PA Bill Number: HR541
Title: Recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Description: A Resolution recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Last Action:
Last Action Date: Sep 27, 2024
Lawmaker presses ICE on gun show license plate scans :: 10/15/2016
Is the ICE out to ice attendance at America's gun shows?
The chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee is demanding answers from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency after a Wall Street Journal report indicated that ICE agents induced local law enforcement officers to scan the license plates of people attending gun shows in California.
The report comes less than two years after the American Civil Liberties Union exposed an effort dating back to at least 2009 by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to monitor gun show attendees using automatic license plate readers.
In a letter this week to ICE director Sarah Saldaña, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the ICE's invasive use of license plate readers was particularly troubling since there is no written policy to govern the practice.
"When attending a gun show, law abiding citizens are exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble," Goodlatte wrote. "Further, if they are purchasing or otherwise acquiring or possessing a firearm, they are exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. These constitutionally protected activities should not subject gun show attendees to unwarranted and heavy-handed surveillance practices by their government."
Goodlatte asked Saldaña to provide detailed information about ICE's use of license plate readers, including the number of gun shows ICE surveilled and how many license plates were recorded. The chairman also wanted to know if ICE still maintains the records of the recorded license plates and, if so, how long it intends to maintain that information.
Finally, Goodlatte asked if ICE has any ongoing operations or planned operations at gun shows.
"While the use of license plate readers is a valid law enforcement tool when properly used, this does not appear to be the case in this situation," Goodlatte wrote in the Oct. 4 letter.
Gun owners are people, too
In addition to Goodlatte's letter, the Second Amendment Foundation is calling for a probe by the House Oversight Committee into the effort, calling the project a "civil rights outrage."
While federal agents apparently persuaded local police officers in 2010 to scan license plates, ostensibly to detect possible gun smuggling, SAF founder and executive vice president Alan Gottlieb said the effort appears to have been "one more gun control affront launched during the Obama administration."
"Attending a gun show is not a criminal activity," Gottlieb said. "American citizens engaged in a perfectly legal activity should not have to worry about the government monitoring their exercise of various civil rights, including freedom of association and the right to keep and bear arms."
Instead of worrying about people attending gun shows, he said, maybe the same attention could have been paid to criminals walking guns across the border under the Fast and Furious fiasco.
"Unless there is clear evidence of criminal activity, it is none of the government's business who comes and goes at a lawfully operated gun show," Gottlieb said. "This kind of snooping should require a court order, and, unless some illegal activity was detected, all license plate information gathered during this effort should be destroyed, and Congress should determine how it may have been used, or misused."
Gottlieb said the Wall Street Journal's revelation raises enough questions that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform should launch an inquiry.
"If this kind of monitoring dealt with any activity other than a gun show, you can bet the liberal media would be screaming," he said. "The Obama administration and its media cheerleaders should understand that gun owners have privacy rights, too."
According to the Wall Street Journal, the ICE hoped to compare the license-plate numbers collected at gun shows with those of cars crossing the border with Mexico, "hoping to find gun smugglers."
Just as troubling to some as the collection of the data is the use of local law enforcement agencies to collect it. That, some observers say, is the latest trend toward turning divisions of local governments, and especially police departments, into mere branches of the federal government.
The ICE plan is also just the latest effort by the federal government to target gun show attendees and record their license plate information. In 2014, the ACLU released a 2009 email that stated that "DEA Phoenix Division Office is working closely with ATF on attacking the guns going to (redacted) and the gun shows, to include programs/operation with LPRs (license plate readers) at the gun shows."
The DEA subsequently told the ACLU the plan was never implemented, which was fortunate because, as the ACLU observed, an automatic license plate reader could not distinguish between people transporting illegal guns and people transporting legal guns, or no guns at all.
"It only documents the presence of any car driving to the event," wrote the ACLU's Jay Stanley and Bennett Stein. "Mere attendance at a gun show, it appeared, would have been enough to have one's presence noted in a DEA database."
Beyond gun shows, the use by police of automated license plate readers has become ubiquitous across the nation. Many police departments mount the scanners in patrol cars and record the plate of every vehicle the squad car passes. Agencies then routinely compare data to see if the owner might be wanted for a crime or as a person of interest, or might be connected to an Amber Alert or to a missing person's report, or to see if the car is registered or if the car might have been reported stolen.
Many municipalities scan the parking lots of motels at night to try and find stolen cars.
As the practice has skyrocketed, so have civil-liberties concerns. The idea, though, that police can surveil public roadways is pretty well settled; less so is the scanning of license plates of cars in parking lots and at such events as gun shows.
Various states, such as Massachusetts, Arkansas and California, have passed or have considered legislation to regulate the use of scanners and the possession of the data.
Richard Moore is the author of The New Bossism of the American Left and can be reached at www.rmmoore1.com.
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