Repo companies a vast hidden surveillance network across the country

MassPrivateI

Few notice the “spotter car” from Manny Sousa’s repo company as it scours Massachusetts parking lots, looking for vehicles whose owners have defaulted on their loans. Sousa’s unmarked car is part of a technological revolution that goes well beyond the repossession business, transforming any ­industry that wants to check on the whereabouts of ordinary people.

An automated reader attached to the spotter car takes a picture of every ­license plate it passes and sends it to a company in Texas that already has more than 1.8 billion plate scans from vehicles across the country.  

These scans mean big money for Sousa — typically $200 to $400 every time the spotter finds a vehicle that’s stolen or in default — so he runs his spotter around the clock, typically adding 8,000 plate scans to the database in Texas each day.

Private companies were quietly and rapidly finding ways to profit from much larger databases with little public discussion. Digital Recognition Network, with the help of about 400 repossession companies across the United States, has increased the number of ­license scans in its database tenfold since September 2010, and the firm continues to add another 70 million scans per month, according to company disclosures. Digital Recognition’s top rival, Illinois-based MVTRAC, has not disclosed the size of its database, but claimed in a 2012 Wall Street Journal interview to have scans of “a large majority” of vehicles registered in the United States.

Digital Recognition already provides its entire data pool to more than 3,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, free of charge for most searches. The Massachusetts State Police is a registered subscriber, as are the Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, and Quincy ­police departments. Even ­University police like Boston College & Brandeis police have access to the firm’s entire scan database.

Digital Recognition described what it calls good “target environments” for repossession agents, including “malls, movie ­theaters, sporting events, and numerous other locations.” In marketing materials, the firm has indicated that it suggests routes for repossession companies that focus on workplaces and commercial lots during the day and apartment complexes and residential areas at night.

“Honestly, we’ve found random apartment complexes and shopping ­plazas that are sweet spots” where the company can impound multiple vehicles, explains Sousa, the president of New England Associates Inc. in Bridgewater.

“It helps generate other leads,” said Groob, president of American Investigative Services in Brookline. “If a vehicle has been missing, or you need to ­locate a person, this gives us ­another locus to investigate.”

Groob said he would use the database to track a missing person or conduct background inves­tigations for child custody or marital infidelity litigation. Groob said he “absolutely” foresees vehicle location data becom­ing part of private investigators’ standard toolkit.

But the most significant impact of Sousa’s business is far bigger than locating cars whose owners have defaulted on loans: It is the growing database of snapshots showing where Americans were at specific times, information that everyone from private detectives to ­insurers are willing to pay for.
While public debate about the license reading technology has centered on how police should use it, business has eagerly adopted the $10,000 to $17,000 scanners with remarkably few limits.

According to Motorola, one company that sells the Automated License Plate Recognition Systems, police in Long Beach, Calif., used two ALPR-equipped vehicles to search for parking violators. In just 30 days, they located and impounded more than 300 vehicles – collecting over $200,000 in delinquent fines and impound fees. And when the department installed four ALPR systems, they identified 929 lost or stolen license plates, recovered 275 stolen vehicles and made 50 arrests in six months.

Two repossession companies also told BetaBoston that they focus on low-income housing developments, since a significant number of residents are delinquent on their car payments.

“This is just another example of stereotyping,” responded Cambridge Housing Authority deputy executive director ­Michael Johnston, who had never heard of plate scanners before. “But our lots are open, and we don’t have any gated communities in our system, so I don’t know how to prevent it.”

License plate tracking (spying) is not like Instagram:

Massive license plate location database just like Instagram, Digital Recognition Network insists:
Chris Metaxas, CEO of the Digital Recognition Network, one of the major players—probably the most most powerful—in the license plate tracking industry.

During his testimony, Metaxas compared his business to Instagram. Journalist Shawn Musgrave fromBetaBoston reports:

“It’s taking a picture that has no expectation of privacy and is in public view,” said Chris Metaxas, chief executive of Digital Recognition Network based in Fort Worth, Texas, while speaking about the high-speed scans the technology takes of passing vehicles. ”License plate reader technology stores these pictures just like people store pictures on Instagram, which are available for all to see.”

Metaxas was the sole witness to testify against a bill that would regulate use of license plate readers. His company oversees a nationwide network of license plate reader cameras operated by repo agents, many of whom collect their geotagged “pictures” of license plates in shopping mall parking garages, office park lots, and residential parking facilities.

DRN’s database currently stores 1.8 billion vehicle location records, and its network adds 70 million scans each month. Beyond operating a common database of vehicle sightings for the repossession industry, DRN also sells this data and analysis to insurance companies, banks and law enforcement nationwide.

Hold up. Metaxas wants people to take seriously the idea that his license plate tracking business—which until very recently has operated almost entirely in secret from the American public—is just like a widely-used social media network that allows users to take photographs and share them with their friends?

At the risk of indulging this absurd analogy, allow me to clarify some of the differences between DRN and Instagram.

Can you choose whether or not to use the product? Instagram: Yes. DRN: No.

Does it amass billions of records of the driving patterns of ordinary motorists? Instagram: No. DRN: Yes.

Does it sell your driving location history to banks, insurance companies, and police? Instagram: No. DRN: Yes.

Is it a social networking service? Instagram: Yes. DRN: No.

Are all Instagram pictures “available for all to see,” as Metaxas claims? No. Users can make their accounts private.

Are the billions of records in DRN’s database “available for all to see”, as Metaxas (falsely) claims Instagram users’ are? No. The only people who can access this database are those connected to institutions like banks, insurance companies, police departments, and intelligence agencies, or people who have licenses to serve as private investigators. Under current law, you have no legal right to access information DRN holds about you, let alone the millions of other people the company keeps records on.

In short: No, Mr. Metaxas, your massive, nationwide location tracking database is actually nothing like Instagram, a wildly popular social networking service.
http://privacysos.org/node/1343

Vigilant Solutions the company that can track you everywhere:

DHS didn’t need a national license-plate database, because such a database already exists. It’s run by a private company called Vigilant Solutions and ICE and other law enforcement agencies have been dipping into it for years, according to documents obtained by  ACLU Massachusetts. 

According to its website, Vigilant “creates intelligence by merging previously disparate data sets such as fixed and mobile license plate recognition, public records, facial recognition, and more.” In its spare time, it’s suing the state of Utah for passing a law restricting the collection of license plate data.

AlterNet spoke with Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty program at the Massachusetts ACLU, about Vigilant Solutions, law enforcement abuses of privacy and the dangers posed by license plate reader databases.

Kade Crockford: I’m not sure why there was so much confusion about the story. The first references to it I saw were from the right-wing blogosphere and basically the headlines were things like, “DHS plans to build massive license plate reader database!” Naturally I was interested in that because it is a pet obsession of mine. And so I clicked on the solicitation for bids and I actually read it—unlike that many people who wrote about it. And it was pretty clear to me that in fact no, DHS did not intend to build its own nationwide license plate reader database. The solicitation read almost exactly like it was written by the company Vigilant Solutions, a description of a database the company already offers law enforcement nationwide. 
 
So my assumption is that in fact what DHS was doing was going through a relatively mundane bureaucratic procedure that they have to go through in order to apportion funds for the purchase of more subscriptions to this database. 
 
As a document we posted to the ACLU website shows, ICE has been tapping into this database for years. Law enforcement all over the country has been tapping into it. The FBI more than likely does as well. It holds about 2 billion individual license plate records in it, and according to the company it grows almost 100 million plate reads per month and those numbers are just going to keep going up. So ultimately what we’re looking at is a database that contains billions of records and law enforcement has access both for free on a tier one subscription plan, which allows a limited number of searches per week or month and then a tier two subscription service that they have to pay for, which I believe gives unlimited search of the database.  

So it’s false to say that this database is not actually happening as a result of DHS withdrawing the solicitation. More than likely DHS is going to in fact pursue more subscriptions to this database. I would be very, very surprised if [Homeland Security Secretary] Jeh Johnson instructs ICE to never use this database again.

So Vigilant is obviously the leader in this field, it’s the company we have to worry about right now (it also has a sister corporation called Digital Recognition Network that sells this information to insurance companies).

What is not legitimate and not OK is for law enforcement to be tracking innocent people’s movements over a period of months or years or decades or indefinitely. This is not acceptable in a free society, and we believe that courts are ultimately going to make that judgment. It’s just that we shouldn’t wait five or 10 or 20 years until the courts get this question before them. We should act now to update the law to just require the same thing that we want of cops when they go to a cell phone company to get information about where our cell phones have been.

Our argument is that that should be protected by a warrant, and the same should go for license plate data. If the cops collect it themselves, they should only be able to retain it for a limited amount of time. Again, days or weeks, not months or years. And if they’re getting it from a private company like Digital Solutions that they should have to get a warrant for that, in the same way that you have to get a warrant to go to AT&T and demand cell site location information.

As far as we know, there’s nothing stopping police officers from making 1,000 searches a day if they want to, if they have paid for the access. So we want to prevent those kinds of fishing expeditions.

Even though it’s disturbing and very creepy that a private company is tracking you and selling this data to other companies, Vigilant Solutions can’t lock you up and the police can. And so it’s critical that we deal with this immediately. The much more difficult question of how to regulate privately held data sets we’re really just beginning to grapple with. And there are some sort of consumer protection analogues that we might want to think about, but right away the law enforcement question is easy to deal with, and we should deal with it.

New Hampshire’s law bans license plate readers almost entirely front the state, including police use of them. The only license plate readers that are used in the state are at certain bridges. But cops are even prevented from using them in New Hampshire. There are department policies in places like Ohio, with the Ohio state troopers—they don’t keep any plate data unless it’s a hit, shows evidence of a crime.

So police departments throughout the country are using this technology in very different ways. A good way of explaining the two different ways to use the tool is, one of them is what the Ohio state patrol is doing, which is to automate a process that law enforcement has always done which is to check license plates against lists of stolen cars, etc. And to go after the people if there’s some sort of allegation. The second way of using license plate readers is what Vigilant is doing, and what many law enfacement agencies around the country are doing, which is to use them as intelligence tracking databases. And that is the piece of this technology that we think incompatible with a free society.
Even something that’s not suspicious, like where your girlfriend was last night or to see where the journalist who’s been bothering you about the license plate readers has been hanging out, to see if you can catch them drinking at a bar.
http://www.alternet.org/meet-company-can-track-everywhere-youve-been-and-tell-police-about-it?page=0%2C0

Repo men sue to overturn private license plate reader ban

Private companies that spy on motorists are suing the state of Utah over a law that limits commercial use of automated license plate readers (ALPR, also known as ANPR in Europe). The firms Digital Recognition Network Inc and Vigilant Solutions told the US District Court for the District of Utah that they have a First Amendment right to photograph motorists, identify the vehicle and record the time and GPS coordinates in a searchable database accessible to clients nationwide.

Digital Recognition Network (DRN) mounts license plate reader cameras on tow trucks so it can distribute the collected data to “clients and partners,” usually repossession firms and collection agencies. In Utah, Swift Towing, American Automotive Recovery, Inner Global Recovery and Repros Recovery together spent $120,000 buying license plate reader cameras from the firm. Vigilant Solutions typically offers information from these cameras to law enforcement agencies.

Last year, Utah adopted a ban on license plate readers that only allows their use by law enforcement for “conducting criminal investigations,” by meter maids to issue parking tickets or by toll roads to generate bills. Other uses are prohibited.

“A person or governmental entity may not use an automatic license plate reader system,” Utah Code Section 41-6a-2003 states.

This has forced the license plate reader companies to stop doing business in Utah for fear of being charged with a class B misdemeanor. The companies filed suit in the hopes of turning the cameras back on.

“DRN and Vigilant further seek a preliminary injunction against the application or enforcement of the act so that they can resume their constitutionally protected speech — namely, the dissemination and collection of license-plate data using ALPR systems — in Utah,” DRN attorney J. Ryan Mitchell wrote to the court. “Because of the Act, DRN can no longer disseminate or sell license-plate data collected by ALPR systems in Utah.”

The companies argued the state is not truly interested in protecting privacy since it allows so many intrusive uses of license plate readers, as long as the government is involved. In effect, they argued that the ban on private use hinders the repossession industry’s freedom of expression.

“The act is a content-based speech restriction,” Mitchell wrote. “The illegality of speech under the statute turns on the content of what is being photographed and transmitted through ALPR systems — license-plate information is covered, but other content is not.”

The industry insists that location history data and license plate numbers represent public information, and there is no privacy concern with selling this data. Utah’s attorney general has not filed a formal response to the suit.
http://thenewspaper.com/news/43/4338.asp

http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2014/03/repo-companies-vast-hidden-surveillance.html