Malls In California Are Sending License Plate Information To ICE (theweek.com)

Presto Vivace shares a report from The Week with the caption, "And they wonder why some of us prefer to shop online." From the report: Surveillance systems at more than 46 malls in California are capturing license plate information that is fed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported Tuesday. One company, Irvine Company Retail Properties, operates malls all over the state using a security network called Vigilant Solutions. Vigilant shares data with hundreds of law enforcement agencies, insurance companies, and debt collectors -- including ICE, which signed a contract with the security company earlier this year, reports The Verge. "[Irvine Company] is putting not only immigrants at risk, but invading the privacy of its customers by allowing a third-party to hold onto their data indefinitely," EFF wrote in its report, urging the chain of malls to stop providing information to ICE.

Comments

Re:Invading privacy?

[dgatwood]

PUBLIC IS PUBLIC. Where you go has *always* been public information, just the tracking has gotten more automatic.

From a legal perspective, that's not true. Article IV of the Constitution is considered to protect your right to travel freely, and you can't have a right to travel freely if you are being tracked, because there are places that would inherently be embarrassing if you were widely known to have traveled there.

The law has always recognized a difference between merely seeing that someone is in a place and tracking that person for a year to see where he or she goes. The latter, if surveillance is on an ongoing basis, is likely to cross the "reasonable" line and require a warrant (United States v. Jones). A license tracking system appears to be a prima facie attempt to sidestep that warrant requirement, and as such, is legally problematic.