Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with suspicious' travel patterns

"The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found. The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took."

"Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement's radar. Once limited to policing the nation's boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country's interior that can monitor ordinary Americans' daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects."

"The Border Patrol has recently grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies have asked Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show. This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation."

The U.S. Border Patrol operates a predictive intelligence program that monitors millions of American drivers by scanning and recording license plates and analyzing travel patterns. An algorithm flags vehicles based on origin, destination and routes, and federal agents may notify local law enforcement. Drivers are often stopped for minor violations and subjected to aggressive questioning, searches, and some arrests without knowing they were flagged. The program began about a decade ago to target border-related trafficking and has expanded over the last five years, incorporating data from DEA, private firms and federally funded local license-plate reader programs and exploring facial recognition.

Read at www.mercurynews.com