Long before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) got a tool to access license plate reader information, the police departments of Orange, Tustin, Anaheim and Fountain Valley were already supplying that data to the federal agency.
The revelation comes from an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report that included the four Orange County cop shops among at least 14 California cities that have been sharing the information with ICE for years.
Also of regional interest in Dave Maass’ story is this tidbit:
[A]n ICE officer obtained access through the Long Beach Police Department’s system in November 2016 and ran 278 license plate searches over nine months. Two CBP [U.S. Customs & Border Protection] officers further conducted 578 plate searches through Long Beach’s system during that same period.
The revelations come a week after ICE struck a deal with Livermore-based Vigilant Solution to obtain license plate reader information. (Hat tip to San Diego Patch.)
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.