Revealed: Government has 472 CCTV pictures for every car in Britain in archive - that grows by 26 MILLION pictures every day

Spy: 8,000 hidden cameras like this one photograph the cars on Britain's roads 26 million times every day

 Government has an archive of 17 billion pictures of vehicles discretely photographed at the roadside by hidden cameras every single day, it was revealed today.
That works out as an average of 472 pictures for each of the 36 million cars, lorries and vans on Britain's roads.
There are 8,000 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras hidden on streets across the country which are used in the battle against crime.
However, privacy campaigners have voiced concerns about the vast database of images which is thought to be the biggest of its kind in the world.
Up to 26 million new pictures of cars are taken every day and each one is stored for two years before being deleted, the Guardian reported.
The archive is expected to balloon in size over the next five years as more fixed and portable cameras are installed across the country.
It is thought that by 2018, between 50 million and 75 million pictures of vehicles will be taken every day.
The network of cameras is already so extensive that it allows police forces to track where vehicles have gone every single day.
Pictures can be checked against the Police National Computer and used by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in the battle against crime.
The first cameras were installed in Britain on the M1 in 1984 to spot stolen vehicles.
By 2005, the number of cameras had increased to 2,000 and there are now more than 8,000.
As well as fixed cameras, police forces use mobile units - with more than 100 in London alone.
Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, said the technology is being secretly rolled out without the public's knowledge.
'ANPR is a classic example of a very intrusive technology being rolled out with zero public debate.

Tracked: The Government archive of 17 billion images works out as nearly 500 pictures of every one of the 36 million cars on Britain's roads

'The public hasn't been given even the most basic information about what information is being recorded, how long it is kept or who is able to access it.
'When you consider the system allows every journey to be tracked, down to the second, and for someone to search through the entire log of when your car was scanned and where, it is without doubt an extremely intrusive system.
'How many people would have said yes if they had been asked to install a device on their car so the police could monitor their journeys? Yet this is exactly what ANPR technology allows.

Secret camera: More Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras are expected to be rolled out over the next five years

'It is a total failure of law and oversight if this massive yet secretive expansion of ANPR systems is legal.'
Julian Blazeby, from the Association of Chief Police Officers, told the Guardian that ANPR cameras had become 'one of the jewels of modern policing'.
'It is always a challenge for us, balancing the rights of individuals with preventing and detecting crime,' he said.
'However, we want to be as transparent as possible and perhaps in the past we have not been as open as we could have been.
'We want to reassure the public we are doing everything we can to prevent the misuse of the systems, with national standards and guidelines in place.'
Police forces want to share the information harvested by the cameras with countries across Europe.
A spokesman for the Home Office said: 'ANPR is a vital tool and we support its use where it is legitimate and proportionate.
'We have created a new, independent post of surveillance camera commissioner to help oversee this.
'These cameras may only be located where there is an identified need to detect, deter, and disrupt criminality. Any new ANPR camera deployment will also require a privacy impact assessment.'