Pubdate: Tue, 27 Jan 2015
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Devlin Barrett

U.S. SPIES ON MILLIONS OF CARS

DEA Uses License-Plate Readers to Build Database for Federal, Local Authorities

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has been building a national 
database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the 
U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and 
stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists, according to 
current and former officials and government documents.

The primary goal of the license-plate tracking program, run by the 
Drug Enforcement Administration, is to seize cars, cash and other 
assets to combat drug trafficking, according to one government 
document. But the database's use has expanded to hunt for vehicles 
associated with numerous other potential crimes, from kidnappings to 
killings to rape suspects, say people familiar with the matter.

Officials have publicly said that they track vehicles near the border 
with Mexico to help fight drug cartels. What hasn't been previously 
disclosed is that the DEA has spent years working to expand the 
database "throughout the United States," according to one email 
reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Many state and local law-enforcement agencies are accessing the 
database for a variety of investigations, according to people 
familiar with the program, putting a wealth of information in the 
hands of local officials who can track vehicles in real time on major roadways.

The database raises new questions about privacy and the scope of 
government surveillance. The existence of the program and its 
expansion were described in interviews with current and former 
government officials, and in documents obtained by the American Civil 
Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act request and 
reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It is unclear if any court 
oversees or approves the intelligence-gathering.

A spokesman for Justice Department, which includes the DEA, said the 
program complies with federal law. "It is not new that the DEA uses 
the license-plate reader program to arrest criminals and stop the 
flow of drugs in areas of high trafficking intensity," the spokesman said.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary 
Committee, said the government's use of license-plate readers "raises 
significant privacy concerns. The fact that this intrusive technology 
is potentially being used to expand the reach of the government's 
asset-forfeiture efforts is of even greater concern."

The senator called for "additional accountability" and said Americans 
shouldn't have to fear " their locations and movements are constantly 
being tracked and stored in a massive government database."

The DEA program collects data about vehicle movements, including 
time, direction and location, from high-tech cameras placed 
strategically on major highways. Many devices also record visual 
images of drivers and passengers, which are sometimes clear enough 
for investigators to confirm identities, according to DEA documents 
and people familiar with the program.

The documents show that the DEA also uses license-plate readers 
operated by state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies to feed 
into its own network and create a far-reaching, constantly updating 
database of electronic eyes scanning traffic on the roads to steer 
police toward suspects.

The law-enforcement scanners are different from those used to collect tolls.

By 2011, the DEA had about 100 cameras feeding into the database, the 
documents show. On Interstate 95 in New Jersey, license-plate readers 
feed data to the DEA - giving law-enforcement personnel around the 
country the ability to search for a suspect vehicle on one of the 
country's busiest highways. One undated internal document shows the 
program also gathers data from license-plate readers in Florida and Georgia.

"Any database that collects detailed location information about 
Americans not suspected of crimes raises very serious privacy 
questions," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU. 
"It's unconscionable that technology with such far-reaching potential 
would be deployed in such secrecy. People might disagree about 
exactly how we should use such powerful surveillance technologies, 
but it should be democratically decided, it shouldn't be done in secret."

License-plate readers are already used in the U.S. by companies to 
collect debts and repossess vehicles, and by local police departments 
to solve crimes.

In 2010, the DEA said in internal documents that the database aided 
in the seizure of 98 kilograms of cocaine, 8,336 kilograms of 
marijuana and the collection of $866,380. It also has been connected 
to the Amber Alert system, to help authorities find abducted 
children, according to people familiar with the program.

One email written in 2010 said the primary purpose of the program was 
asset forfeiture""a controversial practice in which law-enforcement 
agencies seize cars, cash and other valuables from suspected 
criminals. The practice is increasingly coming under attack because 
of instances when law-enforcement officers take such assets without 
evidence of a crime.

The document said, "DEA has designed this program to assist with 
locating, identifying, and seizing bulk currency, guns, and other 
illicit contraband moving along the southwest border and throughout 
the United States. With that said, we want to insure we can collect 
and manage all the data and IT responsibilities that will come with 
the work to insure the program meets its goals, of which asset 
forfeiture is primary.'

A number of lawmakers have been planning to offer legislation to rein 
in what they call abuses of asset-forfeiture laws. The Justice 
Department recently announced it was ending its role in one type of 
asset seizure, known as "adoptions," a process by which local 
officials take property, then have the assets adopted and sold by the 
federal government. Often, that allows the local agency to keep a 
higher percentage of the money from the seizure. The policy change 
doesn't affect the bulk of asset seizures in the U.S.

The national vehicle database program was launched in 2008 and opened 
to participating state and local authorities a year later. The 
initial focus was on tracking cars moving on or near the Southwest 
border, in order to follow the movements of drugs and drug money, 
according to officials and documents. Requests to search the database 
are handled by the El Paso Intelligence Center in Texas, which is 
known as EPIC in law enforcement circles. EPIC is staffed around the 
clock to both take in and send out information about "hits" on 
requested license plates.

The effort began in border states like Arizona, California, Nevada, 
New Mexico and Texas, but the goal has always been expansion, 
according to current and former federal officials and documents. 
Officials wouldn't say how many other states are now feeding data 
into the system, citing concerns that disclosing such information 
could help criminals avoid detection.

The federal program hasn't always been embraced by states. At a 2012 
hearing, Utah lawmakers balked when DEA officials sought to have 
license-plate readers in the state feed into the database - one of 
the few times the agency has provided even limited facts about the 
program. That same year, a DEA official made a general reference to 
the program at a congressional field hearing about the Southwest 
border, saying it was built to monitor and target vehicles used to 
transport bulk cash and other contraband.

Under questioning from Utah lawmakers, the agency said the program 
began with an effort to track drug shipments on the Southwest border, 
and the government wanted to add monitors on major drug-trafficking 
routes like Utah's Interstate 15, in order to hunt a wide array of 
criminals. That alarmed privacy advocates, who noted at the time that 
the DEA's map of major drug routes included most of the national 
highway system.

The agency has reduced the time it holds the data from two years to 3 
months, according to a Justice Department spokesman.

The EPIC database allows any police agency that participates to 
quickly search records of many states for information about a 
vehicle. One May 2010 redacted email says: "Anyone can request 
information from our [license-plate reader] program, federal, state, 
or local, just need to be a vetted EPIC user."|"

The data are also shared with U.S. border officials, according to an 
undated memorandum of understanding between the DEA and Customs and 
Border Protection officials. That document shows the two agencies 
specifically said that lawmakers might never specifically fund the 
work, stating: "this in no way implies that Congress will appropriate 
funds for such expenditures."

The disclosure of the DEA's license-plate reader database comes on 
the heels of other revelations in recent months about the Justice 
Department, as well as the agencies it runs, gathering data about 
innocent Americans as it searches for criminals.

In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Marshals 
Service flies planes carrying devices that mimic cellphone towers in 
order to scan the identifying information of Americans' phones as it 
searches for criminal suspects and fugitives. Justice Department 
officials have said the program is legal.

Earlier this month, the DEA filed court documents indicating that for 
more than a decade it had gathered the phone records of Americans 
calling foreign countries, without judicial oversight, to sift 
through that data looking for drug suspects. That program was canceled in 2013.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom