It's not just government use either. There are private companies that scan vast numbers of license plates (sometimes by driving around parking lots with a camera), build a database of what plate was seen where at what time, then sell access to both law enforcement and I believe private investigators.

Want to know if your spouse is having an affair? Those databases may well have the answer.

Here is a Wired story from 2014 about Vigilant Solutions, founded in 2009: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/license-plate-tracking/

I believe Vigilant only provide access to law enforcement, but Digital Recognition Network sell access to others as well: https://drndata.com/about/

Good Vice story about that: https://www.vice.com/en/article/i-tracked-someone-with-licen...

Supreme Court has established that some established constitutional provisions do not apply at the U.S. border, and protections against governmental privacy incursions are significantly reduced.

The border search exception applies within 100 miles (160 km) of the border of the United States, including borders with Mexico and Canada but also coastlines.

The same daughter and our son-in-law lived in Huntsville Alabama while he finished his post grad degree. I can't tell you how many trips we made then to visit, tour and eat at restaurants around town. Was that suspicious?

In 2023, we drove a round-about way to Phoenix to purchase a puppy. We visited Carlsbad New Mexico and several national parks after driving through the panhandle of Texas, in some of the remotest highways I've ever been on. (And beautiful too!) On the way home, we took a different route to see more of the states. Was that suspicious?

If I would have been pulled over and asked what I was doing, I would have said it was none of their damn business, I'd broken no laws. (Yes, I would have said we are on a trip to buy a dog and are heading home, but to be grilled, hell no!) How is this legal? I'm a white guy in his late sixties, is it fair they wouldn't suspect me because of that? Does the rule of law crumbling bother anyone anymore?

They'll of course pretend that they just saw you commit a minor infraction and that's why you were pulled over.

Wow, this is incredibly concerning. So they can pull me over, lie about why and then try to manufacture something ?

Murder clearance rates in the 50s was in the high ninety percent.

Your rights are limited in interactions with CBP, or to state the inverse: CBP have claimed more powers than traditional law enforcement. This has been true for quite a while; they have at various times been more and less careful about your rights while exercising those powers. They are being less careful now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY

Imagine a drone swarm that follows you wherever you go. Tracking and photographing every step you take in public. When you go into a building, a ground drone follows you in, notes where you've gone, and when you leave, hands you off to the flying swarm. Creating a trail of all your activities. Legally there may not be anything you can do to stop it.

The expectation that you have no privacy in public is what fuels this.

Well, that's what happens when you blur the line called the border.

Police shouldn't be able to pull someone over for an air freshener or tinted windows. They can send a fix-it ticket without wasting the time and resources, and without causing the inconvenience or diversions in traffic. And, as a private citizen, I strongly prefer the police have the minimal necessary powers to detain me.

Detaining those they _deem_, without oversight to have such.

It was about cost, not desire.

Originally it would cost too much to have someone follow you around and keep track of where you're going. This was a kind of check against that system. Now you're an SQL query away from being on some list you don't know exists.

So, standard driving while black (or brown, or Muslim, or whatever is demonized in $CURRENT_YEAR), but extended to new categories? I guess now that it's impinging on the comfortable it's news.

Democracies with Liberal leaders can quite literally get away with murder.

This war along with the War on Terror™ give pretense to all of these abuses of power and need to be undone. The problems they profess to address can be addressed in much simpler, cheaper, and humane ways.

I now believe we need to not only abolish ICE, but puts the politicians and officers on trial. CBP needs to be purged and rebuilt from the ground up.

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/braselton-police-chief-arre...

If there's a reason for having them, why don't we require them for people? Let's make everyone walk with their id at the front and back. We're for public safety here, right?

[1] https://blog.careem.com/posts/local-regulatory-data-sharing-...

/s

If you think 'this is just a normal citizen doing good work' at first and you are breaking privacy here, keep reading.

>They unearthed no contraband. But Beltran arrested Gutierrez Lugo on suspicion of money laundering and engaging in organized criminal activity because he was carrying thousands of dollars in cash — money his supervisor said came directly from customers in local Latino communities, who are accustomed to paying in cash.

carrying thousands of dollars in cash over the US Mexico border is so suspicious that there is likely a lot more happening. The trucking company spent 20,000$ to get him out of it.

The more I think of better call Saul and breaking bad, the more I wonder whether this is one of those situations where the reality is actually much worse than television fiction.

90% of the drugs that enter US come from the south border. At 120 tons of drugs being 'seized' not the ones being distributed, I am assuming the scale of this thing is massive. [1]

[1] https://forumtogether.org/article/illicit-fentanyl-and-drug-...