Bay Area firm gives ICE access to vehicle locations

Federal immigration officers across the country will be able to track where vehicles have been after contracting with a Livermore company that keeps a vast database of license plate scans, officials said Friday.

James Schwab, a spokesman at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in San Francisco, confirmed that the agency entered into a contract with West Publishing, which is partnering with Bay Area company Vigilant Solutions to provide the service. The contract was first reported by the news site The Verge.

ICE “has issued an award of a single source, firm-fixed price contract to obtain query-based access to a commercially available license plate reader database,” Schwab said in a statement. “Like most other law enforcement agencies, ICE uses information obtained from license plate readers as one tool in support of its investigations.”

Vigilant Solutions is one of the country’s biggest vendors of license plate readers and databases of scanned plates. A number of Bay Area agencies work with the company, including police in Antioch, Dublin, Mill Valley and Alameda, as well as the California Highway Patrol.

The technology is touted by law enforcement officials as a helpful way to track down stolen cars and pinpoint the location and movements of suspected criminals. But the devices — and the growth of multiagency databases — have raised concerns from privacy advocates, who have argued the surveillance measures are unconstitutional.

Schwab said ICE officers will use the database for investigative purposes but not contribute to it.

Matt Pera, a spokesman for Vigilant Solutions, said in a statement that the company does not comment on individual contracts.