Justice
Department spies on millions of cars: WSJ
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[January 27, 2015]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Justice
Department has been secretly gathering and storing hundreds of millions
of records about motorists in an effort to build a national database
that tracks the movement of vehicles across the country, the Wall Street
Journal reported on Monday.
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The newspaper said the main aim of the license plate tracking
program run by the Drug Enforcement Administration was to seize
automobiles, money and other assets to fight drug trafficking,
according to one government document.
But the use of the database had expanded to include hunting for
vehicles linked to other possible crimes, including kidnapping,
killings and rape suspects, the paper said, citing current and
former officials and government documents.
While U.S. officials have said they track vehicles near the Mexican
border to combat drug cartels, it had not been previously revealed
the DEA had been working to expand the database "throughout the
United States," the Journal said, citing an email.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Jan/27/images/ads/current/sunloan_bch_010715.png) It said many state and local law enforcement agencies were using the
database for a variety of investigations, the paper said.
It added it was unclear if any court oversaw or approved the
program.
The Journal quoted Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the
Senate Judiciary Committee, as saying the use of license plate
readers "raises significant privacy concerns."
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A spokesman for the Justice Department, which oversees the DEA, told
the paper the program complied with federal law. "It is not new that
the DEA uses the license-plate reader program to arrest criminals
and stop the flow of drugs in areas of high trafficking intensity,"
the spokesman was quoted as saying.
(Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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