ACLU Warns of Mass Tracking Through License Plate Scanners

The American Civil Liberties Union is warning that law enforcement officials are using license plate scanners to amass massive and unregulated databases that can be used to track law-abiding citizens as their go about their daily lives.

In a new report, "You Are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans' Movements," the ACLU discusses the data culled from license plate scanners - cameras mounted on patrol cars, overpasses and elsewhere to record your license plate number and location at a given time. There are tens of thousands such cameras now in operation, according to the group, with the data in some cases being stored indefinitely.

The cameras, which are often installed thanks to federal funding, are designed to catch car thieves and other criminals. The ACLU's Catherine Crump writes that the organization does not object to "when they're used to identify people who are driving stolen cars or are subject to an arrest warrant." But, she continues, "they should not become tools for tracking where each of us has driven."

The ACLU report is the result of an analysis of 26,000 pages of documents from police departments around the country, obtained through nearly 600 freedom of information requests. It finds that while some jurisdictions keep the information gleaned from the scanners for a short time - 48 hours in the case of the Minnesota State Patrol - many hold onto the data for years. That includes the Delaware Department of Homeland Security and the state of New Jersey, which keep the data for five years, and towns in Texas and New York, which are presumed to keep the data indefinitely.

The organization complains that there are "virtually no rules in place" to keep officials from tracking "everybody all the time." The town of Grapevine, Texas reported scanning an average of 14,547 plates each day in September 2012 and said it had nearly 2 million plates stored in its database. Milipitas, California has 4.7 million plates in its database. Neither town has a policy in place to regulate that data. The ACLU also warns that the data is being fed into larger databases, with the private National Vehicle Location Service now holding more than 800 million license plate records. The group's database is used by more than 2,200 law enforcement customers.

"Trips to places of worship, political protests, or gun ranges can be powerful indicators of people's beliefs," writes Crump. "Is it really the government's business how often you go to the drug store or liquor store, what doctors you visit, and the identities of your friends?" The report warns that the data can be used in an official capacity to spy on protesters or target communities based on their religious beliefs, or unofficially by a police officer who wants to keep an eye on a romantic rival.

The ACLU is calling for regulations to be put in place to prevent broad-based tracking using the scanners. It said the scanners should be used in a limited capacity, that the data be stored for less than a month unless it has been specifically flagged, that the public should be able to find out if a plate is contained in a database, that the data not be shared with third parties, and that scanner usage be reported publicly on an annual basis.

Friday, June 28, 2013

Obama Syndicate Plans Imminent Takeover of USA by Islam and Globalists

by: Sher Zieve
While Congress ignores it (or secretly supports it), the US courts continue to fall one by one towards accepting and utilizing Shari’a law in place of US law and the wholly-owned-by-the-totalitarian-Left-and/or-the-Saudis (same thing) media continue their mindless and largely irrelevant programming (to continue the mesmerization of the American people) Obama is openly supporting and assisting the Islamist takeover of the USA. I have been writing about this since prior to the Obama syndicate’s usurpation of the White House. However, it’s comforting to know that my more well-known brethren have at last gotten the message and are now, also, writing about it. In the end, we are all in this together!
Recently, Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Soeren Kern wrote in his article “Caliphate Conference” Seeks to Islamize Europe, U.S.”: “The explicit aim of the Istanbul Process—currently backed by the Obama administration—is to make it an international crime to criticize Islam. A Muslim fundamentalist group has organized a conference focused on turning Austria and other European countries into Islamic states.
“The “Caliphate Conference 2012” which was held on March 10 in the Austrian town of Vösendorf, situated just south of Vienna. The main theme of the event was “The Caliphate: The State Model of the Future.”
“The conference which was organized by Hizb ut-Tahrir [Party of Liberation], a pan-Islamic extremist group that seeks to establish a global Islamic state, or caliphate, ruled by Islamic Sharia law.”
Shortly thereafter, WND published the article “Planning for Islamic Caliphate Begins” in which it exposes a December 2011 Islamist Conference held in Washington D.C.—also with support from Obama—at which Sec. of State Hillary Clinton spoke in favor of the Islamists’ plans to stop anti-Islam speech in the USA. The “Istanbul Process” (also SURPRISE—SURPRISE is supported by the U.N.) would deny anti-Islamic speech, only, and if any anti-Muslim/Islam speech leads to said Muslims rioting and pillaging (which is what they do on a regular basis, anyway) the speaker would be held liable, jailed or worse.

The above is happening now. Source it for yourselves or take a look at the references below. This would also be an excellent campaign strategy for Obama…jailing anyone who has spoken out against the Satanic Islamic cult. That’s most—if not all—of we Constitutionalists.
So, we have a dictatorial group now ruling—not governing—us which has destroyed our jobs and is in the process of destroying the employers who provide those jobs. It is, also, gutting our US Treasury, taking our money and spending it on the globalists, Islam and whatever other groups wanting and working with Obama to destroy what used to be our country. This same Obama syndicate has ordered military drills (aka “urban warfare”) in many of our cities including, but not limited to, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston and Little Rock, has ensured that gasoline and energy prices are reaching unprecedented highs (how better to immobilize a population?), is beginning its takeover of raising our children (did you see the articles about the Obama Food Police checking 4-6 year olds lunches) and Michele Obama has even limited how large candy bars are allowed to be. And, there’s always ObamaCare—which is much…much more than healthcare—looming darkly over us. So many more tyrannical dictates have been commanded by Obama that it would take several books to include them all.
How much more will it take, America, for us to rise up against this massive onslaught? Are we doomed to slavery, poverty and early death at the hands of the most corrupt and evil oppressors in human history or will we actually get off our collective derrieres and fight them? By the way, there is no time left. Decisions must be now or never.