Remember that whole 24-hour kerfluffle about the Department of Homeland Control Security making a license plate database?  We reported on it, and then it seemed the next day we were told that no, they changed their minds.  Go back to your regularly scheduled Facebook memes, folks, because there’s no big problem here.  Remember that?

Except, there is a big problem.  The government is not designing a license plate database, that’s true.  They don’t need to.  Several databases already exist in the private sector, and the government simply pays for access.

A search on USASpending.gov kicked up records showing that various entities within DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement section (ICE) alone have paid $175,000 over the past four years to Vigilant Video — the company now known as Vigilant Solutions – for access to the license-plate database most commonly used by law enforcement. Purchase orders say the database is necessary for locating and capturing fugitives and money-launderers…The Air Force, Forest Service, U.S. Marshals Service, DEA and FBI also use Vigilant’s paid services.

And guess what?  Your license plates are in there too.  And as PrivacySOS points out, that’s not okay.

If you aren’t the subject of a criminal investigation, the government shouldn’t be keeping tabs on when you go to the grocery store…In a democratic society, we should know almost everything about what the government’s doing, and it should know very little to nothing about us, unless it has a good reason to believe we’re up to no good and shows that evidence to a judge. Unfortunately, that basic framework for an open, democracy society has been turned on its head. Now the government routinely collects vast troves of data about hundreds of millions of innocent people, casting everyone as a potential suspect until proven innocent. That’s unacceptable.

That’s not the word we’d use for it.  PrivacySOS goes on to say that “The Constitution is a floor, not a ceiling.”  Absolutely true.  The Electronic Freedom Foundation and the ACLU are suing LAPD for a week’s worth of records, so they can inform the public as to the scope of the license plate collection.  Right now, six states have limited Vigilant’s collection activities, and Utah just passed a similar law.  Naturally, Vigilant is suing to have it overturned, claiming that their First Amendment rights are being violated.  I’ll wait while you wrap your mind around that one.

Bottom line is this:  You are being tracked.  As we’ve said over and over here, everywhere you go, the government has a record, because they paid a private sector company to give it to them.  Everything you say online, is being collected.  At this point, conversations that you have in your house with your spouse are not private, because we already know that the NSA can activate microphones and webcams on any computer without the owner knowing.  If you own a computer, smartphone, tablet, etc., then you’re being watched.  That’s how it goes now.  When are we going to care enough about that?