Washington - Homeland Security searching for national license plate tracking system

Washington – The Department of Homeland Security is searching for a company that can provide a national license plate tracking system, giving the agency access to information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers.

As reported by The Washington Post the license-plate recognition database could help catch fugitive illegal immigrants, but the database would also be able to attain more than 1 billion records that could be shared with other law enforcement agencies.

That idea raises concerns from advocates that about possible abuse of a system that has access to information about law-abiding citizens.

A DHS spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) stated that the database would only be used to find those involved in ongoing criminal case and it would help law enforcement better locate suspects and would reduce surveillance time.

The DHS search for a license plate tracking system comes about as some states question policy issues around the subject. Currently, about 20 states have passed or proposed legislation that restricts the use of readers storing the data found using readers.