U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is using sophisticated technology to keep tabs on immigrants, privacy advocates say, raising concerns about the breadth of ICE surveillance activities.
The American Civil Liberties Union released a detailed report on ICE’s efforts to track immigrants using what it called an “expansive surveillance database” with information from automated license plate reader tools, offered by a company called Vigilant Solutions. The ACLU report, based on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in May 2018, accused local law enforcement agencies of sharing information with ICE, sometimes in violation of local privacy laws.
The Vigilant Solutions database allows ICE to track drivers as they go about their daily lives, with access to more than 5 billion points of location information collected by private businesses such as insurance companies and parking lots, the ACLU said.
The ACLU already had “grave concerns” about the privacy implications of license plate readers, but the ICE surveillance program will fuel the agency’s “deportation machine,” Vasudha Talla, a staff attorney at ACLU of Northern California, wrote in a blog post.
Many communities have cameras that can capture license plate numbers, she added. “High-speed cameras mounted on police cars, road signs, or bridges … can photograph every passing license plate,” she said. “Together with time, date, and location coordinates, the information is stored for years, generating a literal and intimate roadmap of people’s private lives.”
The concerns are heightened, privacy advocates say, in light of a news report this month from The Nation, a self-described “progressive” publication, that ICE is tracking immigration policy protesters in New York City, as well as reports from late last year that the agency has talked with Amazon about deploying facial recognition technologies.
[Related: Immigrant deaths under Trump on par with Obama numbers: DHS]
The ACLU report gives new details about where and how often ICE is using license plate readers, said Jake Laperruque, senior counsel for The Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight, a watchdog group that has raised recent concerns about government use of facial recognition technologies.
Both license plate readers and facial recognition “allow for mass automated identification and tracking,” he said. POGO has more concerns about facial recognition because license plate readers track only people in vehicles.
“The fact that ICE has a longstanding interest in automated identification tech in license plate readers definitely indicates the agency would likely be interested in even more powerful automated identification tech like facial recognition,” Laperruque added.
So far, U.S. lawmakers have not taken steps to limit agencies’ use of either license plate readers or facial recognition, but members of both parties criticized the FBI’s use of facial recognition during a hearing in early 2017.
Lawmakers in two states, Washington and Massachusetts, have proposed moratoriums on the use of facial recognition technologies, Laperruque noted. “Given increasing use of the technology and the range of risks it poses, I expect Congress will be increasingly active on the topic,” he added.
[Also read: Democrats push for body cameras on all immigration, border cops]
In addition, the ACLU has called for the state auditor to assess law enforcement agencies’ compliance with state laws that prohibit sharing license plate reader information with out-of-state and federal agencies.
Meanwhile, ICE defended its use of license plate reader technologies. The agency completed a formal privacy impact assessment before rolling out the technology, and ICE doesn’t use the technology to locate or track people with no connection to investigations or enforcement activities, a spokesman said.
ICE also does not take enforcement action against any person “based solely” on license plate reader technologies, the agency added.
Asked about tracking protesters in New York City, a second ICE representative said the agency distributed information about a July 2018 protest to its Homeland Security Investigations special agents “for situational awareness.”
ICE didn’t offer details about the New York City case. “Due to operational and safety implications, the agency does not discuss specific operational tactics,” the spokeswoman said. “However, all investigative and enforcement activities are conducted with professionalism and strict adherence to all applicable law and agency policies.”
