LICENSE PLATE CAMERAS KEEP TRACK OF VEHICLES CROSSING BORDER

SAN DIEGO - It can't sniff drugs or rifle luggage. But the newest weapon
against smuggling boasts blink-of-an-eye speed that border officials hope
will be just as useful.

The weapon is a high-tech camera that feeds the license plate numbers of
passing cars into a computer that can tell if the vehicle is stolen or tied
to a crime, and how often it crosses the border and when.

U.S. Customs officials in the California-Mexico border city of San Ysidro
have installed a bank of the devices, called license plate readers, in
freeway lanes leading into Mexico and plan to activate them within a month.

"What we see now is just the beginning of the trend," said Raymond Mintz,
director of applied technology for the U.S.. Customs Service in Washington,
D.C.

The newly installed license plate readers in San Ysidro offer one such
change: Vehicles, always scrutinized upon entering the United States, will
for the first time be recorded as they head into Mexico. The readers take an
electronic snapshot and send the digitized data into a computer bank. That
information pops up when the car re-enters the country.

Officials say a log of departing cars may help establish the patterns of
drug-cartel couriers and make it easier to crack criminal rings that operate
across the border.

The license plate readers, mounted on concrete barriers a few hundred feet
north of the border, win tell inspectors whether a car nearing a checkpoint
is sought by police and log all cars leaving.

Similar readers have been in place in U.S.-bound lanes at San Ysidro for
about eight months. Data is checked against a customs computer and a
separate national crime database to see if a vehicle warrants special
attention. By the time the car pulls up to the booth, the information is on
the inspector's computer screen.

Mintz said the reader system could one day be combined with scales embedded
in the road to show if a vehicle is carrying a load as it re-enters the
United States.

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst