The worrying thing about these cameras also carrying ANPR is that the movements of any individual can be monitored on a soon to be real-time basis – this raises justifiable concerns of an encroaching infringement on civil liberties.
It's very effective in combating more serious crime, though, as I'm sure you'll appreciate. I've been to a couple of presentations by the ANPR manager of a local constabulary on their network and the kind of data mining they can do to combat dangerous criminals. Quite an eye opener.
He's also very defensive about the network and where the information goes. He's not a fan of speed cameras at all because he's got bigger fish to fry and needs the public's support.
The day the network is used for summary speeding convictions, road charging, the data sold to insurance companies or used to beat us up over our carbon footprint is the day the real benefits of the network will evaporate, IMHO.
I fully expect it to happen, however. 
Kevin
I certainly agree that technology has enabled the war on crime much easier to wage, and when I think back to the early days when we had one car (a 2.8 Granada) outfitted with a data terminal for text only comms in 'sensitive' operations, it is plain to see that the lack of readily useable technology had a real impact on how crime – especially serious crime - was tackled.
I have seen a lot of change in my time and now, in the final few months before I collect my pension, I can see that this job (for the non specialist officers) has grown into something far removed from the traditional and into the confrontational and pejorative.
This move is being assisted by the use of technology and it risks breaking the compact between the physical face of policing and the people being policed which, in my view, is a bad thing because if one develops a system where people feel that they can’t make a move without running the risk of coming under the notice of the authorities, those people will develop sentiments which will eventually run contrary to the very necessary relationship between the police and the public – a relationship built and maintained on the exchange of physical interaction between human beings.
We are moving, quite unmistakably, into an authoritarian state, and this technology is assisting the state to develop a means to go far beyond the apparently innocuous reasons for deploying it in the first place.
I am aware of how this data is disseminated and collated and am afraid to say it dismays me.
Technology is necessary in modern policing but the application of it, by certain elements within authority, will ultimately give good cause to those who consider that we now face living in a police state, where privacy will be lost and any transgression noted and dealt with by way of sanction, to believe that they are correct in their assumption.