Encryption Working Group Releases Paper To 'Move The Conversation Forward'

from the what-conversation? dept

One of the frustrating aspects of the "debate" (if you can call it that) over encryption and whether or not law enforcement should be able to have any kind of "access" is that it's been no debate at all. You have people who understand encryption who keep pointing out that what is being asked of them is impossible to do without jeopardizing some fairly fundamental security principles, and then a bunch of folks who respond with "well, just nerd harder." There have been a few people who have suggested, at the very least, that "a conversation" was necessary between the different viewpoints, but mostly when that's brought up it has meant non-technical law enforcement folks lecturing tech folks on why "lawful access" to encryption is necessary.

However, it appears that the folks at the Carnegie Endowment put together an actual working group of experts with very varying viewpoints to see if there was any sort of consensus or any way to move an actual conversation forward. I know or have met nearly everyone on the working group, and it's an impressive group of very smart, and thoughtful people -- even those I frequently disagree with. It's a really good group and the paper they've now come out with is well worth reading. I don't know that it actually moves the conversation "forward" because, again, I'm not sure there is any conversation to move forward. But I do appreciate that it got past the usual talking points. The paper kicks off by saying that it's going to "reject two straw men," which are basically the two positions frequently stated regarding law enforcement access to encrypted communication:

First of all, we reject two straw men—absolutist positions not actually held by serious participants, but sometimes used as caricatures of opponents—(1) that we should stop seeking approaches to enable access to encrypted information; or (2) that law enforcement will be unable to protect the public unless it can obtain access to all encrypted data through lawful process. We believe it is time to abandon these and other such straw men.

And... that's fine, in that the first of those statements is not actually the position those who support strong encryption actually hold. I mean, there have been multiple reports detailing how we're actually in the "golden age of surveillance", and that law enforcement has so much greater access to basically every bit of communications possible, and that there are plenty of tools and ways to get information that is otherwise encrypted. Yes, it's true that some information might remain encrypted, but no one has said that law enforcement shouldn't do their basic detective work in trying to access information. The argument is just that they shouldn't undermine the basic encryption that protects us all to do so.

Where the paper gets perhaps more interesting is that it suggests that any debate about access to encrypted data should focus on "data at rest" (i.e., data that is encrypted on a device) rather than "data in motion" which is the data that is being transferred across a network or between devices in some form. The paper does not say that we should poke holes in encryption that protects data at rest, and says, explicitly:

We have not concluded that any existing proposal in this area is viable, that any future such proposals will ultimately prove viable, or that policy changes are advisable at this time

However, it does note that if there is a fruitful conversation on this topic, it's likely to be around data at rest, rather than elsewhere. And, from there it notes that any discussion of proposals for accessing such data at rest must take into account both the costs and the benefits of such access to determine if it is viable. While some of us strongly believe that there is unlikely to ever be a proposal where the costs don't massively outweigh the benefits, this is the correct framework for analyzing theses things. And it should be noted that, too often, these debates involve one group only talking about the benefits and another only talking about the costs. Having a fruitful discussion requires being willing to measure both.

From there, the group sets up a framework for how to weigh those costs and benefits -- including setting up a bunch of use cases against which any proposal should be tested. Again, this seems like the right approach to systematically exploring and stress testing any idea brought forth that claims it will "solve" the "problem" that some in law enforcement insist encryption has created for them. I am extremely skeptical that any such proposal can pass such a stress test in a manner that suggests that the benefits outweigh the costs -- but if those pushing to undermine encryption require a "conversation" and want people to explore the few proposals that have been brought up, this is the proper, and rigorous, way to do so.

The question, though, remains as to whether or not this will actually "move the conversation forward." I have my doubts on that, in part because those who keep pressing for undermining encryption have never appeared to have much interest in actually having this type of conversation. They have mostly only seemed interested in the "nerd harder, nerds" approach to this, that assumes smart techies will give them their magic key without undermining everything else that keeps us secure. I fully expect that it won't be long before a Willam Barr or Chris Wray or a Richard Burr or a Cy Vance starts talking nonsense again about "going dark" or "responsible encryption" and ignores the framework set out by this working group.

That's not so say this wasn't a useful exercise. It likely was, if only to be able to point to it the next time one of the folks listed above spout off again as if there are no tradeoffs and as if it's somehow easy to solve the "encryption problem" as they see it.

Filed Under: data at rest, encryption, going dark, law enforcement, nerd harder, responsible encryption

Amazon Has Already Roped 200 Police Departments Into Its Ring Doorbell Surveillance/Promotional Scheme

from the good-work-if-you-can-get-it-and-Amazon-quite-obviously-can dept

If I've learned anything from the past 20 years of J-horror remakes, these documents are the last thing Motherboard's Caroline Haskins will see before she dies.

At least 200 law enforcement agencies around the country have entered into partnerships with Amazon’s home surveillance company Ring, according to an email obtained by Motherboard via public record request.

Ring has never disclosed the exact number of partnerships that it maintains with law enforcement. However, the company has partnered with at least 200 law enforcement agencies, according to notes taken by a police officer during a Ring webinar, which he emailed to himself in April. It’s possible that the number of partnerships has changed since the day the email was sent.

Amazon is slowly but steadily building a surveillance network. It's not just building it for itself. It has Alexa for that. It's building a new one for US law enforcement agencies, free of charge, in exchange for free promotion and future long-term buy-in.

Ring's doorbell cameras are a consumer device, but many, many people are getting them for free from local PDs. The incentives work for everyone… except for those concerned about a private company turning people's houses into de facto police cameras. The police hand out the free cameras to citizens, implicitly suggesting end users could repay their debt to um... society[??] by providing camera footage on demand. Amazon gives these cameras to PDs for next to nothing, asking only that PDs promote Ring cameras and push camera recipients into downloading Amazon's snitch app, Neighbors.

Two hundred law enforcement agencies is a drop in the S3 bucket, considering there's almost 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. But every market starts somewhere, and Amazon is aggressively pursuing this untapped arena with free doorbell cameras, a free law enforcement surveillance portal, and a bunch of incentives that skew heavily in favor of the watchers. Sooner or later, the other Amazon marketing push -- facial recognition -- will get folded in, giving cops the chance to determine who you're hanging out with by using your own doorbell against you.

If you would like a chance to die within seven days of reading them, Motherboard has posted its public records stash here. It adds to the wealth of information showing Amazon is steadily pursuing non-paying customers -- so long as they exhibit a bit of brand loyalty. Its paying customers -- the millions of Prime members -- are now just sting fodder to be used in a never-ending string of disappointing anti-package theft operations.

But Amazon's willingness to tie government agencies into contracts that demand final cut approval on press releases and a certain amount of free publicity blurs the line between public and private. That blurred line, unfortunately, runs right up to the doorsteps of suburban America, converting personal security into police surveillance.

Filed Under: doorbells, law enforcement, police, ring doorbells, surveillance
Companies: amazon, ring

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Facescan, No Service: Welcome To 21st Century Convenience Store Shopping

from the say-cheese-snacks dept

Developers of facial recognition software and their customers are finding new and uninventive ways to use unproven tech to keep people out of places. Law enforcement just wants to watch everyone who's out in the open and strays too close to the right cameras. Security agencies just want to watch everyone leaving or entering the country.

Private businesses, on the other hand, want to limit their interactions with certain people. Landlords are replacing keys/locks with cameras and phone apps. Retailers are implementing facial recognition tech to create digital barriers to entry. Given the tech's error rate, the chance of misidentifying someone as a shoplifter is omnipresent, leaving would-be shoppers in the awkward position of attempting to prove a negative just for the opportunity to give a retailer money.

Large retailers have already played around with the tech, but it's now finding a new home at the smaller end of the retail spectrum. The Seattle Times reports a convenience store chain is kicking the facerec tires.

Jacksons Food Store customer Denise Diharce was surprised to learn that the Tacoma location she frequents for odds and ends is testing a high-tech system that, prior to entry, will compare her to images of previous crime suspects.

Before patrons can enter the basic convenience store at the corner of South 38th Street and Pacific Avenue, a camera under a red awning will take a picture and use artificial intelligence (AI) to decide whether the image matches any in a database of known robbers and shoplifters at that location.

This was during the chain's test run. But it's moving forward with full deployment, seeking to have the systems run during night hours to keep criminals out of its stores. When the system is on, customers will be informed of the system's use -- something they will have a hard time not noticing when a speaker asks them to stand still and point their faces in the direction of the camera.

The system used by the convenience store chain is very much DIY, which probably keeps it at an affordable price point. There's no link to existing criminal databases. Every undesirable member of the public must be hand-flagged by store staff to be added to the database. Limiting the number of faces in the database should help decrease both false positives and false negatives -- something that's a commonly-observed problem with larger deployments linked to much bigger databases composed of both criminal and non-criminal face photos.

In isolation, this use may seem justified. Convenience stores tend to get robbed more frequently than other retailers and anything that adds a bit of safety for employees is probably a good thing. But it can't be viewed in isolation -- not when government agencies at all levels are snapping up facial recognition software from a handful of vendors who are creating massive databases of photos for use by almost anyone -- public or private -- that can afford to purchase the tech.

The steady creep of surveillance tech makes people more accepting of even more serious encroachments on their privacy -- or just their ability to move around in public without being "noticed" by dozens of cameras linked to dozens of databases.

Filed Under: convenience stores, crime, facial recognition, law enforcement, privacy, shoplifting

City Of San Francisco Bans Use Of Facial Recognition Tech By Government Agencies

from the FaceBlock dept

San Francisco is getting out ahead of the tech curve. Instead of waiting until after law enforcement had already deployed a suite of surveillance tools, city legislators have passed a ban on facial recognition tech by government agencies.

San Francisco, long at the heart of the technology revolution, took a stand against potential abuse on Tuesday by banning the use of facial recognition software by the police and other agencies.

The action, which came in an 8-to-1 vote by the Board of Supervisors, makes San Francisco the first major American city to block a tool that many police forces are turning to in the search for both small-time criminal suspects and perpetrators of mass carnage.

This move is being applauded by privacy and rights activists. Obviously, it has it critics as well. But the argument made here is pretty much a non-starter.

“It is ridiculous to deny the value of this technology in securing airports and border installations,” said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University. “It is hard to deny that there is a public safety value to this technology.”

The ban doesn't affect federal agencies so the borders and airports will be just as protected as they ever were by software known mostly for its false positive rates. And in San Francisco, the use of facial recognition tech by law enforcement is -- and apparently will remain -- theoretical. To date, no local law enforcement agency has deployed facial recognition tech in San Francisco.

But the ban [PDF] also prevents local cops from pulling info from outside databases compiled using facial recognition tech, which means there won't be any backdoor searches for faces. This whole package of preemptives isn't popular with local cops… or at least not with their union representation.

[T]he San Francisco Police Officers Association, an officers’ union, said the ban would hinder their members’ efforts to investigate crime.

“Although we understand that it’s not a 100 percent accurate technology yet, it’s still evolving,” said Tony Montoya, the president of the association. “I think it has been successful in at least providing leads to criminal investigators.”

Upon information but mostly belief, the SFPOA touts the success of a tool it's never used and backs it with facts not in evidence. Undeniably, facial recognition software has been used to capture criminals. But there's little suggesting it's a regular occurrence, much less one that offsets citizens' long-held beliefs that their commutes in public should not become the tech equivalent of being tailed by police officers at all times.

Bells are easier to ring than un-ring. The city's decision to ring the ban bell before the deployment of facial recognition tech by local agencies shoves the burden on law enforcement to show it can be trusted with the surveillance tech it already has before it starts asking for this ban to be rolled back. Government agencies know better than most how much of an uphill battle repeals are. The SFPD lost before it even knew it was playing.

Filed Under: facial recognition, law enforcement, san francisco

ICE, CBP Want To Sit With The Adults, Angling For Entrance Into The Intelligence Community

from the all-about-foreigners-but-operating-domestically dept

Has the DHS been trying to put the "IC" in ICE? A letter reviewed by Betsy Woodruff of The Daily Beast seems to indicate ICE is possibly now part of the "Intelligence Community," bringing it in line with the FBI, CIA, and others who have access to the NSA's collections.

The revelation came in a letter that David Glawe, DHS’ undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, wrote to Congress late last year. This letter, the contents of which have not been previously reported, sheds new light on ICE’s relationship with the 17 U.S. government organizations that collect and analyze intelligence, known collectively as the Intelligence Community or IC.

It's no secret ICE wants in. Previous reporting by The Daily Beast shows ICE and CBP both felt they had something to offer the Intelligence Community. Both agencies collect a lot of data on travelers and visitors, and the latter agency is cloning the contents of electronic devices (phones, laptops, etc.) with increasing frequency.

This attempt to cozy up to the IC was noticed by members of Congress, who asked for clarification on ICE's intents and partnerships. This led to a letter from David Glawe the Beast reviewed -- sent late last year -- claiming ICE's application for membership had been declined.

“The Secretary of Homeland Security and I agree that this is not the right time to pursue potential IC membership for CBP and ICE,” he wrote.

That's what part of the letter states. The rest of it, however, isn't nearly as clear. As Woodruff points out, Glawe's answer is filled with jargon, making it difficult to parse ICE/CBP's links to the IC. But there's enough contained in the letter to make it appear as though ICE/CBP are doing exactly the thing David Glawe says they're not doing. The letter refers to ICE's "enhanced intelligence capabilities," which include "collection." This could be referring to some unreported programs ICE is running or new tech it's deployed. But it also could mean what it says literally: that ICE is tapping into the IC's collections.

This densely-worded flow of contradictions has raised concerns in the civil liberties community. (It should raise concerns elsewhere, but it almost always starts here.) What it sounds like is potentially-unlawful domestic surveillance.

“I’m curious about the phrases ‘fuses intelligence into operational functions’ and ‘activities to inform actions,’ which sound like there is some type of information sharing arrangement going on,” said Jake Laperruque, a lawyer for the Project on Government Oversight who focuses on privacy and surveillance. “If information is coming from PATRIOT Act Sec. 215 or FISA Section 702, that would be a huge controversy.”

Domestic surveillance in the interest of enforcing immigration laws would be a new twist on an old formula. Other IC components already have access to NSA data stores, which allow them to perform backdoor searches on domestic data and communications. ICE operates domestically but targets foreign persons here unlawfully. That novel blend will make blurring the lines on access to domestic communications and data that much easier.

Added to this mix is the CBP's newfound enthusiasm for demanding social media account passwords and performing forensic searches of electronic devices. These two initiatives routinely ensnare US citizens and others here legally. With an IC partnership, domestic surveillance would expand -- all under the theory that anything shared will result in better national security.

The Daily Beast has asked the DHS for clarification on the data collection it already performs as well as its "enhanced capabilities" via its connection to the Intelligence Community. The agency has yet to comment on Glawe's cryptic, but worrisome, response to Congressional questions. There's a good chance any answers provided will be just as cryptic and/or composed mainly of non-denial denials. This administration has made border security a priority. This is the ideal environment for expanding the IC to include immigration agencies. And once they're in, they'll stay in, no matter who's running the White House in the future.

Filed Under: cbp, dhs, ice, intelligence, intelligence community, law enforcement, surveillance

FamilyTreeDNA Deputizes Itself, Starts Pitching DNA Matching Services To Law Enforcement

from the FamilyIndictmentDNA dept

One DNA-matching company has decided it's going to corner an under-served market: US law enforcement. FamilyTreeDNA -- last seen here opening up its database to the FBI without informing its users first -- is actively pitching its services to law enforcement.

The television spot, to air in San Diego first, asks anyone who has had a direct-to-consumer DNA test from another company, like 23andMe or Ancestry.com, to upload a copy so that law enforcement can spot any connections to DNA found at crime scenes.

The advertisement features Ed Smart, father of Elizabeth Smart, a Salt Lake City teen who was abducted in 2002 but later found alive. “If you are one of the millions of people who have taken a DNA test, your help can provide the missing link,” he says in the spot.

Welcome to FamilyTreeDNA's cooperating witness program -- one it profits from by selling information customers give it to law enforcement. The tug at the heartstrings is a nice touch. FamilyTreeDNA is finally being upfront with users about its intentions for their DNA samples. This is due to its founder deciding -- without consulting his customers -- that they're all as willing as he is to convert your DNA samples into public goods.

Bennett Greenspan, the firm’s founder, said he had decided he had a moral obligation to help solve old murders and rapes. Now he thinks that customers will agree and make their DNA available specifically to help out.

FamilyTreeDNA sounds like it's finally going to seek consent from its customers, but only after having abused their trust once and under the assumption they're all going to play ball. While some DNA companies like 23andMe are insisting on at least a subpoena before handing over access to DNA database search results, other companies are staying quiet about law enforcement access or specifically targeting law enforcement agencies with ads promising to help them work through their cold case files.

Consent is great, but it's never going to be complete consent, no matter how FamilyTreeDNA shapes the argument. As Elizabeth Joh points out at Slate, there's a whole lot of people involved who will never be asked for their consent once a customer agrees to allow DNA-matching sites to hand over their samples to law enforcement.

[W]hen you volunteer your DNA sample, you’re volunteering your genetic family tree, without having asked your parents, siblings, cousins, and distant cousins if they agree. That upends the usual way we think about providing information to law enforcement. You can’t give the police lawful consent to search your third cousin’s house, even if your third cousin (who you may never have met) is suspected of having been involved in a serious crime. Why are we allowing a distant relative to grant police permission to your DNA?

There's no informed consent happening here. Customers are being treated as data points law enforcement can peruse at its leisure. A customer who agrees to be a good citizen (by clicking OK on a submission box on a private company's website) may learn later their sample was used to lock up a close relative. Some people will be fine with this outcome. Others may regret being the critical piece of evidence used to incarcerate one of their relatives.

Whatever the case is, very few companies are being upfront about the effects of opening up database access to law enforcement. FamilyTreeDNA is using a crime victim's parent and the founder's Team Blue sympathies to hustle its customers towards compliance. Users who don't like this turn of events will likely find it far more difficult to remove their DNA from FamilyTreeDNA's database than simply hold their nose and become an willing part of this partnership.

Filed Under: dna, law enforcement, privacy
Companies: familytreedna

Court Documents Show Canadian Law Enforcement Operated Stingrays Indiscriminately, Sweeping Up Thousands Of Innocent Phone Owners

from the bleeding-edge-meets-zero-fucks-given dept

A wide-ranging criminal investigation involving eleven suspects has resulted in the reluctant disclosure of Stingray data by Canadian law enforcement. The Toronto PD and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police joined forces to deploy a surveillance dragnet that swept up thousands of innocent Canadians, as Kate Allen reports for the Toronto Star.

Toronto police and RCMP officers deploying controversial “Stingray” surveillance technology over a two-month period swept up identifying cellphone data on more than 20,000 bystanders at malls, public parks and even a children’s toy store.

As police sought cellphone data for 11 suspects in a 2014 investigation, they deployed a Stingray — also known as an IMSI catcher — at three dozen locations, including the middle of Yorkville, at the Dufferin Mall, at Vaughan Mills Mall, near Trinity Bellwoods Park, near Kensington Market, and at a Toys ‘R’ Us store in Richmond Hill.

These sweeps occurred years before either law enforcement agency admitted to possessing and deploying Stingray devices. In prior years, Canadian prosecutors dropped charges rather than discuss the devices in open court. This case must have been too big to let go. It involved 50 raids, 112 arrests, and a plethora of charges ranging from gun possession to murder.

Multiple defendants are now challenging the evidence derived from the multiple Stingray deployments, arguing that it was gathered unlawfully. The courts may decide to see it the defendants' way, but it's unlikely these deployments broke the agencies' own policies. Pretty much every law enforcement agency anywhere that has acquired a Stingray has deployed first and developed policies after their Stingray use could no longer be kept secret. The agencies involved here are no exception:

An RCMP spokesperson said that policy regarding deployment and resting time is “still being developed,” and that interim guidelines state that the devices will generally operate for three minutes, though may be operated for longer periods under certain circumstances and if permitted by a judge.

From what's contained in the tracking logs submitted as evidence in these cases, there appears to have been very little done to limit the tracking of non-suspects.

According to the logs, police deployed the device at three dozen locations between March 18 and May 23, 2014. In all, the device logged approximately 25,000 captures. The same cellphones may have been captured more than once in that time, since police used the device multiple times at some locations; with those repeat locations excluded, a minimum of 20,000 bystanders in Toronto and the GTA saw their cellphone data swept up.

At one location -- a condo where a target was suspected to live -- law enforcement operated the device for nearly ten minutes, sweeping up 1,400 cellphones.

Many of the logs show violations of the limitations law enforcement set for itself when applying for a warrant. The officer obtaining the affidavit failed to mention the device's ability to act as a tracking device. The officer also stated the device would only be operated for three minutes at a time, followed by two minutes of "rest" -- a minor concession meant to limit the impact on phone operation in the area. Instead of doing either of these things, officers switched frequencies every three minutes, running the device pretty much uninterrupted during each deployment.

This whole thing started out with the RCMP farming out the warrant request to a novice -- one who probably swore to his own "training and expertise" while combining boilerplate cribbed from other warrants with his subject matter inexperience.

According to court documents, the Toronto police sergeant who obtained the warrant testified he had never used an IMSI catcher before, and that he copied and pasted a set of “standard” wording used in a warrant for a previous case. The RCMP’s program manager for deployment of the technology testified that the standard wording was written “by people that are not operators of the equipment so they didn’t fully understand the capabilities and how it operated.”

To reiterate: the Stingrays were (and are) being deployed in an operational policy vacuum. According to a statement given to the Star, the policies the RCMP said it would draw up after it publicly admitted it owned and used Stingrays still aren't in place. An interim policy, instituted in 2017, is the only internal legal framework guiding Stingray use. In practice, this means the RCMP isn't controlling deployments. In this case, it also meant sending an amateur to do a professional's job when it came to securing a warrant. Put it all together and you have the mess both law enforcement agencies created by simply assuming no one would ever find out they'd been using these devices.

Filed Under: canada, law enforcement, privacy, stingray, surveillance

Vigilant And Its Customers Are Lying About ICE's Access To Plate Records

from the burying-the-truth-with-talking-points dept

Everyone's hooking up ICE with automatic license plate reader (ALPR) data. And everyone's misleading the public about it, starting with ALPR manufacturer, Vigilant. The EFF has been investigating California law enforcement's data sharing claims with relation to its Vigilant ALPRs and finding their public statements are directly contradicted by internal communications obtained with public records requests.

Vigilant tries to keep as much information about data sharing under wraps by forcing purchasers to sign restrictive non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements. Law enforcement agencies are secretive by default, so this allows them to double down on opacity. Vigilant has taken a hardline approach to negative press, threatening journalists with lawsuits for asking too many questions and publishing the answers they've received.

Last summer, EFF volunteer Zoe Wheatcroft, a high school student in Mesa, Ariz., discovered a curious document on a website belonging to the Irvine Company, a real estate developer based in Orange County. The document showed that private security patrols were using ALPR to gather data on customers at Irvine Company-owned shopping malls . As EFF reported, Irvine Company then transferred that information to Vigilant Solutions, a controversial ALPR vendor well-known for selling data to ICE.

We asked the mall operator, Irvine Company, to explain itself, but it refused to answer questions. However, after EFF published its report, Irvine Company told reporters ALPR data was not shared with ICE, but only three local police departments. Then Vigilant Solutions issued a press release saying “the entire premise of the article is false,” and accused EFF of “creating fake news.” Vigilant Solutions also demanded we retract the post and apologize, saying that it was “evaluating potential legal claims” against EFF.

The EFF's reporting has been backed up by emails obtained by the ACLU that show Irvine Company was one of many agencies sharing ALPR data with ICE. It was also sharing it with other law enforcement agencies beyond the three listed in a statement given to the EFF. One of the agencies Irvine Company shared data with was an Orange County fusion center -- a joint anti-terrorism effort headed up by the DHS. The fusion center fed the Vigilant ALPR data to other California law enforcement agencies, along with ICE. The emails show someone at Irvine Company sending PDFs of plate records directly to an ICE agent, violating the confines of its data-sharing agreement and allowing the ICE agent to bypass internal controls on plate data access.

Vigilant continues to deny its data is being handed out to ICE by California law enforcement agencies. Meanwhile, Irvine Company has quietly terminated its contract with Vigilant and refuses to discuss its data sharing any further. The EFF has passed this information on to Motorola. Motorola acquired Vigilant earlier this year and may have relied on Vigilant's misrepresentations about its customers and their data sharing when vetting this purchase. When reached for comment by the EFF, Motorola didn't sound too happy about ICE's access to plate records.

We are aware of the ACLU of Northern California's recent report on license plate recognition data and assertions regarding data access by the Irvine Company. The referenced incident predates Motorola Solutions' ownership of Vigilant Solutions, and we are currently working with Vigilant to assess the situation in greater detail.

Motorola Solutions is committed to the highest standard of integrity and data protection, which includes ensuring that vehicle location data is accessed only by authorized law enforcement agencies in accordance with applicable laws and industry standards. We also are committed to working with our customers and partners to ensure that use of vehicle location data hosted in our database is appropriately safeguarded to minimize the potential for misuse by any person.

Motorola may have a $445 million PR nightmare on its hands. Or it may just be happy to be making some money from domestic surveillance equipment. Vigilant also offers facial recognition tech. Given the tech's history, this likely won't be the last time Vigilant is on the receiving end of negative press.

But given the dishonesty of everyone involved, it's time for California's government to step up and start performing some actual oversight. The EFF is calling for an investigation of Vigilant and its law enforcement partners, with an eye on determining the extent of these data-sharing partnerships and their impact on the general public.

Filed Under: alprs, ice, law enforcement, license plate readers, license plate records
Companies: vigilant