This information includes the date, time and GPS location data of any vehicle captured on camera.
Vigilant Solutions has been contracted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to access more than 2 billion license plate photos. The government agency can track individuals by obtaining license plate photos that include the date, creation time and GPS location. According to ICE it plans to use this huge trove of data to track suspects in criminal investigations as well as to find “priority aliens” to facilitate their interdiction or removal reports citing an official privacy assessment.
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Agents will have the ability to search the database for hits for a particular license plate and can also set up alerts for future sightings of that plate. Agents will be able to access this information to determine the travel history of a target vehicle and identify common places a person visits. The data also gives agents a good idea about where a suspect is at the moment.
Vigilant Solutions will not accept photos from ICE. The law enforcement agency will still have access to the ever-growing collection of images, which will be sourced from sources such as license plates readers and cameras on police cars. The Verge reports that Vigilant’s image database is growing by 100 million per month.
Because of the fear of abuse, license plate scanning is becoming more accepted by the government. Cameras collect data on every vehicle in the road, allowing them to see the needle in the haystack. While most of these drivers do not commit any crimes, an untrustworthy agent could easily track innocent motorists.
This case raises questions about how futuristic technology will address driving. Wikileaks documents also claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency had researched hacking methods for Blackberry QNX automobile software.