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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."
Why are private companies even allowed to amass this data?
since "privacy" in public is a moot issue
Yes. They will do that as soon as they teach Siri to handle followup sentences properly. But after that the sky is the limit for AI!
Oh yeah, the A is American. You know, the thing that people entering the country illegally aren't. They bill of rights doesn't apply to them either so they can be searched however and whenever they want. That said, plate readers do sort of hit every single citizen, which could be an unreasonable search issue.
There is a deeper strategy here.
(1) Get information with the suit (and make a little publicity along the way)
(2) With hard facts, be able to demonstrate that this private company selling information to ICE is dependent on local law enforcement feeding data into the system
(3) Put the squeeze on local politicians about whether voters will support them helping ICE officials raid within their city
In a lot of cities in California, this strategy could easily work, cutting down these surveillance providers at the knees. They have nothing useful to sell to ICE if city police departments do not give them the license plate reader information.
Seriously, you're basically complaining that police should not have the right to look around in public for known criminals.
No, not remotely.
What's happening is that private parties aren't merely "looking around", they're writing down everything they see, keeping massive logs of what they've seen, collating the data, and selling that to the police. That data isn't just about criminals. It's about everybody. And last time I checked most people by far are not criminals. So there's only very little data on actual criminals in there by volume.
It's not merely "I've seen this", but suddenly can be turned in "we've seen so much that we can backtrack any given license plate to where he's been in the last few weeks/months/years/decades". It's the scale difference that does it.
And also that these parties aren't bound by the usual law enforcement safeguards, and therefore allow law enforcement to circumvent its safeguards.
But hey, if you categorically refuse to follow this to its inevitable conclusion and instead insist on seeing it in its most shallow "nothing's happening here"-guise, there's nothing I can do to make you see. You don't *want* to see. Well, you'll get to experience instead, then. Too bad everyone else has to, too. Thus you're depriving them of a choice not to go there. Including me. Thanks so much for that.
What does that have to do with immigration?
More than likely law enforcement is not the source of the data. Repo agencies ride around using license plate scanners to hunt for deadbeats' cars. This generates a lot of data which gets monetized by sale to db companies, adding to the repo guys' bottom line.
We could protect freedom by sacrificing privacy.
Let anyone collect data as massively as they like but require that access to that be free and open to all, along with all analysis tools. Not just the government, everybody. Sort of a GNU-like approach.
I don't mind you seeing mine as long as I can see yours