New surveillance systems being brought into force in Manchester aim to log every vehicle entering the city centre.
Using CCTV, the police system will log both the license plate and colour of all vehicles entering the Northern city.
Details will be logged for five years in an effort to combat terrorism, crime and car theft, the BBC reports.
However, civil liberties groups have expressed their concern about the system, which logs more than 600,000 vehicles every day.
James Welch, legal director of Liberty, told the BBC: "We have no problem with its use to locate vehicles whose owners police firmly suspect of having committed an offence."
But, he added, the system should not be used as a tool of mass surveillance or to target people based on hunches.
Elsewhere in the UK, Portsmouth has begun trialling surveillance software that tracks mobile phone signals to identify shopping habits of consumers in the city centre.
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