EPIC and ACLU acquired via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documentation of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) trial access to the National Vehicle Locator Service (NVLS) license plate reader database in the 2010-2012 period, operated by Vigilant Solutions on the LEARN platform.
In December of 2017, Vigilant Solutions entered into a contract with ICE offering access to NVLS. That contract set off significant alarm among municipal customers of Vigilant Solutions using LEARN and NVLS, several in sanctuary jurisdictions. Vigilant sent out several memos to their customers, in the wake of the Verge article detailing the contract and the City of Alameda’s decision not to move ahead with an expansion of their Vigilant LPR system to install fixed scanners on every entrance and exit to the island.
Vigilant Solutions also inked a contract with Thomson Reuters to include Vigilant LPR scans in their CLEAR platform. Thomson Reuters has granted ICE access to CLEAR, which is a vast public records database full of personally identifying information for ERO (enforcement and removal operations) activities and for asset forfeiture operations and CLEAR data has been incorporated into Palantir’s FALCON database.
We are providing these FOIA documents for easy public access. They are already posted elsewhere on the Internet in longer and less accessible versions.
EPIC ICE-NVLS FOIA Part 1
EPIC ICE-NVLS FOIA Part 2
EPIC ICE-NVLS FOIA -Part 3
how-dhs-is-using-license-plate-information
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