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ACLU Sues ICE For License Plate Reader Contracts, Records (sfgate.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGate: The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for records about the agency's use of license plate reader technology, after ICE apparently failed to turn over records following multiple requests. In December, ICE purchased access to two databases of ALPR data, the complaint reads. One of those databases is managed by Vigilant Solutions, which has contracts with more than two dozen Bay Area law enforcement agencies. "We believe the other is managed by Thomson Reuters," ACLU laywer Vasudha Talla said. The ACLU and other privacy advocates have expressed concern about how this data will be stored and used for civil immigration enforcement. The ACLU filed two requests under the Freedom of Information Act in March seeking records from ICE, including contracts, memos, associated communications, training materials and audit logs. Since then, ICE has not provided any records, the ACLU said in the complaint, which was filed Tuesday morning in the Northern District Court for the Northern District of California.
"The excessive collection and storing of this data in databases -- which is then pooled and shared nationally -- results in a systemic monitoring that chills the exercise of constitutional rights to free speech and association, as well as essential tasks such as driving to work, picking children up from school, and grocery shopping," the complaint said. "We have essentially two concerns: one that is general to ALPR databases, and one that's specific to this situation with ICE," Talla said. "The ACLU has done a lot of work around surveillance technology and ALPR, and we're generally concerned about the aggregation of all this data about license plates paired with a time and location, stretching back for so many months and years."
They bill of rights doesn't apply to them either
Wrong.
The bill of rights is a non-exhaustive list of human rights. Granted, not all of the rights are extended to non-citizens equally, for example foreigners can only purchase a firearm if they have an immigrant visa, and can only "receive" them for sporting purposes — not for self-defense. However, some rights are theoretically extended to citizens and non-citizens alike. Historically, for example, the USA has extended the rights under the first amendment to all people.
I asked DDG "which rights in the bill of rights apply to non citizens" and the second link it gave back to me was titled "Yes, illegal aliens have constitutional rights". However, it was surrounded by similar company. You could ask Google and see if it differs.
That said, plate readers do sort of hit every single citizen, which could be an unreasonable search issue.
We know what you can do with metadata if you have enough of it. It's dangerous. But we can't possibly stop our government from collecting it any more than we can stop Google. (They, too, have cars driving around with cameras on them...) So what do we do about it? I'd like to replace license plates with transponders, because they are ugly and affect aerodynamics. That would at least stop Google from recording our plate numbers (with good enough crypto, anyway.) But what can we do about our government?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Its not YOUR data, it is mine.
That is where Americans' and Europeans' view differ.
If the program running on my computer could belong to some megacorp and just "licensed" for my use in limited situation (such as cannot install on another machine even if I destroyed this one), if the music on a CD I bought cannot be legally played in a performance, in a store, etc, THEN why can't MY personal information cannot be only "licensed", with my consent, for YOUR limit use?
I don't even think the government requires a warrant for taking pictures of vehicles on public streets. Actually, I know they don't. Nobody does. There is no expectation of privacy in public.
Many states already have networks of license plate readers, both for law enforcement purposes and for things like toll enforcement. They use that data to track known criminals - like estranged parents who kidnap their own children.
If they want to place a tracker on your car, they have to get a warrant. If they want to put you under heavy surveillance, they have to get a warrant. But just checking 'who is this" by running a plate doesn't require a warrant.
What the database does is blur the lines between those last two scenarios, since checking the plates of everyone passing several points throughout a city ends up building up a database that amounts to almost the same thing as tracking an individual all the time.
It would be weird and illogical to conclude that such databases are illegal. It would also be weird and illogical to conclude that our privacy rights can suddenly be eliminated because databases, cameras and text recognition became cheap.
There's no easy and obvious answer to this one. Someone's rights are going to end up being stepped on either way.