jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) (02/01/90)
ngc@chanel.UUCP (Chris Ng) wrote: > zotog@sersun0.essex.ac.uk (Zotos G) writes: >> In UK they use a system (detector, presumably a sort of receiver) to detect >> a non-licence TV household. [ electronic details omitted ] > How do they know the TV household is a non-licenced one? The TV licencing authority has a database listing everyone who's paid their licence fee. They match this against whatever records they can find about people. If they discover you exist and don't have a licence, they will send you warning letters, or even send an inspector round, on the presumption that you have a TV unless you can prove otherwise. Electronic detection doesn't play a major role; most of it's bluff and intimidation. I suspect most of the names come from the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Centre in Swansea, the biggest database of personal information in the UK (much used by the police for purposes having nothing to do with motor vehicles). As I've never had a car or driving licence in the UK, I was ignored by the TV licence inspectorate until last year. After getting registered for the poll tax, I got two threatening letters from them within weeks (no, I've never had a TV). Other circumstantial evidence makes it virtually certain that's where they found out about me. The poll tax registrar presumably passed on that information as part of a swap with either the licence inspectorate or the DVLC. To get people registered for the poll tax, every imaginable source was used - employers' personnel records, health board files, student rolls at colleges, the lot. I doubt if it was coincidence that the introduction of the poll tax coincided with the biggest swoop on licence-dodgers for years. For more information about government databanks in the UK, see Duncan Campbell and Steve Connor: "On the Record: surveillance, computers and privacy - the inside story", Michael Joseph, London, 1986, ISBN 0 7181 2576 2. It predates the poll tax; an update is badly needed. -- Jack Campin * Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, SCOTLAND. 041 339 8855 x6044 wk 041 556 1878 ho INTERNET: jack%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk USENET: jack@glasgow.uucp JANET: jack@uk.ac.glasgow.cs PLINGnet: ...mcvax!ukc!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!jack