License reader company offers trove of info to Texas cops, for a cut

The long arm of the law in Texas is getting a controversial boost from a tech company’s people-tracking database, in what one critic called a “huge invasion of privacy.”

 

Vigilant Solutions, which operates license plate readers around the state, has given at least two Lone Star law-enforcement agencies access to its massive automated database. Information culled from plate readers in police cars and affeixed to traffic signals, as well as software programs that analyze it, is used to help cops track down deadbeats and scofflaws. And Vigilant, which in one case even collects the debt on behalf of the public agency, get a 25-percent cut.

 

“It’s a huge invasion of privacy,” Dave Maass, an investigative researcher with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told FoxNews.com. “They are taking advantage of a public safety rule that came years before anything like this was a possibility.”

 

Vigilant has offered an array of automated license plate reader (ALPR) tech to agencies Guadalupe County and the city of Kyle for access to all data on drivers with outstanding court fees.

 

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