Vigilant Solutions

History

2018: Search of illegal migrants by means of scanners of autorooms in shopping centers

In July, 2018 it became known of how shopping centers in the USA help migration services to look for illegal immigrants. Reported about it in human rights organization Fund of electronic boundaries (Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF),

In the State of California tens of shopping centers belonging to Irvine Company Retail Properties construction company send data from scanners of car numbers to law enforcement agencies thanks to what the last find location of potential criminals. 

Shopping centers help migration services to look for illegal immigrants

According to the message on the website Irvine Company Retail Properties, the company at least since 2016 is an active client of Vigilant Solutions company which develops one of the world's largest networks of scanners of automobile registration signs. Though this network private, Vigilant Solutions has agreements on sharing of data with law enforcement agencies in the USA, including with police departments New York, Chicago and Dallas. The Vigilant Solutions network processes about 100 million license plate numbers of vehicles every month.

It turned out that Vigilant Solutions also cooperates with the U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement (ICE). The department confirmed to the The Verge edition use of the database of the company, but told nothing concerning whether any agreement on sharing of data works between them. ICE only emphasized that work with information which is stored on servers takes place in compliance with the policy of impact on the identity of high risk methods of personal data processing (Privacy Impact Assessments) accepted in 2015.

As well as most other law enforcement agencies, ICE uses information obtained from readers of license plate numbers as one of tools for conducting the investigations. ICE conducts both criminal investigations, and the investigations connected with immigration of citizens. ICE does not aim to create the database of readers of license plates and will not collect and not to enter any data in the national state or private database — the representative of the agency said.

In EFF urged Irvine Company to stop practice of sharing of data with Vigilant Solutions as "such shadowing location and cooperation with Vigilant Solutions", according to human rights activists, "not only threaten immigrants, but also break confidentiality of clients of the company, allowing third parties to store these clients indefinite term". 

Vigilant Solutions called the report of EFF "inaccurate and based on someone's opinion, but not on the facts". What the inaccuracy consists in, in the company did not tell.

The representative of Irvine Company in a conversation with The Verge told that data on car numbers are really collected in several shopping centers. However these data are transferred only to local police, but not federal bodies, like ICE.

Information analysis will help detectives to define, for example, what cars most often were close to the famous suspects: on the one hand, it can be the criminal's accomplices, with another — his possible victims.

Vigilant Solutions through the subsidiary company Digital Recognition Network sells the cameras which are reading out car numbers, to collection and insurance agencies through the whole country. Installed on tow trucks or other cars of the device take the picture, then a system will recognize license plate numbers, and information on them is on sale to partners and clients of the company. Sometimes Digital Recognition Network provides data to law enforcement agencies on a grant basis.^[1]

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