It seems like something straight out of Enemy of the State, but a British invention designed to fight terrorism has the potential to revolutionize some aspects of law enforcement. Platescan is an Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) technology that can read in license plate numbers of cars driving up to 110 MPH. It can then run those plates through any number of available databases and flag the operator if something comes up. The speed of the system is also quite impressive. At up to 4 scans per second, the system can process up to 14,400 plates per hour.

The technology is currently in use in California in both Los Angeles and Sacramento. It is mainly being used to catch car thieves, but there are many other possibilities for this system. A network of these cameras could be set up along all the major freeways to help supplement the current Amber Alert System. These same cameras could then also be looking for vehicles involved in crimes and even making sure that insurance and registration are kept up to date.

The system uses a “neural network” technology to recognize the patterns of letters, which the company’s website claims has a distinct advantage over the competition’s OCR solutions. As computer power increases, I wonder if the system might be able to recognize patterns beyond just license plates. It seems far fetched, but it may some day be able to look out for a red Honda Civic with a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker. Now that is scary!

UPDATE: The future is now… See what is going on in the UK right now.

Learn more here: http://www.platescan.com