Here in the UK we also have London's congestion charge.
All around the outskirts of London on all the main arterial roads, there are ANPR cameras tracking number plates to fine you, if you have not paid the £15 charge for entering the city.
A worrying example of ANPR.
I visited my mum one weekend, she lives over 300 miles from where I live on the egde of London.
She had a phone call while I was there from the police. They were asking to speak to me!
They said that they were concerned that there were two cars with the same registration number plate. Could I check that my car was still outside my mums home.
They had stopped another car, not the same make as mine, in London with the same number plate. The police said that the other car had been involved in criminal activity.
I can only assume that they tracked my car over 300 miles with ANPR, checked out who I was, then did a family association check, found my mum's contact details and called to speak to me.
I also assume that they must have already been to my home address and found I was not home.
There are ANPR cameras all over the UK for the purpose of checking insurance, road tax, and wanted vehicles. They are usually much more discreet than speed cameras because they don't jave to make themselves visible, and in fact police forces don't make locations public. My understanding is that the police can keep records of all the vehicles that drove past for up to a year.
At least you were lucky that the criminal masterminds who cloned your car's number plate did not bother to match the make and model, that made it obvious to spot for the police. Otherwise you might have had trouble explaining...
Or they called your mum because she's your mum and top of the list to call? No creepy additional surveillance required there.
They do plenty of creepy surveillance if your vehicle is flagged on the central database (eg for having been near a protest)
https://www.burtoncopeland.com/news/police-are-watching-your...
Also highly likely doing deep analysis of /every/ journey as predictive policing
"We can use ANPR on investigations or we can use it looking forward in a proactive, intelligence way. Things like building up the lifestyle of criminals - where they are going to be at certain times. We seek to link the criminal to the vehicle through intelligence. Vehicles moving on the roads are open to police scrutiny at any time. The Road Traffic Act gives us the right to stop vehicles at any time for any purpose" - Frank Whiteley, Chief Constable of Hertfordshire and Chair of the ACPO ANPR Steering Group" ( source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni... )
Of course when he said "criminals" he meant "criminals and also innocent people"
What list?