SurveillanceICE offices subscribed to national license-plate database in violation of DHS policy

In February, DHS officials dropped a controversial bid which would have allowed the department to access a national license-plate database, citing possible violation of Americans’ civil liberties. Soon after, DHS officials established a policy which required similar plans to be reviewed by department privacy officers. TheWashington Post now reports that roughly two months after that policy was put in place, officials with DHS’s Newark and Houston field offices of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency purchased subscriptions for a commercially run national license-plate database without approval from DHS’ privacy office.

Privacy advocates oppose plans to grant DHS access to national license-plate databases because the information can be abused to track the movements of citizens who are not under criminal investigation. ICE officials, however, claim that the field office subscriptions will be used for ongoing criminal investigations for which they had earlier access to the database, noting that the subscription is not for civil immigration enforcement purposes. The Homeland Security News Wire also reported in February that ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen, said the database would only be accessed in relation to ongoing criminal investigations or to locate wanted individuals. “As a tool, it was very useful,” said an ICE official who has worked criminal investigations in the Dallas field office. “We were after illegal aliens who were wanted on aggravated felonies or who had warrants as drug dealers. It helped narrow down to an apartment complex or city block. You locate the vehicle, then you can start watching the vehicle to find the person. It was very successful.”

The Post also reports that interviews and e-mail correspondence obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal an internal debate within ICE regarding the use of a national license-plate database. “From what I can tell, this data is collected privately and used by law enforcement without the public’s knowledge,” ICE privacy officer Lyn Rahilly wrote in a January 2011 e-mail to an official in ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division. “There is no accountability to the public as to how the data is collected, how much is collected, how long it is retained, how it is used or what rights affected users might have.” Rahilly added that “I certainly understand why law enforcement would want to use this dataset. . . . But the public policy, privacy and civil liberties issues associated with its use are not insignificant.”

According to Christensen, over the past six months, the agency, its privacy office, and the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties have been reviewing ICE’s practices and policies on the use of national license-plate databases. She added that in 2012, ICE attorneys determined that there were no legal obstacles “with respect to privacy and data retention laws” to using the database “particularly given its widespread use by other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the furtherance of ongoing criminal investigations and fugitive cases.”

Law enforcement units across the country have been using commercial license-plate databases for years to track down fugitives, drug dealers, and other criminals. In addition to ICE, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the FBI all have subscriptions with Vigilant Solutions, the California-based firm that supplies the largest commercial collection of license-plate data in the country, offered exclusively to law enforcement. EPIC reports that at least ten ICE field offices including Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles, Vermont, San Antonio, Chicago, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. have had access to Vigilant’s database since 2011.