License Plate Readers Collecting a Massive Amount of Data on Drivers

photo credit:
Michael Katz-Lacabe

Across California police are using license plate readers to collect millions of records on drivers and are supplying those records to intelligence fusion centers.

When Michael Katz-Lacabe asked the city of San Leandro for the all records taken of his car by the readers he found that there had been 112 different occasions he had been photographed. In the records he found a picture of him and his daughters getting out of his Toyota Prius in their driveway, reports CIR.

San Leandro only has one patrol car equipped with a reader. Despite this fact Katz-Lacabe’s car was being logged once a week on average.

With the NSA surveillance revelations, this is just more insight on the over-the-top surveillance state America is becoming.

Government is proving to be committed to surveillance.

Just a year ago Northern California Regional Intelligence Center had signed a $340,000 agreement with the Silicon Valley firm Palantir, a firm with extensive ties to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, to construct a database for license plate readers for 14 counties.

Jurisdictions stretching over some 450 miles, from Monterey County to the Oregon border, are collecting data with license plate readers.

The database will be capable of handling at least 100 million records and be accessible to local and state law enforcement across the region.

Katz-Lacabe expressed his concerns about the capabilities of the readers, saying that with this technology, “you can tell who your friends are, who you hang out with, where you go to church, whether you’ve been to a political meeting.”

With the shocking amount of data just one patrol car equipped with a reader was able to collect on just one individual, it is certainly enough to raise privacy concerns.

American has fallen into the hands of Big Brother. The commitment of the State to break into the lives of innocent people has reached dangerous levels.

Is it safe to say there will soon be zero privacy in the United States?

Paul Lawrance writes for Eyes Open Report, where this article first appeared.