ICE twice breached privacy policy with license-plate database

[alp227]

After the Department of Homeland Security canceled a plan for broad law enforcement access to a national license-plate tracking system in February, officials established a policy that required similar plans be vetted by department privacy officers to ensure they do not violate Americans’ civil liberties.

Two months later, however, officials with DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency bypassed the privacy office in purchasing a one-year subscription for a commercially run national database for its Newark field office, according to public contract data and department officials. In June, ICE breached the policy again by approving a similar subscription for its Houston field office. The database contains more than 2.5 billion records.

The policy was created after Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who oversees ICE, canceled a solicitation that could have given ICE field offices across the country — more than 12,000 personnel — access to a national license-plate database.

That solicitation had prompted a backlash from privacy advocates who have raised concerns that the information can be abused to track the past and current movements of ordinary citizens who are under no criminal suspicion. Advocates said the failure to follow procedures fits a pattern in which concerns over privacy are overlooked as law enforcement officials clamor for subscriptions to massive license-plate tracking databases.

full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ice-twice-breached-privacy-policy-with-license-plate-database/2014/10/29/df3a8e6c-5096-11e4-8c24-487e92bc997b_story.html

[Newsjock]

1. When do we say ENOUGH

But when we do finally say ENOUGH, they'll just laugh in our face. And strip-search us by the side of the road along I-8 while the dogs go through our vehicles.