CBP Has Access To Billions Of License Plate Images Collected By Private Companies

from the too-much-is-never-enough dept

The Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has a thirst for license plate images. It wants as many as it can get. And as far inland as it can get without straying from the areas it's really supposed to be keeping its eyes on: the nation's borders. Two consecutive Privacy Impact Assessments of the agency's automatic license plate reader program came to the same conclusion: if you don't want to get your plate read, don't drive anywhere. Sure, it may seem easy to avoid the border, but the agency is allowed to do its border protecting stuff up to 100 miles from any border, which includes coastlines and international airports.

But it's not enough that the CBP has an unknown number of plate readers in operation. The information captured by its camera network apparently isn't comprehensive enough. So it's been buying access to other license plate image databases. As Joseph Cox reports for Motherboard, the CBP is making use of plate images gathered by private companies to round out its surveillance of Americans.

The PIA [Privacy Impact Assessment] did not name the specific commercial database. But a source in the private investigator industry, which makes use of commercial license plate databases, suggests the supplier is likely Vigilant Solutions and its sister company DRN which collects the license plate data in the first place.

"DRN is the only one I know that collects the data. The other companies that advertise this service as a search buy from DRN," Igor Ostrovskiy, principal at private investigator firm Ostro Intelligence, who has used the DRN system, told Motherboard. With the consent of the target, a source previously tracked a target for Motherboard using DRN's vast license plate reader system.

Vigilant is home to what is likely the largest database of plate images in the business. The company sells access to an unknown number of law enforcement agencies. Some agencies get free access in exchange for a cut of any fines and fees collected by law enforcement as the result of plate reader hits. As of a half-decade ago, Vigilant was home to two billion license plate photos, with 100 million more being added daily by its network of cameras.

But Vigilant's network isn't just its hundreds of law enforcement owned plate readers. It's also the hundreds run by private companies that allow Vigilant to sell access to the plate images they've collected. As Cox reports, this has turned two billion images (as of 2015) to nine billion images -- much of this "crowd-sourced" from hundreds of repo men using Vigilant equipment.

So, the CBP's Privacy Impact Assessment isn't accurate. It may be accurate as far as suggesting not driving is the only way to prevent your license plate from ending up in the CBP's database. But to suggest staying out of areas "impacted" by CBP activity might allow you to elude this collection is patently false. If the CBP has access to this database, plate/location info from drivers nowhere near the CBP's enforcement areas is still making its way to the CBP via Vigilant's numerous private company contributors.

And this collection isn't subject to the CBP's rules, which limit searches to five years of plate/location data and removes cached, non-hit searches within 24 hours. The CBP may not have control of this collection -- it remains solely in the hands of Vigilant -- but claiming (as the CBP does in Cox's article) that query-only access is somehow a completely different thing is disingenuous. While it may make exploitation of the database more difficult for the CBP, it's still access to billions of plate records the CBP hasn't shown it should legally or logically have access to. The CBP can dip into it whenever it wants and operate outside of its own ALPR guidelines while doing it. There are no downsides. The CBP gets access to billions more plate images without having to deal with the infrastructure side of it. More plates, lower costs, fewer headaches. Win win win.

Filed Under: 3rd party doctrine, 4th amendment, cbp, license plate images, privacy
Companies: drn, vigilant solutions

License Plate Reader Company Says Public Records Requests For ALPR Documents Are Just Clickbait

from the price-of-freedom-is-eternal-Vigilant-open-letters dept

It turns out the most oppressed demographic in this country is the one with power, guns, unions, extra rights, and plenty of civil immunity. Law enforcement agencies around the country currently besieged by public records requests are having their fears assuaged and brows unfurrowed by the nation's largest provider of automatic license plate reader technology.

Earlier this year, the EFF and public records clearinghouse MuckRock joined forces to file approximately 1,000 public records requests with agencies partnering with Vigilant. Apparently this influx of up to one additional records request per agency has pushed law enforcement to its limits. Vigilant Solutions has stepped up to let law enforcement officers know it has their back during this ongoing national nightmare. (h/t Dave Maass, Camille Fassett)

Dear Vigilant Solutions Customer,

We know you are experiencing an onslaught of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Public Records Act (PRA) requests from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and MuckRock regarding your use of our license plate reader (LPR) technology. We write this letter to let you know, quite simply, we support you and are here for you.

Just to be clear, this "onslaught" is composed of one request per law enforcement agency. There's no point in doubling up on requests since that would just waste time and resources. There may be some inadvertent double filings, but that would only mean some agencies have seen more than one request for Vigilant documents. In no case are any agencies being targeted with mass duplicated requests. So, this "onslaught" might be cumulative in total, but it basically comes down to a 1/1 ratio of requests/agencies.

From there, Vigilant's letter [PDF] devolves into talking points about the great law enforcement work being done with its passive collection systems. It highlights a handful of nonspecific success stories -- stories it claims the EFF and MuckRock ignore -- as justification for 24/7 gathering of license plate/location data. Again, this poor attempt to slam both entities as anti-law enforcement fails. No one disputes ALPRs help catch criminals. The problem is they're often put into place with zero public comment, zero discussion by public officials, zero guidelines for data gathering and retention, and with an eye on law enforcement efficiency above everything else.

The letter tries to mock EFF as being noble fools for pointing out how many agencies have access to Vigilant plate data.

The EFF has noted that California agencies are sharing with the U.S. Forest Service, universities on the East Coast, and airports in Tennessee. EFF is apparently unaware that criminals travel across state lines. Perhaps these writers have not read the countless stories about crimes committed on college campuses, at airports and even in National Parks.

This willfully ignores the reason the EFF points out the long list of agencies with access to data. It's not that the EFF doesn't know suspected criminals move around the country or that criminal acts can occur anywhere. It's that hundreds of agencies are dipping into this data without clear, concise guidance on what they can access and how they can use it. For some agencies not tasked with law enforcement, it's unclear why they're even able to pull data from a database supposedly created for law enforcement use only.

But the most ridiculous part of the letter is its ending, in which Vigilant claims the EFF and MuckRock are doing this for the clicks.

The real impetus behind this campaign is so EFF and MuckRock can capitalize on the most well-known emotional trigger for fundraising: Fear. Their aim is to paint a false picture of sharing LPR data by leading their readers to believe it is reckless, unrestricted and used to track individuals. In short, they are attempting to scare individuals into hitting one of the countless "Contribute" and "Donate" buttons on their website.

Wow. Way to stick it to a couple of nonprofits, Vigilant. The "doing it for money/eyeballs/ad revenue/etc." argument is a full-throated admission you can't find anything legitimate to complain about. Vigilant sure seems defensive for an entity that believes it's nothing but a net gain for public safety. This letter is hilarious -- an admission Vigilant can be put on the defensive by a steady trickle of public records requests from around the nation.

It's also kind of hypocritical. Vigilant has brought lawsuits against states claiming their anti-ALPR laws violated the company's First Amendment right to collect license plate photographs en masse. Now, it's reaching out to law enforcement agencies to let them know Vigilant will be there for them while citizens exercise their First Amendment rights by requesting a much smaller quantity of public records. This open letter of Vigilant's is terrible optics. Either it shows Vigilant can be put on the defensive by people seeking information about its products, or it believes law enforcement officers are feeling threatened by the incremental increase in FOIA paperwork. Either way, it's a terrible look and a terrible response.

Filed Under: alpr, foia, law enforcement, license plate readers, police departments, public records, transparency
Companies: eff, muckrock, vigilant solutions

Cops Getting Free License Plate Readers In Exchange For 25% Of The 'Take' And All The Driver Data Vigilant Can Slurp

from the an-equitable-partnership dept

What happens when you lower the barriers to entry? More participants join the market. It works everywhere, even when the market is "law enforcement" and the "customers" are everyone else.

Vigilant Solutions, one of the country’s largest brokers of vehicle surveillance technology, is offering a hell of a deal to law enforcement agencies in Texas: a whole suite of automated license plate reader (ALPR) equipment and access to the company’s massive databases and analytical tools—and it won’t cost the agency a dime.

[...]

Vigilant is leveraging H.B. 121, a new Texas law passed in 2015 that allows officers to install credit and debit card readers in their patrol vehicles to take payment on the spot for unpaid court fines, also known as capias warrants. When the law passed, Texas legislators argued that not only would it help local government with their budgets, it would also benefit the public and police.

Well, we can see how this will benefit law enforcement and others on the government food chain, but it's unclear how this will benefit the public. The bill's sponsor said the law would "relieve the burden" of having their vehicles impounded or being jailed for unpaid fines. But beyond those vague perks, the benefits seem to flow mostly in one direction.

The EFF quotes legal blogger Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast, who speculated the combination of license plate readers and credit card readers would push cops towards chasing down unpaid fines rather than enforcing traffic laws or performing more routine patrol duties. If so -- and it appears to be the case -- this is exactly the outcome Vigilant was expecting. It didn't hand out its tech for free. There may be no price tag on the plate readers at the point of purchase, but that's only because Vigilant has points on the back end.

The “warrant redemption” program works like this. The agency gets no-cost license plate readers as well as free access to LEARN-NVLS, the ALPR data system Vigilant says contains more than 2.8-billion plate scans and is growing by more than 70 million scans a month. This also includes a wide variety of analytical and predictive software tools.

The government agency in turn gives Vigilant access to information about all its outstanding court fees, which the company then turns into a hot list to feed into the free ALPR systems. As police cars patrol the city, they ping on license plates associated with the fees. The officer then pulls the driver over and offers them a devil’s bargain: go to jail, or pay the original fine with an extra 25% processing fee tacked on, all of which goes to Vigilant.

To make this relationship even more explicit, officers who issue tickets to parked vehicles rather than drivers leave a note instructing them to visit Vigilant's website to pay the fine. On top of the 25% fee, Vigilant also gets to collect massive amounts of sweet, sweet driver data, which it can then sell to other law enforcement agencies (database access licenses) and private firms (insurance companies, repo men, etc.). And, if the locals seem understaffed, Vigilant is more than happy to pick up the slack.

In early December 2015, Vigilant issued a press release bragging that Guadalupe County had used the systems to collect on more than 4,500 warrants between April and December 2015. In January 2016, the City of Kyle signed an identical deal with Vigilant. Soon after, Guadalupe County upgraded the contract to allow Vigilant to dispatch its own contractors to collect on capias warrants.

As the EFF points out, this freemium service benefits Vigilant and law enforcement, but does very little for the general public… including protect them from Vigilant's inability to perform its job competently.

During the second week of December, as part of its Warrant Redemption Program, Vigilant Solutions sent several warrant notices – on behalf of our law enforcement partners – in error to citizens across the state of Texas. A technical error caused us to send warrant notices to the wrong recipients.

These types of mistakes are not acceptable and we deeply apologize to those who received the warrant correspondence in error and to our law enforcement customers.

Apologies are nice, if of limited utility, but…

[T]he company has not disclosed the extent of the error, how many people were affected, how much money was collected that shouldn’t have been, and what it’s doing to inform and make it up to the people affected.

As has been discussed here before, turning law enforcement agencies into revenue-focused entities is a bad idea. Case in point: asset forfeiture. Further case in point: speed trap towns. Improper incentives lead to improper behavior. Agencies may like the idea of a "free" license plate reader, but the price still has to be paid by someone -- and that "someone" is going to be the general public.

As priorities shift towards ensuring ongoing use of the "free" ALPRs, other criminal activity is likely to receive less law enforcement attention. Unpaid fines and fees are in law enforcement's wheelhouse, but should never become its raison d'etre. Once it does, the whole community suffers. Anything that could be implemented to lower crime rates would also serve to lower revenue, making it far less likely to be implemented. Fewer infractions mean fewer opportunities to collect court fees. And while the legislators pushing the new law Vigilant is leveraging talked a good game about sending fewer people to overcrowded jails, the governments overseeing these agencies still have budgets to meet and law enforcement to lean on to ensure this happens. Actually achieving the bill's stated aims would mean a steady reduction in court fees, which would lead to the loss of "free" plate readers. And no one wants that, at least not on the government side of things.

Filed Under: alpr, business models, law enforcement, license plate readers, license plates, police, texas, ticketing
Companies: vigilant solutions