[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11990]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   THE ALL-SEEING EYE OF GOVERNMENT TRACKS CITIZEN MOVEMENT THROUGH 
                       LICENSE PLATE SURVEILLANCE

  (Mr. POE of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, government agencies have been keeping 
track of Americans' whereabouts by amassing databases of millions of 
our license plates by using license plate scanners. The information 
captures data on movements of innocent American citizens going about 
their daily lives.
  Unbeknown to Americans, government technology records our movement 
from the time we get in our car in the morning to every place we stop 
during the day, to the time we drive home. Plus, this data can be 
stored indefinitely.
  This reminds me of the days when I was in the Soviet Union and saw 
how government spied on its citizens constantly. Do we really want a 
government to have the authority to record us anywhere we go during the 
day or during the night?
  When you go to work, to lunch, to the barber shop, to the airport, to 
the movies, to the post office, to the banker, to the shopping center, 
to the car repair shop, to business meetings, to vacations, the parks, 
to the pool, to grandma's house, to church, to the grocery, to a 
friend's house, to the hospital, et cetera?
  We know by recent experience, abusive government cannot be trusted 
with dragnet information data files it collects on Americans.
  To me, freedom includes government not keeping personal daily logs on 
individuals and their activities. None of these activities are the 
government's business.
  The Right of Privacy and the Right to be Left Alone include the right 
to keep snooping government surveillance out of our lives.
  And that's just the way it is.

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