Dear John,

Yesterday, the Associated Press (AP) published a blockbuster investigation that reveals, for the first time, how the U.S. Border Patrol and other federal law enforcement agencies are using an extensive network of license plate reader cameras to monitor the travel of millions of Americans, then asking local law enforcement to stop those travelers based on what the agencies consider suspicious travel patterns. This mass surveillance, which has become far, far removed from simple border enforcement, would not have come to light without IJ’s case representing innocent motorist Alek Schott and the information we’ve uncovered while fighting for his rights. 

As you may recall, Alek was driving home to Houston from a work trip when a county sheriff’s deputy pulled him over for drifting between lanes (which Alek’s dashcam showed he didn’t do). The deputy aggressively interrogated Alek, and when Alek wouldn’t consent to a search of his pickup truck, the deputy called in a drug-sniffing dog, which alerted, despite there being no drugs in the car. Deputies tore through Alek’s truck, found nothing, and sent him home with thousands of dollars in damage to his vehicle.

When we first took Alek’s case, we knew it was going to be an important challenge to the many illegal stops where officers fish for cash to seize based on hunches. But as the IJ attorney representing Alek told the AP, “What we found was something much larger—a system of mass surveillance that threatens people’s freedom of movement.”

Alek Schott sued after an unconstitutional traffic stop by Texas deputies. His case has revealed an extensive network of federal mass surveillance.

Border Patrol agents had tracked Alek as he drove to a hotel 80 miles from the border, tracked him the next day as he met with a client, and tracked him as he drove home. They passed that info to local deputies. 

The system works like this: Networks of automated license plate readers, many hidden in seemingly innocuous items along the highway, take photos of license plates and sometimes driver’s faces as people go about their lives. An algorithm uses that data to determine what law enforcement calls “patterns of life.” The algorithm then flags “anomalies”—things as common as driving on backroads or making a quick trip to a town near the border—which officers pass to local law enforcement, often informally through WhatsApp messages. 

Local officers find or make up pretexts to stop cars flagged by the feds. As detailed in the article, those stops can lead to searches, the seizure and forfeiture of cash or vehicles, and arrests of innocent people.

The AP characterizes the agency’s surveillance role as “akin to a domestic intelligence operation”: “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.” 

I urge you to read the entire AP investigation, available without any paywall. The key that enabled IJ and AP’s reporters to tie Alek’s stop to the Border Patrol’s surveillance system was a WhatsApp chat with federal agents and the deputy who stopped Alek. The deputy deleted the chat from his phone, but with the help of a forensic technician, IJ was able to recover the messages. They are part of the case’s public record because IJ successfully fought the government’s attempt to keep everything secret at the start of the case. 

While the article focuses on the Border Patrol and related agencies, this type of mass surveillance has grown to encompass all levels of law enforcement in America. More than 6,000 cities nationwide use automated license plate reader cameras, often combined with increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. That means that whether you are driving on a highway or just through your hometown, there’s a good chance the government is tracking your movements. 

IJ is fighting back against warrantless surveillance and demanding that constitutional standards be followed. Through cases like Alek’s, our lawsuit against Norfolk, Virginia’s use of license plate readers to track drivers, and our recently launched Plate Privacy Project, we challenge the government’s arbitrary power to surveil the entire driving public. 

Millions of Americans will soon take to the nation’s roads and highways to celebrate Thanksgiving with their loved ones. Many of those Americans will be caught in this surveillance dragnet, their movements uploaded to databases that law enforcement of all kinds can access with little to no judicial oversight.  

This is not the America we want and it’s not the America our Founders envisioned when they wrote into the Bill of Rights that the right to be secure “against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.” Your support enables IJ to take on these big fights that expose even bigger fights against threats to our Constitution. 

Scott 

Scott G. Bullock
President and Chief Counsel
Institute for Justice