Anything Google, Amazon, Twitter or Facebook store on you is available to the government. If they want to get hold of it to get something to arrest you with, all they have to do is ask. While they may push back on some requests, there's actually very little they can do with FISA/NSA requests, they're almost always complied with.
I've heard them grumble about mass surveillance laws, but I haven't heard about them openly defying them, or using any of their substantial lobbying muscle in Washington against them. If they really cared, they could encrypt a lot of communications data, and simply not store things like real names, GPS co-ordinates and IP addresses as soon as they're not necessary to provide a service. The data wouldn't be as profitable, though.
If it makes you feel any safer, your license plate data is already being sold to private companies who want to build a file on you for profit.
From the EFF[1]:
> Vigilant Solutions' subsidiary Digital Recognition Network, along with MVTrac, are the two main companies hiring contractors to collect ALPR data across the country. The companies then share the data not just with law enforcement but also with auto recovery (aka "repo") companies, banks, credit reporting agencies, and insurance companies. Data collected by private entities does not have retention limits and is not subject to sunshine laws, or any of the other safeguards that are sometimes found in the government sector.
As far as we know (which is as little as possible), they can get all the data on you as an individual, if you’re on a data retention list. This is outside of data you generate happening to hit certain search terms
I qualify for such a list; I was/am a subscriber to The Linux Journal, an ‘extremeist publication’ according to the NSA, at least at the time of the Snowden leaks.
Am I still? It’s illegal for me to know. But it’s reasonable to assume that the maximalist approach to data collection is shared by the government and Google et al quite happily.
I've heard them grumble about mass surveillance laws, but I haven't heard about them openly defying them, or using any of their substantial lobbying muscle in Washington against them. If they really cared, they could encrypt a lot of communications data, and simply not store things like real names, GPS co-ordinates and IP addresses as soon as they're not necessary to provide a service. The data wouldn't be as profitable, though.
If it makes you feel any safer, your license plate data is already being sold to private companies who want to build a file on you for profit.
From the EFF[1]:
> Vigilant Solutions' subsidiary Digital Recognition Network, along with MVTrac, are the two main companies hiring contractors to collect ALPR data across the country. The companies then share the data not just with law enforcement but also with auto recovery (aka "repo") companies, banks, credit reporting agencies, and insurance companies. Data collected by private entities does not have retention limits and is not subject to sunshine laws, or any of the other safeguards that are sometimes found in the government sector.
[1]: https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-al...