DEA license plate program stores photos, locations of US drivers

Capabilities of program raise privacy concerns, says ACLU

February 5, 2015 1:28PM ET
by Renee Lewis


A program employed by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to log the license plates of possible criminals also photographs drivers and passengers, regardless of whether they are suspected of a crime, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU reports that the National License Plate Recognition Initiative holds data obtained from devices dotted across the United States. An earlier release from the ACLU revealed that the program is capable of tracking the location of millions of drivers.
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the ACLU yielded documents that show that the license plate program is able to provide “the requester” with images that “may include vehicle license plate numbers (front and/or rear)” as well as “photos of visible vehicle occupants” and “a front and rear overall view of the vehicle.”
It does not specify who those requesters are, and the ACLU notes that it is unclear if other government agencies have access to the photographs, although it is believed local and state law enforcement agencies do.
Another record handed over to the rights group noted that the system can store “up to 10 photos per vehicle transaction, including four occupant photos” — indicating, the ACLU said in a blog post, that such photos are not an incidental or even occasional aspect of the license plate readers.
Law enforcement already uses facial recognition technology and automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to identify and track suspected criminals. But the ability to view photographs of car occupants, irrespective of whether they are suspects, has led to privacy concerns.
The ACLU said it would be “particularly worrisome” if the DEA was using the information to target First Amendment–protected activity.
“We don’t want to see someone’s photo entered into a facial recognition database simply because a person’s presence at a gun show (or any other gathering) is considered suspicion of illegal activity,” the ACLU noted.
Some law enforcement agencies appear to recognize such concerns. The ACLU cites an ALPR policy from Tiburon, California, that states, “Cameras will be directed only to capture the rear of vehicles and not into any place where a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ might exist.”
To give an example of the type of photos ALPRs can capture, the ACLU referred to a 2012 Wall Street Journal report in which a network security engineer in San Leandro, California, Michael Katz-Lacabe, submitted a public records request for photos of his license plate.
One of the images showed him and his daughters getting out of their car in their driveway. The ACLU emphasized that he had never been suspected of any crime.
The documents obtained under the FOIA request said it is unclear which policies, if any, govern the use of ALPRs, the photos they take or the database of Americans’ locations. The program’s budget is also unclear.
In the ACLU’s earlier report on the program, the group revealed the DEA program’s capability to track people’s movements by storing location data taken by ALPRs. It suggested that the program had been widened from its original purpose — tracking drug traffickers — to quietly collecting data on millions of Americans not suspected of any crimes.
Information is retained for six months for nonhit data, or records that are not matched to any crime. It is unclear how many ALPRs the program has access to, though documents revealed the DEA can tap into similar databases kept by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies nationwide.
The DEA referred Al Jazeera's request for comment to the Department of Justice, of which it is a part, but the department did not respond by the time of publication.

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DEA using license-plate readers to take photos of US drivers, documents reveal

ACLU publishes DEA documents that show license plate-scanners also record humans, as face recognition helps government be ‘even more sure of exactly who they are surveilling’

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is using license-plate reader technology to photograph motorists and passengers in the US as part of an official exercise to build a database on people’s lives.

According to DEA documents published on Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the agency is capturing images of occupants in the front and rear seats of vehicles in a programme that monitors Americans’ travel patterns on a wider scale than previously thought.

The disclosure follows the ACLU’s revelation last week about the potential scale of a DEA database containing the data of millions of drivers, which kindled renewed concern about government surveillance.

The latest published internal DEA communications, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that automated license plate scanners, known as ALPRs, record images of human beings as well as license plates.

A document from 2009 said the programme could provide “the requester” with images that “may include vehicle license plate numbers (front and/or rear), photos of visible vehicle occupants [redacted] and a front and rear overall view of the vehicle”.

A document from 2011 said the DEA’s system had the ability to store “up to 10 photos per vehicle transaction including 4 occupant photos”.

The documents confirmed that license plate scanners did not always focus just on license plates, the ACLU said on Thursday: “Occupant photos are not an occasional, accidental byproduct of the technology, but one that is intentionally being cultivated.”

Photographing people inside cars was especially concerning in an age of face-recognition analytics since federal agencies would be “even more sure of exactly who they are surveilling”, the advocacy group said.
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The DEA, which is part of the Justice Department, did not immediately respond to a Guardian request for comment.

The 2009 document was not previously known, the ACLU said. It included the 2011 document in last week’s disclosures. The Wall Street Journal noted that visual images of vehicle occupants were “sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities” but other aspects of the DEA surveillance – such as a proposal to monitor public meetings – largely overshadowed the detail about photographing vehicle occupants.

Using the technology in this way undermined law enforcement agencies’ claims that license plate images could not be used to identify individuals and did not violate individual privacy, said the ACLU. “This argument is thin already, but it certainly doesn’t fly with regards to photographs of the driver or passengers inside of a vehicle.”

Some local law enforcement agencies protected privacy by using the technology to photograph only the rear of vehicles, so occupants would not be recognised, but there was no evidence to suggest most agencies took such precautions, said the advocacy group.

Vigilant Solutions, a California company, which is one of the main providers of ALPR technology, announced last October that it had developed an app that integrated facial recognition technology into automated license-plate readers. The company did not immediately respond to a Guardian request for elaboration.

According to DEA documents, the buildup of a vehicle surveillance database stemmed from the agency’s appetite for asset forfeiture, a controversial practice of seizing possessions at traffic stops and vehicle pullovers if agents suspect they are criminal proceeds.

Last month, outgoing US attorney general Eric Holder opened a review into federal asset forfeiture.

Loretta Lynch, Holder’s would-be replacement, told a Senate confirmation hearing last month that a number of people had questions about the practice.

In a letter to Holder, senators Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy wrote that they “remain concerned that government programs that track citizens’ movements, see inside homes and collect data from the phones of innocent Americans raise serious privacy concerns”.

Privacy watchers were quick to condemn the DEA’s surveillance programme. Clark Neily, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based libertarian law firm, called it “deeply concerning and creepy”.

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License Plate Scanners Also Taking Photos of Drivers and Passengers
02/05/2015

License Plate Scanners
By Sonia Roubini, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at 10:01am

The Drug Enforcement Administration is using its license plate reader program not only to track drivers’ locations, but also to photograph these drivers and their passengers, according to newly disclosed records obtained by the ACLU via a Freedom of Information Act request.

One internal 2009 DEA communication stated clearly that the license plate program can provide “the requester” with images that “may include vehicle license plate numbers (front and/or rear), photos of visible vehicle occupants [redacted] and a front and rear overall view of the vehicle.” Clearly showing that occupant photos are not an occasional, accidental byproduct of the technology, but one that is intentionally being cultivated, a 2011 email states that the DEA's system has the ability to store “up to 10 photos per vehicle transaction including 4 occupant photos.”

The DEA documents are just the latest indication that license plate scanners are not always focused just on license plates.

In December, theNewspaper.com reported that Vigilant Solutions, one of the main providers of ALPR technology, expanded the integration of facial recognition technology into its ALPR offerings. “The new Vigilant Mobile Companion app expands the benefits of license plate recognition and facial recognition technologies to all areas of the agency,” a Vigilant Solutions press release claimed. This software would not only allow law enforcement officials to photograph the occupants of a vehicle, but also to quickly and accurately identify individuals and enter them into the DEA’s database.
In 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that a network security engineer in San Leandro, California named Michael Katz-Lacabe had submitted a public records request in 2010 for photos of his license plate and any associated images in order to determine the breadth of the information that the ALPRs had collected on him. One of the images captured Katz-Lacabe stepping out of his car in his driveway with his two young daughters, and several other images taken by the ALPRs very clearly identified him. It’s important to remember that Katz-Lacabe was never suspected of any crime.
The Milwaukee Police Department’s policy on the use of ALPRs says that stored data can include a “contextual photo (e.g. a photo of the scanned vehicle and/or occupants).”
The Wall Street Journal’s article on the DEA's license scanning program last week mentioned the DEA's collection of visual images of drivers and passengers, confirming in its reporting that they “are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities.”

This aspect of license plate scanning technology has not received enough attention. ALPR manufacturers and law enforcement agencies have argued that images of license plates cannot be used to identify individuals, and thus do not infringe on our individual privacy. This argument is thin already, but it certainly doesn't fly with regards to photographs of the driver or passengers inside of a vehicle — especially in the era of face recognition analytics. Law enforcement is already using license plates to identify and track people — photographs of car occupants only allow agencies to be even more sure of exactly who they are surveilling.

Some law enforcement agencies that employ ALPRs recognize that the technology should not be used to capture photos of vehicle occupants. We obtained an ALPR policy from Tiburon, California that speaks to our privacy concerns. The policy states that “cameras will be directed only to capture the rear of vehicles and not into any place where a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ might exist.” This means that the ALPRs “will not be able to ‘see’ or photograph vehicle occupants because the camera will only be photographing the rear of vehicles, it will not be able to create a record of its occupants.” Tiburon’s policy shows that there are precautionary measures that can be taken to (at least partially) avoid infringing on individual privacy. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to suggest that most law enforcement agencies are taking such measures.

Tracking movement and saving individuals’ photos is particularly worrisome if the DEA is targeting First Amendment-protected activity. As we stated in our blog post on the DEA’s plans to monitor gun shows, an automatic license plate reader cannot distinguish between people transporting illegal guns and those transporting legal guns, or no guns at all; it only documents the presence of any car driving to the event. A photo of a car’s occupants, however, documents much more — and intensifies our concerns about the targeted use of this technology. We don’t want to see someone’s photo entered into a facial recognition database simply because a person’s presence at a gun show (or any other gathering) is considered suspicion of illegal activity.

The DEA has yet to release any policies that govern the use of license plate readers or the database of Americans’ locations that it creates. It is unclear if any court or process oversees or approves the use of this intelligence, or if other government agencies have access to the photographs. This all highlights the need for more light to be shed on this program and others like it.

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mowood3479 said:

Shit they been doing this as far back as 99 prob earlier.. Cameras all over designated hidta (hi intensity drug trafficking areas) or something like that.
Buddies of mine got scooped up by Feds, n they had every dope run they'd ever made to the city on camera... Getting off the exit into the ghetto n getting back on the highway after scoring half or or so later.. (It isn't evidence of anything in of itself) but driving 3 hrs to turn right back around n to do it once a week for several years.. Needless to say it goes a long way to proving that when they actually bust u that it wasn't ur first time n is a pattern of long term trafficking... My buddy did a nickel in a fed prison in Texas.

At this point I just assume that everywhere I go is possibly being videotaped... Because there is a strong likelihood that either on the highway or gas station or fuckin wherever (street cameras) that Iam being recorded.
Glad I live and mostly stay in the boondocks. They can still track me by my phone tho.. Or take satellite images of me in the shower..
Privacy is dead and has been for awhile. It's super awesome

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stoned-trout said:

theres no cameras where I am at biotches ..hell we don't even have a traffic light

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