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Feds Convinced Police To Use License Plate-Scanning Tech At Gun Shows (foxnews.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike quotes the Wall Street Journal:
Federal agents have persuaded police officers to scan license plates to gather information about gun-show customers, government emails show, raising questions about how officials monitor constitutionally protected activity. Emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show agents with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency crafted a plan in 2010 to use license-plate readers -- devices that record the plate numbers of all passing cars -- at gun shows in Southern California, including one in Del Mar, not far from the Mexican border. Agents then compared that information to cars that crossed the border, hoping to find gun smugglers, according to the documents and interviews with law-enforcement officials with knowledge of the operation...
[T]he officials didn't rule out that such surveillance may have happened elsewhere. The agency has no written policy on its use of license-plate readers and could engage in similar surveillance in the future, they said. Jay Stanley, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the gun-show surveillance "highlights the problem with mass collection of data." He said law enforcement can take two entirely legal activities, like buying guns and crossing the border, "and because those two activities in concert fit somebody's idea of a crime, a person becomes inherently suspicious."
[T]he officials didn't rule out that such surveillance may have happened elsewhere. The agency has no written policy on its use of license-plate readers and could engage in similar surveillance in the future, they said. Jay Stanley, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the gun-show surveillance "highlights the problem with mass collection of data." He said law enforcement can take two entirely legal activities, like buying guns and crossing the border, "and because those two activities in concert fit somebody's idea of a crime, a person becomes inherently suspicious."
US law enforcement should work for US interests.
Well they do, the problem is that the current government doesn't work for US interests. This is where I'll remind you that the Obama administration was running guns to Mexico, and them ending back up in the US in the hands of criminals or cartel members illegally in the US.
Om, nomnomnom...
But if you still don't have the energy to use Google, here are some of the founders talking about how they see the matter - as both the federal, and individual state constitutions were being ratified and as they talked with others on the subject. These guys talked specifically and frequently - in correspondence, in the Federalist Papers, and before congress and their state legislatures - in terms that aren't in any way vague. People with an agenda to revise history and strip away your constitutionally protected rights will, of course, pretend they aren't good enough researchers to read what these men had to say both personally and officially. For example:
"If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28, January 10, 1788
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun." - Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops." - Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787
"To disarm the people...[i]s the most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason, referencing advice given to the British Parliament by Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, June 14, 1788
"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to to John Cartwright, 5 June 1824
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
In 1960 I noticed a KKK meeting going on in a field. I parked my car and went to watch the clown show. Men in trench coats were writing down car plate numbers as well as taking pictures of the cars and plates. Oddly for the FBI to be seen doing that is more discouraging to free speech and free association than doing it on the sly. Local folks might have chased the clowns out of the field if they were not frightened to park and get their plates recorded or maybe photos of their faces taken. Watching an event never implies that one approves of an event.