If you’ve ever had the feeling of being watched while cruising down I-95, good news! You might not actually be crazy.
The Justice Department has been tracking vehicles across the country with license plate scanners for years, watching the movements of millions of cars and piling them into a national database, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Drug Enforcement Administration began the program in an effort to track down drug traffickers, but since then has vastly expanded it and employed it for all kinds of other local and federal investigations.
The DEA has stated in the past that they watch cars on the Mexican border, but the Journal discovered that they in fact keep a database of movements “throughout the United States.” On New Jersey’s I-95, for example—a state not close to the Mexican border, for those challenged with geography—features license-plate readers sending driver information to the DEA. Other states known to participate include Georgia and Florida (still not on the Mexican border.) DOJ officials refused to disclose the total number of states participating.
The program not only keeps tabs on cars’ direction and location, but in some cases may even take high-definition pictures of drivers and passengers.
The resulting database appears fairly easy to access: the Journal cites one redacted email saying that “Anyone can request information from our [license-plate reader] program, federal, state, or local, just need to be a vetted EPIC user.…’’ (EPIC stands for the El Paso Intelligence Center in Texas.)
Some states, like Minnesota, have already busted their own cops for using the scanners to track cars for local law enforcement. The DEA program makes use of these local scanners in addition to federal devices.
The program has also been used to help cops make the most out of civil asset forfeiture—a widely condemned practice that allows police to seize property without accusing its owners of a crime, and then keep some or all of the spoils.
Privacy advocates have long been concerned about abuse of license scanners and similar tracking devices. “Any database that collects detailed location information about Americans not suspected of crimes raises very serious privacy questions,’’ the ACLU told the Journal. “It’s unconscionable that technology with such far-reaching potential would be deployed in such secrecy. People might disagree about exactly how we should use such powerful surveillance technologies, but it should be democratically decided, it shouldn’t be done in secret.’’
