals is that the system could easily be extended to other groups."