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This is a long report, but stunning in demonstrating how far we are going to create a fascist police state in the United States. It includes a video documenting a traffic stop initiated by secret cameras.Well, this sucks. Part of Stephen Miller’s and Donald Trump’s creation of a police state in the United States: “They are collecting mass amounts of information about who people are, where they go, what they do, and who they know … engaging in dragnet surveillance of Americans on the streets, on the highways, in their cities, in their communities,” Nicole Ozer, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco, said in response to the AP’s findings. “These surveillance systems do not make communities safer.”
Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with 'suspicious' travel patterns
The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious.
The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.
The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.
Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.
Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years.
The Border Patrol has recently grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies have asked Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show.
This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation. Under the Trump administration’s heightened immigration enforcement efforts, CBP is now poised to get more than $2.7 billion to build out border surveillance systems such as the license plate reader program by layering in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
The result is a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: cars.
This investigation, the first to reveal details of how the program works on America’s roads, is based on interviews with eight former government officials with direct knowledge of the program who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, as well as dozens of federal, state and local officials, attorneys and privacy experts. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of court and government documents, state grant and law enforcement data, and arrest reports.
The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, former officials say, even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels.
The Border Patrol has defined its own criteria for which drivers’ behavior should be deemed suspicious or tied to drug or human trafficking, stopping people for anything from driving on backcountry roads, being in a rental car or making short trips to the border region. The agency’s network of cameras now extends along the southern border in Texas, Arizona and California, and also monitors drivers traveling near the U.S.-Canada border.
And it reaches far into the interior, impacting residents of big metropolitan areas and people driving to and from large cities such as Chicago and Detroit, as well as from Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Houston to and from the Mexican border region. In one example, AP found the agency has placed at least four cameras in the greater Phoenix area over the years, one of which was more than 120 miles (193 kilometers) from the Mexican frontier, beyond the agency’s usual jurisdiction of 100 miles (161 kilometers) from a land or sea border. The AP also identified several camera locations in metropolitan Detroit, as well as one placed near the Michigan-Indiana border to capture traffic headed towards Chicago or Gary, Indiana, or other nearby destinations.
Wow. That's crazy ****Well, this sucks. Part of Stephen Miller’s and Donald Trump’s creation of a police state in the United States: “They are collecting mass amounts of information about who people are, where they go, what they do, and who they know … engaging in dragnet surveillance of Americans on the streets, on the highways, in their cities, in their communities,” Nicole Ozer, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco, said in response to the AP’s findings. “These surveillance systems do not make communities safer.”
Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with 'suspicious' travel patterns
The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious.
The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.
The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.
Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.
Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years.
The Border Patrol has recently grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies have asked Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show.
This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation. Under the Trump administration’s heightened immigration enforcement efforts, CBP is now poised to get more than $2.7 billion to build out border surveillance systems such as the license plate reader program by layering in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
The result is a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: cars.
This investigation, the first to reveal details of how the program works on America’s roads, is based on interviews with eight former government officials with direct knowledge of the program who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, as well as dozens of federal, state and local officials, attorneys and privacy experts. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of court and government documents, state grant and law enforcement data, and arrest reports.
The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, former officials say, even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels.
The Border Patrol has defined its own criteria for which drivers’ behavior should be deemed suspicious or tied to drug or human trafficking, stopping people for anything from driving on backcountry roads, being in a rental car or making short trips to the border region. The agency’s network of cameras now extends along the southern border in Texas, Arizona and California, and also monitors drivers traveling near the U.S.-Canada border.
And it reaches far into the interior, impacting residents of big metropolitan areas and people driving to and from large cities such as Chicago and Detroit, as well as from Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Houston to and from the Mexican border region. In one example, AP found the agency has placed at least four cameras in the greater Phoenix area over the years, one of which was more than 120 miles (193 kilometers) from the Mexican frontier, beyond the agency’s usual jurisdiction of 100 miles (161 kilometers) from a land or sea border. The AP also identified several camera locations in metropolitan Detroit, as well as one placed near the Michigan-Indiana border to capture traffic headed towards Chicago or Gary, Indiana, or other nearby destinations.
