DHS is planning to try a license plate tracking program again

After ostensibly abandoning a plan last spring to develop a national license plate tracking system, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has quietly resumed a modified version of the project.

DHS is now contacting companies that already track license plates for local, state, and federal law enforcement departments. Though the agency insists it has no intention of building a national tracking database, its plan is to gain access to all the smaller databases and thus have — basically — a national database.

As with last year's proposal, civil libertarians have begun to sound the alarm. Gregory T. Nojeim of the Center for Democracy & Technology explains that, "If this goes forward, DHS will have warrantless access to location information going back at least five years about virtually every adult driver in the U.S., and sometimes to their image as well."

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