PRISM

[Lamplighter]

The cost of digital data storage has gone down so much, nothing is not feasible !

ACLU
Catherine Crump,
July 17, 2013

You Are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans' Movements

Automatic license plate readers are the most widespread
location tracking technology you’ve probably never heard of.
Mounted on patrol cars or stationary objects like bridges,
they snap photos of every passing car, recording their plate numbers, times, and locations.

At first the captured plate data was used just to check against lists of cars
law enforcement hoped to locate for various reasons (to act on arrest warrants, find stolen cars, etc.).
But increasingly, all of this data is being fed into massive databases that
contain the location information of many millions of innocent
Americans stretching back for months or even years.
<snip>
Because of the way the technology works – these devices snap photos
of every passing car, not just those registered to people suspected of crimes
– virtually all of the data license plate readers gather is about people who are completely innocent.
Data that we obtained through our records requests illustrates this point vividly:



Law enforcement data-retention policies today are all over the map.
While some police departments store data briefly, others keep it for a long time, or indefinitely.

The entire report is down-loadable as a PDF file.
(See, everyone can store data cheaply, even you )