CBP to buy license-plate reader data to track vehicles away from borders
Are parking garages and toll roads spying on innocent motorists for Federal police?
Reversing a decision made in response to public pressure in 2014, US Customs and “Border” Protection (CBP) plans to pay a commercial aggregator of license-plate reader data to track vehicles that aren’t near any US border or in the “border zone” within 100 miles of coasts and borders where CBP has its own license plate readers, according to a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) published this month.
According to the new PIA, the aggregated commercial database that CBP is paying to query includes “nationwide… license plate image information from private businesses (e.g., parking garages), local governments (e.g., toll booth cameras), law enforcement agencies, and financial institutions via their contracted repossession companies.”
The PIA is worded in the future tense (“CBP plans to…”), but the contract is describes may already have gone into effect, or could do so at any time.