Since at least 2010, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has been expanding a regional license plate reader (LPR) program to the entire United States. Previously the program was only known to be concentrated in the border region of the American Southwest.
The revelation comes from new documents obtained and published late Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents also show the DEA captured over 793 million license plates from May 2009 through May 2013 with the stated goal of drug-related asset forfeiture.
“The government has essentially created a program of mass tracking,” Catherine Crump, a former ACLU lawyer who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, told Ars. “The US has created a system where the government can track you and the American public simply has to accept it as a fait accompli.”
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