ICE Is About To Start Tracking License Plates Across the US

Presto Vivace shares a report from The Verge: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil libertarians. The source of the data is not named in the contract, but an ICE representative said the data came from Vigilant Solutions, the leading network for license plate recognition data. While it collects few photos itself, Vigilant Solutions has amassed a database of more than 2 billion license plate photos by ingesting data from partners like vehicle repossession agencies and other private groups. ICE agents would be able to query that database in two ways. A historical search would turn up every place a given license plate has been spotted in the last five years, a detailed record of the target's movements. That data could be used to find a given subject's residence or even identify associates if a given car is regularly spotted in a specific parking lot. Presto Vivace adds, "This will not end well."

Comments

Re:Cool

[HanzoSpam]

That sounds like a good way to end up making the license plates.

Re:Missing Option

[sl3xd]

You do leave your home with your face, right?

That's a pretty big clue, all by itself. From there, it's just a matter of combining footage from omnipresent security cameras -- which is really just a matter of effort.

Combining all security camera footage was pretty effective in getting pictures of the suspects and timeline of the Boston Marathon bombing. London's panopticion is a regular feature on /.

First it was "terrorists", then "immigrants". We already have prosecutors subpoenaing Alexa and Google Home for murder trials, and people are willingly putting surveillance devices in their homes.

Hey, Siri, how screwed are we?

Interesting question, sl3xd

Re:Missing Option

[Rick Schumann]

I ride a bike quite a bit too, friend, and I'll tell you this: if and when the day comes that we're all either prohibited (in one way or another, or to one degree or another) from riding bicycles anywhere, or are required to have some sort of gods-be-damned license plate on them so they can track us, then we'll know that it's time for Civil War II to start, because things will have officially Gone Way Too Far, and "government by the people for the people" will no longer have any meaning, we'll be living in a full-on police state and have no rights anymore.

Re:Cool

[currently_awake]

If the police follow you around for 5 years, you would expect they require a warrant. Interesting how using technology to achieve the same result is suposedly legal. This appears designed to bypass judicial oversight.

Re:For the people, by the people, of the people.

[TheGratefulNet]

conservatives love authority. conservatives will keep voting these assholes in because they are 'tough on crime' and that rings with the church goers who simply do what they are told (they are not very smart, generally, and are easily manipulated if done by the right people).

we will never break free of this. the ruling parties know this trick and use it against us *constantly*.

good luck having a representative goverment when the morons will never be able to think for themselves and always vote against their own best interests. EVERY FUCKING TIME.