Justice Department spies on millions of cars: WSJ
15 hours ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Justice Department has been secretly gathering and storing hundreds of millions of records about motorists in an effort to build a national database that tracks the movement of vehicles across the country, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
The newspaper said the main aim of the license
plate tracking program run by the Drug Enforcement Administration was to seize
automobiles, money and other assets to fight drug trafficking, according to one
government document.
But the use of the database had expanded to
include hunting for vehicles linked to other possible crimes, including
kidnapping, killings and rape suspects, the paper said, citing current and
former officials and government documents.
While U.S. officials have said they track
vehicles near the Mexican border to combat drug cartels, it had not been
previously revealed the DEA had been working to expand the database
"throughout the United States," the Journal said, citing an email.
It said many state and local law enforcement
agencies were using the database for a variety of investigations, the paper
said.
It added it was unclear if any court oversaw or
approved the program.
The Journal quoted Senator Patrick Leahy, the
senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, as saying the use of license
plate readers "raises significant privacy concerns."
A spokesman for the Justice Department, which
oversees the DEA, told the paper the program complied 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 was quoted as saying.
(Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Peter Cooney)
1 comment:
Not news at all.
Just track the registration and you can track the car's proximity in any county.
All the other cameras including red light cameras could have the ability to do more than just snapshots, so tracking people is not news.
Most will give up their freedom to just 'get along' in the control system and then say, 'nothing will happen; no one will save us.'
No one will save 'you'. You are such a danger to yourself, why would anyone pull you out of a hole for you to jump right back in and say 'save me', save me.
My property is not registered.
When I studied the code and the registration contract was renewed yearly, I wanted to know what I was renewing every year. If I still have the property, I'd think the registration would last as long as I had the property.
Found out registration has nothing to do with the property, it's a contract between you and the state to use the property in commerce. They regulate commerce, if you aren't delivering newspapers or pizzas, or any other goods with your property and not using it in commerce, then you are giving them money to register for the 'privilege' to do it when you get ready to do it.
Oh and if the property does not belong to you, ie, you borrowed money to pay for it, and you don't have clear title, well you ARE moving property in commerce, it's someone else's property and they are letting you use it in commerce until you can make it private by paying it off. So you better keep renewing that contract cause the real owner can always send a tow truck to pick up their property for many reasons including not registering it, not insuring it, and not delivering the payments for it.
Post a Comment