by Mike Katz-Lacabe According to a $60,000 grant the Novato Police Department recently received from the Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative, new automated license plate readers (ALPRs) will be installed on Highway 37 to track terrorists. However, no suspected…
by Mike Katz-Lacabe The Vallejo Police Department cited ferry terrorism as part of its $30,000 grant application for license plate readers, calling the ferry “a viable threat for a terrorist act.” According to the grant application, the “Grant Funds will…
A state audit of license plate reader use by CA law enforcement agencies requested by State Senator Scott Weiner concluded that existing policies were largely not compliant with existing state law and that laws needed to be strengthened. The CA…
Update: November 12th is the day Berkeley’s automated license plate reader policy hits the council. Berkeleyside: Berkeley Is Being Bamboozled Update: On September 4, 2019, Berkeley’s Police Review Commission, which is empowered by the surveillance ordinance to provide recommendations regarding…
Update: On June 25, the Richmond City Council voted 5-2 not to renew their contract with Vigilant Solutions. Richmond Standard The decision by the Council represents the first Bay Area municipal contract cancelled as a result of the passage of…
In March of 2018, the small East Bay city of San Pablo delayed a $2.4 million dollar expansion of their Vigilant Solutions license plate reader surveillance system after community distress about Vigilant’s contract with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A…
Mike Katz-Lacabe reports that Homeland Security fusion center NCRIC, the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, collected 79.2 million license plates from a variety of Northern California cities from June of 2018 to May of 2019. The City of Piedmont sent…
The use of automated license plate readers by law enforcement agencies has become ubiquitous over the last decade. It is probably the most extensive mass surveillance program in the United States. The terrabytes of car images, of whch 99.5% or…
Recent public records requests have confirmed that as of February 2018 at least three Bay Area Sheriff Departments were sharing license plate reader scans they collected with the San Diego sector of the Border Patrol via the Vigilant Solutions platform…
