DEA tracking millions of drivers across US

by
in legal on (#2WVD)
In 2008, the Drug Enforcement Agency created a program to automatically read and monitor vehicle license plates near border crossings in California, Arizona, and Texas. Federal authorities explained that the system would be used strictly to track the movement of contraband and money by Mexican drug cartels. Today, however, the system has been secretly expanded to hundreds of cameras and scanners far away from border crossings, from Georgia to New Jersey to Florida. The resulting database tracks the movement of millions of vehicles - maybe yours - throughout the United States. Who says that bureaucrats don't know how to take an idea and run with it?

According to documents and e-mails obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, the vast database can be searched by any participating police agency. No search warrants are required, and no court supervises the system's management. Not that long ago, the idea of maintaining such information on the movement of law-abiding citizens would have been universally derided as a police state tactic. Many of the same politicians who rush to the microphones to denounce Facebook or Google for using "personal" data to help sell consumers shampoo or Doritos are proving awfully quiet about the proliferation of government databases on private citizens.

Re: Fewer like this, please (Score: 2, Informative)

by kwerle@pipedot.org on 2015-02-01 18:54 (#2WVS)

It's very much tech & privacy.
OK, let's summarize the tech:
Cameras exist
OCR exists
databases exist

Big whoop.

The article doesn't mention any technical details. Technical details are why I come here. Political BS is why I don't go to /.
Besides... the pipe is the place to vote on and discuss what should/shouldn't be here... Problem is, almost no submissions are coming in, which needs to change, first.
I don't think that's a problem. I would rather no articles than articles like this.
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