On June 15, ICE employee Garrett Rutherford logged into Nampa Police Department’s automated license plate reader system (similar to Flock but a different brand) late at night, according to data obtained via a records request. Rutherford ran five searches on the technology and viewed three plates, though portions of the document were redacted by Nampa’s records staff.
The next day, Rutherford was back around 7 a.m. searching for and viewing plates, part of over 100 searches run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Drug Enforcement Administration between June 1 and July 31 using a controversial technology that critics have said is an unacceptable level of mass surveillance.
The technology, called automated license plate readers, uses cameras to capture pictures of license plates and store the associated information in a database, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Police typically use that information to “track cars in real time and to track the past locations of cars,” the ACLU said. Nampa keeps its data for 60 days, according to its records division…