ICE can now track any license plate it wants, nationwide
That's because Washington's Good-to-Go tolling system, for example, also depends on license plate recognition and a national database to collect tolls.
"As with any law enforcement tool", ThinkProgress notes, "its mere existence does not immediately connote abuse or civil rights violations, but a system like this would give an administration obsessed with halting and reversing immigration of both documented and undocumented people unprecedented ability to track down almost anyone it wanted".
Vigilant Solutions is a private company that uses partnerships with local law enforcement agencies to gather data from police auto cameras, resulting in some 100 million recorded license plate sightings a month.
The development, first reported by The Verge on Friday, sparks civil liberties concerns and comes as the federal agency appears to be ramping up its efforts to round up immigrants. But the immigration cops are happy to put the existing database to use.
ICE agents would be able to use the database to see every location where a license was recognized in the last five years which could be used to locate someone's residence.
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Agents could also get "instantaneous email alerts" whenever a plate they're searching for is found.
"Knowing the previous locations of a vehicle can help determine the whereabouts of subjects of criminal investigations or priority aliens to facilitate their interdiction and removal", an official statement on the purchse explains.
The Trump Administration has a new strategy to harass and persecute immigrants. However, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told The Verge that the contract was awarded to Vigilant Solutions, one of the leading purveyors of LPR data.
Wider government acceptance of license plate scanning raises privacy concerns because of fear of abuse of such a system. For that matter, it does not discriminate between vehicles owned by people suspected of committing any crime and everyone else. According to the privacy impact assessment, Vigilant Solutions reports 100 percent accuracy in query matches. In the meantime, millions of innocent Americans can have their vehicles tracked by the immigration police-whether they are immigrants or not-for no reason at all.
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