Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday January 27 2018, @10:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the Big-Brother-was-polite dept.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil libertarians.

For civil liberties groups, the implications go far beyond immigration. "There are people circulating in our society who are undocumented," says senior policy analyst Jay Stanley, who studies license plate readers with the ACLU. "Are we as a society, out of our desire to find those people, willing to let our government create an infrastructure that will track all of us?"

Meanwhile, countermeasures are already deployed, and obfuscated:

Known as "Bienvenidos," the Spanish word for "Welcome," the app purports to help navigate the treacherous U.S.-Mexico border by alerting users to a range of obstacles and threats.

The anonymous creators of Bienvenidos attempted to pitch their app this month to numerous media outlets before suddenly reversing their announcement. A YouTube video explaining the technology was inexplicably deleted while the Bienvenidos website became password-protected.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @01:53PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @01:53PM (#629438)

    But it will keep coming back with slightly different language, and different buzz words, until it is passed.

    Cool. With so many targets, Americans will become great sharp-shooters when they feel they had enough.
    Or if they feel.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @11:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @11:30PM (#630095)

    Yeah, just another practice target like the streetlights.