COMMENT | When Penang Smart Parking (PSP) was launched in 2019, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) was never part of the original concept. The idea only emerged in 2024.

Following discussions involving Penang Island city councillors, the system was deployed on the streets of George Town on April 24, 2025.

ANPR uses specially equipped patrol vehicles to scan number plates in real time and facilitate the issuance of digital compounds. Its stated purpose is straightforward: to make enforcement faster, more efficient, and increasingly automated.

But if ANPR had been operating since April 2025, why did it only become a major controversy more than a year later, prompting the state government to suspend it on Aug 8, 2026?

The answer is not that ANPR itself is the problem. It is how the technology is being used.

The question that started it all

The controversy began with...